Supporting our community

With our presence across cities, regions and remote areas, we are a part of the fabric of society. We use our resources and skills to partner with the communities that we are part of to improve the health and well-being of our customers, creating employment opportunities for young Australians and New Zealanders, and supporting communities facing natural disasters with emergency relief and post-disaster recovery. Some of our initiatives include Free Fruit for Kids, Earn and Learn, S.T.A.N.D., White Ribbon and programs with our food rescue partners such as OzHarvest and Foodbank.
 
In addition to Woolworths’ direct contribution to community partnerships, we help customers contribute directly to charitable organisations. Many Australian and New Zealand communities have a Woolworths business in their town centre, and this provides us with the opportunity to engage with our customers, team members and suppliers to raise awareness of and contribute vital funding to community programs.

Reporting on the social impacts for our community

We will manage our community investments under a best practice social accounting framework, such as the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) methodology, to ensure that we meet the targets we set. The 2020 target is ‘We will publicly report social impact to quantify the positive changes we are creating with a focus on health, economic development and emergency relief.’
 
Reporting social impacts shows how our community partners are improving and transforming lives, including those of our team members and customers. This will allow us to highlight the impacts of ‘Good Acts’, raising the awareness of our community partners’ work.
 
Our goal is to contribute the equivalent to at least 1% of our pre-tax profits (on a three-year rolling average) every year to the communities in which we operate.

Our community contribution 2016/17

Contribution to the community⁶ as a % of pre-tax profit⁷

= 1.1% on a rolling average basis

⁶ Excludes leveraged funds
⁷ Before significant items
 
Requests for support 

We receive many requests from worthy causes. However, unfortunately, we are unable to support them all. In order to appropriately channel our support our community investment does not provide funding for the following:

• Unregistered charities or organisations
• Australian Business Number (ABN) is mandatory for all organisations.
• Charities require Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status and must be authorised licensed/permitted to conduct charitable fundraising activities in the States/Territories in which they operate.
• Charity advertising or promotions, unless part of a Woolworths specific campaign.
• Political campaigns and activities.
• Organisations with a religious affiliation are not excluded, so long as participation is open to the community generally.
• Year end deficits.
• Sponsorship of individuals, including Woolworths Limited staff (see employee specific schemes).
• Overseas projects not linked to a Woolworths program.
• The replacement of funds provided by the government, which does not bring additional benefits to people or communities.
• Business-related conferences, awards and exhibition sponsorships.

If you feel your request meets our criteria please contact us here.