Community engagement
Contributing to solving some of the world’s biggest challenges isn’t something we do on the side. Our community investments simply allow us to extend our impact. We focus our efforts on sharing our skills and experience to 'Maximise Potential' - of individuals through education, of social enterprises and of the NGO sector.
Investing in skills
Labour markets are transforming, driven by rapid technological change and changing socio-demographics. In this year’s CEO survey 72% of CEOs were concerned about the availability of key skills and most CEOs (75%) said that a skilled, educated and adaptable workforce should be a priority for business in the country where they’re based.
Through investing in education we enable our network an access point to help solve important problems and power an effective skills transition.
For example:
- PwC US’ Earn Your Future, designed to help strengthen the financial capability of young people and ultimately contribute to more stable and inclusive communities, has reached more than 3.5 million students and educators.
- PwC Australia has brought together a range of business and education collaborators through the 21st Century Minds Accelerator Program - designed to unearth, grow and scale Australia’s best STEM education initiatives and help in the transition from a resource to knowledge economy.
Supporting NGOs and social enterprise to accelerate societal change
Social enterprise and NGOs are solving some of societies biggest problems and our global network of people have the skills and knowledge to support them. From working to build trust and transparency in the NGO sector to directly supporting the start up of innovative social enterprises, we’re working across the globe to accelerate change in collaboration with those having some of the greatest impact in creating sustainable and enterprising economies. For example:
- PwC China/Hong Kong is helping build trust in the NGO sector through helping 1,000 NGOs to better understand impactful reporting, good governance and robust internal controls through its Strengthening Donor Communications and Mentoring project.
- PwC UK’s Social Enterprise Club has connected over 250 members using the skills and resources within the firm to support social entrepreneurs and enterprises such as Brigade.
- The Netherlands Social Impact Lab is designed to challenge start-ups with social purpose and support them in creating the next step to increasing their social impact.
- PwC Philippines has helped establish the Developmental Social Enterprise Awards.
Helping in disaster
As global humanitarian disasters increase in frequency we continue to explore how we can best support people and communities affected – utilising our skills and experience. For example, teams from PwC Netherlands are helping towards the refugee crisis by bringing together key stakeholders to find the best solutions to issues such as refugees getting permits to access regular home and work opportunities. We also work with others through our Global Crisis Centre – supporting clients prepare for, respond to and recover from a crisis.
As disasters increase, the economic losses and impact on business is being increasingly recognised. That’s why we worked with the UN to co-create the R!SE Initiative which aims to contribute to risk resilient cities through risk sensitive investments.
How we are performing
In FY16 we saw our community investment increase to an all-time high as a result of our focus on skilled volunteering and capacity building.
Community investment in numbers
Volunteering in numbers
Note: These figures relate only to the 21 largest firms in the PwC network. Donations include cash donations made directly by the firm to charitable organisations, donations provided by the firm to match funds raised by staff and the value of non-cash in-kind donations other than professional services (e.g. equipment, property, access to our facilities). Volunteering hours accounts for the value of the time contributed by our staff through volunteering activities (calculated based on the London Benchmarking Group standard for measuring corporate community investment). Management costs include the administrative and management costs that are directly attributable to delivering the firm's corporate responsibility activities e.g. salaries of our CR teams Pro bono and discounted engagements include the value of our professional services provided free of charge or at discounted rates to non-profit or community organisations.
Impact measurement
This year we started on a journey to improve our social impact measurement on community organisations – transitioning from inputs to outcomes.
Our first round of measurement identified the following key findings.
Over 60,000 PwC people volunteered in the community and invested over 800,000 hours of general, professional services and skilled volunteering in FY16.
Contact us
Kirsty Jennings
Global Corporate Responsibility Leader
Tel: +61 3 8603 0174
Email