Community investment

Although we are a business with a well defined market, we have an impact on a much wider community. This can range from the impact our advice and services have in society through to the impact we have at a very local level in the environment around our individual offices. We believe that we have a responsibility to make a difference to the wider society both through the financial support we can give to charities, the advice and knowledge we can provide to them and, importantly, the support and encouragement we can provide to our people to enable them to make their own commitment to the community.

The basis of our community investment programme is to support and encourage our people to make a difference in the communities in which they live and work, by giving them the opportunity to apply their time and talents to create positive change. To facilitate this, we support our people in contributing to charities and communities in a variety of ways: through providing paid volunteering leave, matched fundraising, payroll giving and making donations to charities in recognition of work our people do in their own time. Our people can use their community investment ‘entitlement’ to support charities and communities of their own choice or support the firm’s community partners.

The firm-organised opportunities we offer our people are focused around our key community partners – The Prince’s Trust, Education Partners, children’s charity NCH, and Comic Relief and Sport Relief. We do, however, also support a number of other charitable organisations which fit with our core approach, criteria and focus, including Business in the Community, TaxAid, Mango and Crisis.

As an organisation we also strive to make an impact in the areas of education and entrepreneurship, particularly amongst young people.

Education, both formal and informal, is a critical factor in any individual achieving their potential. In recognition of the important role schools play in the development of young people and as focal points for local communities, we are committed to developing sustainable partnerships with state schools in deprived areas. We aim to make a difference by supporting pupils and teachers, as well as by contributing to the school’s management. We also seek to support their physical environment where appropriate.

Entrepreneurs benefit their communities by creating jobs, growing their economies and making their local communities more vibrant. We believe, therefore, that by supporting young entrepreneurs (by developing their thinking around enterprise and their business skills) we can make a difference to the wider community, both now and over the longer-term. Social entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial charities can also be supported through the time and advice we can give.

We are members of the London Benchmarking Group and using its measurement model, our overall contribution to the community in our financial year to June 2007 was more than £2.7m. This covers cash, time and management costs. Please click here for a financial breakdown of our contribution.

This overall contribution of £2.7m translates into over 1.4% of our pre- tax profits being donated to charitable causes as per the London Benchmarking Group’s definition.

• Working with community organisations
• Recent success and performance
• Our community investment targets

Working with community organisations

Key to supporting our people in making a difference to the community is our relationship with a small number of community organisations. We have built significant community partnerships with four organisations:

• The Prince’s Trust
• Education Partners
• NCH
• Comic Relief and Sport Relief

and support a number of other key community organisations:

• Business in the Community
• Mango
• TaxAid
• Crisis
• SMart
• Unicorn Children’s Theatre
• London Benchmarking Group
• StreetShine
• Community Service Volunteers
• Numerous local charities and community groups

Community partnerships
Working with our community partners ensures we can offer all of our people a diverse range of opportunities throughout our UK locations. It allows us to build long-term sustainable relationships with our partners, enabling us to provide high value support.

Recent success and performance

We have had a very successful 2006/07 financial year in Community Investment. Highlights range from an increase in the number of hours volunteered in the community by our people; the establishment of Profitunity! (our joint initiative with The Prince’s Trust) as a key graduate recruitment programme; winning a national award for our Education Partnership programme; and the introduction of Learning Through Community Investment – a programme which formally recognises skills development opportunities for our people through community activities.

What success looked like in 2006/07:

• We recorded over 20,000 hours volunteering (2005/06: 12,500).
• Over 18% of our people volunteered some of their time for charity (2005/06:12%).

• Our people raised over £880,000 for charity, including £108,000 for Comic Relief and £170,000 for The Prince's Trust.
• Ernst & Young contributed over £400,000 to charities in matched funding.
• Our volunteering had a positive impact on over 30,000 young people.
• As the honorary account for Comic Relief we have counted over £5.5 million of public donations and provided pro bono accounting worth over £300,000.
• Our people donated over £176,000 to charity through our Give As You Earn scheme and the firm made an extra contribution of over £14,000.
• We contributed the cash equivalent of £2.7m to community investment activities (calculated using the London Benchmarking Group model) which includes cash, gifts in kind, time and commercial activities.
• Our Education Partnership programme won a 'Big Tick' from Business in the Community in the Achievement in Young People category by a panel of practitioners as a programme which 'demonstrates the positive impact of responsible business behaviour on society as well as on the company itself'.
• Our community programme achieved the 'Platinum Standard' (highest grade) within the firm’s Corporate Reasonability Index for the second year running.
• We came fourth in The Times Best Companies survey, with questions relating to the firm’s community investment activity scoring strongly.
• Profitunity! raised over £28,000 for The Prince's Trust, with six students joining the firm. Profitunity! is now established as a key graduate recruitment programme.
• Learning through Community Investment was launched enabling our people to develop business and personal skills through community based opportunities.

Our community investment targets

Our community targets, to be met by June 2008, are to:

• Increase the number of people engaged in volunteering and the number of hours volunteered
• Continue to allocate the Ernst & Young Foundation monies appropriately
• To measure the number of beneficiaries and the impact of a number of our Community investment activities
• Increase the take-up of our payroll giving scheme
• Increase the number of people applying for their 'out of hours' donation from the firm
• To continue to ensure at least 1% of our pre tax profits are donated to charity
• Enhance the firm's position in the ‘Give Something Back’ category of the Sunday Times Best Companies To Work For.