Community and partnerships
Community and partnerships
We have a long history of building strong partnerships and delivering great impact in our communities, locally and internationally. Our business relies on strong, resilient communities, and we’re committed to support social cohesion, economic prosperity and inclusive growth. We have presence in thousands of communities across the country and aim to help positively impact those in need through fundraising, volunteering, donations and by raising awareness.
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Our commitment
Address food poverty by providing good food for all of us
Key achievements
£36 million
raised for good causes in 2023-24
798
local good causes supported with over £1 million of committed funding
23+ million
meals donated via our partnership with Neighbourly since 2021
3.34 million
raised for the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal in 2022
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Our progress so far
For further information on our performance, please visit our Reports & Policies page for our Plan for Better report.
Our approach
Our colleagues are key to supporting the communities we serve. Through our fundraising and volunteering programmes, our colleagues have the opportunity to fundraise and volunteer their time to local good causes.
We play an active role in the communities we serve and have a long history of supporting our communities. In 1998, we launched our Food Donation Programme, where stores partner with local organisations operating both Front of Store (customers donations into donation points in stores) and Back of Store (donating surplus stock to local organisations) programmes. We want to improve the volume of surplus food we redistribute and this year are trialling tech solutions to support us redistribute our surplus food.
Over the last year, our key priority for us has been to support our communities and the most vulnerable in society during the pandemic. To support the huge amount of pressure on foodbanks, charities and community groups at the start of the pandemic, we made a £3 million commitment to FareShare. During this time, Sainsbury’s funded and supported distribution of over 24 million meals, via 3,945 unique charities.
We supported Comic Relief and Children in Need by matching our customers’ donations £ for £ in the The Big Night In Appeal, with the total donation exceeding £4 million, split between the two charities, to support those severely affected by the pandemic. We also donated over 2,000 laptops for kids as part of the Computers for Kids initiative and donated 470,000 items of clothing with a retail value of around £5.2 million across a number of charities including Comic Relief and Newlife.
08 January 2025
That’s amore! Sainsbury’s partners with Italian ready meal supplier to donate one million meals to those experiencing food insecurity
- Sainsbury’s has partnered with its supplier Greencore to help produce and deliver one million fresh meals to food redistribution charity FareShare
- From now until the end of April, 25p from every by Sainsbury’s Italian style ready meal purchased will help fund the meal production with Greencore
- FareShare will then distribute the meals to its network of over 8,000 charities
- This forms part of Sainsbury’s ongoing charity work with Comic Relief to tackle food insecurity across the UK
Read the article
08 January 2025
That’s amore! Sainsbury’s partners with Italian ready meal supplier to donate one million meals to those experiencing food insecurity
- Sainsbury’s has partnered with its supplier Greencore to help produce and deliver one million fresh meals to food redistribution charity FareShare
- From now until the end of April, 25p from every by Sainsbury’s Italian style ready meal purchased will help fund the meal production with Greencore
- FareShare will then distribute the meals to its network of over 8,000 charities
- This forms part of Sainsbury’s ongoing charity work with Comic Relief to tackle food insecurity across the UK
Read the article
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Working in collaboration
We have a long history of working with food banks and community donation schemes to support our local communities. We are a founding member of FareShare which began in 1994, and continue to work with them to redistribute surplus food, indirectly supporting 11,000 charities and community projects across the UK. Through our Food Donation Programme we work with over 1,300 organisations and have partnerships across the majority of our Sainsbury’s stores. These partnerships include The Felix Project and The Trussell Trust.
We have been working with The Royal British Legion on the Poppy Appeal for over 25 years, during that time raising an estimated £40 million through the Poppy Appeal collections in store and the sales of products.
We have also been a long standing partner of Comic Relief, and have raised over £130 million.