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Giving and volunteering

We’re working to support our colleagues and customers give back to help our communities. 

2024 Key Stats

Our direct community investment amounted to

£10.4m(*)

compared with £11.1M in 2023.

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Our colleagues gave

      

£4.2M

through their giving and fundraising

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Our colleagues volunteered over

140,000

worktime hours

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(*) Data subject to independent Limited Assurance by EY. Refer to our External Assurance webpage for details. 

 

Please see our 2024 Sustainability Report for more information.

people riding exercise bikes

Supporting our communities through giving

While we recognise that our core business activities are likely to have the biggest influence on the communities in which we operate, we believe that our community investment activities can also help address some of the societal challenges our communities face. Our direct community investment in 2024 amounted to £10.4 million(*) compared with £11.1 million in 2023, as measured using the Business for Societal Impact benchmarking standard. This includes the funding we make available to support colleague giving and the direct costs of delivering our community programmes.

(*) Data subject to independent Limited Assurance by EY. Refer to our External Assurance webpage for details.

Refer to the 2024 Sustainability Basis of Reporting for more information. 

A man bungee jumping

Colleague charitable giving

The Do Good Feel Good campaign unites our colleagues to support the causes they care about through volunteering and fundraising. In 2024, we raised over £4.2 million for community causes (2023: over £3.8 million) and volunteered over 140,000 worktime hours (2023: over 125,000) to support our communities (see pages 87 of our 2024 Sustainability Report).

In 2024, we aligned our series of challenge events to support the Team GB partnership. In June 2024, the Team GB Baton Relay saw 220 colleagues participate in a range of activities and in September over 370 colleagues took part in our Team GB triathlon, using static cycle, running and rowing equipment to virtually travel as many times as possible from London to Paris. These events along with other fundraising activity in September led to over £630,000 being raised for charitable causes.

a man and woman planting a tree

Our longstanding partnership with The Conservation Volunteers (TCV) continued during 2024 with the planting of 40,000 trees and 4,000 colleagues taking part in environmental volunteering days. An audit of the trees we planted at Gogarburn in 2022 suggested a higher than expected attrition rate, so we will be addressing this by aiming to plant new trees grown at our new tree nursery at Gogarburn during the 2024/25 planting season. 

Customer charitable giving

We have innovated in recent years to make it easier for customers to give digitally. Through our Rewards account, customers donated £817,702 in 2024. We added Social Bite, a charity working to end homelessness, as a Rewards charity and encouraged customers to donate to their Festival of Kindness campaign; the £43,250 raised is enough to fund 8,650 Christmas dinners and winter meals for people who are homeless and vulnerable across the UK. 

Support for disasters and emergencies

Disaster Emergency Committee

In October 2024, the Disasters Emergency Committee responded to the humanitarian need in the Middle East by launching an appeal. Our colleagues and customers generously responded by donating £1.05 million to the appeal including £790,000 through the simple giving functionality on our mobile banking app, bringing the total raised through this channel to £8.5 million since it was launched in 2020. Our card payment provider for businesses, Tyl, allows customers to select charities to benefit from its Giveback Community Fund, leading to donations of £117,700 in 2024 (2023: £258,000).

 

National Emergencies Trust

Members of our Marketing team volunteered with The National Emergencies Trust in March 2024. The National Emergencies Trust were creating a ‘Survivors’ Hub’, a central resource hub where people affected by a UK disaster can access useful information. After a day exploring the issue, our marketing team put together a deck guiding the Trust on how to market the ‘Hub’.

Mhairi Sharp, CEO of the National Emergencies Trust said: ‘Thanks to support from the NatWest marketing team in shaping our dedicated Survivor Hub, those affected by disasters will be able to receive key guidance and signposting information in the most accessible and inclusive way. We know from previous research there is a need to ensure that support is readily available, so the onus is not on survivors to find it. The aim is to reduce this burden and ensure people can access vital information quickly’.