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Community

HomeServe has always been committed to the community in which it operates. This year the business has increased its focus on the community and has formed its first national community partnership in the UK with Marie Curie Cancer Care.

Marie Curie looks after approximately 30,000 patients each year who are terminally ill. 5,000 patients are cared for in their eight UK hospices, but the vast majority of patients are cared for in their own homes by their relatives and Marie Curie nurses.

HomeServe chose Marie Curie as our first national charity partner because, in addition to the traditional fundraising channels, we are in a unique position to help Marie Curie patients in their own homes. Utilising our network of tradesmen and engineers, we plan to undertake emergency and repair work in patients’ homes to provide support to them during their illness.

HomeServe has pledged to raise £1,000,000 for Marie Curie over the next three years (April 2010 – March 2013). The target will be made up of employee fundraising and volunteering, customer donations, sponsorship and gift-in-kind contributions.

Initiatives for 2010/11 include:

Launching a Marie Curie Complete Cover patient policy

HomeServe aims to give each patient being cared for in their own home free cover for all home emergencies and repairs. A pilot test will be launched this summer to 2,000 patients.

Sponsorship of Walk Ten

Marie Curie has three flagship events each year: The Great Daffodil Appeal; Blooming Great Tea Party and now, Walk Ten. HomeServe is delighted to announce that we are to be the headline sponsor for the launch of Walk Ten in August and September 2010. HomeServe’s cash sponsorship of Walk Ten contributes towards our fundraising target.

Walk Ten is a series of 10k walks in the grounds of National Trust properties and stately homes throughout the UK, which finish at 10:00pm – marking the start of the Marie Curie nurse night shift.

Employee fundraising

To encourage employee participation HomeServe has set fundraising targets for each of our four regional sites (Banbury, Preston, Walsall and Weston). These targets are based on the number of employees working out of each site and equate to approximately £20 per employee per year. Every £20 raised pays for one hour of Marie Curie nursing care. A Fundraising Calendar of Events for the next 12 months is to be agreed with each site.

Pennies for Patients

The Pennies for Patients payroll scheme enables employees to donate the loose change from their monthly wage direct to Marie Curie. Over 1,000 employees currently contribute to Marie Curie within their monthly pay.

Volunteering

Volunteering is promoted and encouraged by HomeServe and our ‘Employee Volunteering Policy’ stipulates that all full-time employees may use up to 16 hours of work time per annum (at full pay) for volunteering projects. We will now aim to integrate this with Marie Curie activity.

In addition to our partnership with Marie Curie, HomeServe is also proud to support ad-hoc charity appeals throughout the year. This year, these have included Comic Relief, Sport Relief and Children in Need.

For Sports Relief in 2010, HomeServe committed to opening 70 donation lines during the live BBC show (7.00pm – midnight). 120 volunteers (HomeServe employees, family and friends) answered nearly 4,000 calls and raised over £125,000.

HomeServe is also focused on supporting local charities. Amongst other things, the business provides annual grants for 25 local youth teams linked to HomeServe employees.

Cause related marketing

In addition to our employee fundraising and business donations, we recognise that our customers may also be interested in supporting our national charity, Marie Curie. Therefore, as part of our relationship with Marie Curie Cancer Care we intend to integrate ‘cause related marketing’ into our acquisition and cross sales marketing activity, to enable our customers to support our community plans. This summer we are running a test which will enable customers to opt in to donate £1 to Marie Curie. Customers will be able to tick a box, that will be printed on the letters that we send them to donate £1, when they take out a new or upgrade an existing policy. These donations will contribute towards our fundraising target.

An example of how a customer donation could be requested is shown below: