‘By asking local people to nominate and vote for the community projects which are important to them, the fund will be directly supporting the communities the bank serves.’
Jon Fox, regional managing director for NatWest in the Midlands
High street banks are taking an X-Factor approach to a new £1.9m fund launched today by asking their customers to vote on who should get the cash.
RBS and NatWest are providing 380 individual funds of £5,000 to support small community ventures, charities and social enterprises in the areas they operate.
But the decision on where the cash goes does not lie solely with the banks. Local customers are being urged to nominate good causes and will then be asked to vote for their favourite project or organisation from a shortlist.
The shortlist of three per community will be picked by a panel of representatives from the bank and local people. The most popular will receive £3,000, with the two runner ups getting £1,000 each.
Jon Fox, regional managing director for NatWest in the Midlands, said: ‘By asking local people to nominate and vote for the community projects which are important to them, the fund will be directly supporting the communities the bank serves.’
The fund comes after RBS and NatWest launched a charter, based on the responses of 30,000 customers, which resulted in a commitment to support the local communities the banks work in.
The charter has also introduced an employee community away day, where employees can spend one day a year away from the office helping local good causes.
Fox said: ‘We hope this element of our customer charter will deliver more than 10,000 days of community volunteering in 2010.’
NatWest and RBS customers can nominate a charity or project by visiting their local branch or by logging on to natwest.com/communityfund and rbs.co.uk/communityfund.
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Comments
A nice gesture
Unfortunately that's all it is, while failing to take on board that social investment is looking for opportunity. That's the message from the US where 120 billion is estimated to be waiting in the bank accounts of socially conscious customers.
A bank surely understands investment, the funding of business proposals with a financial return, in this case a financial and social return.
In a recent discussion hosted by Tactical Philanthropy one radical foundation leader pointed out that their policy of drip feeding grassroots organisations with tiny grants, kept them in the permanent position of being able to achieve nothing.
I find myself responding to those who are asking just how do we deal with the immensity of the social investment potential. All responses are business propositions.
http://myoocreate.com/challenges/socap-impact-challenge#view_entries_
If only this country was as forward thinking.
Jeff Mowatt
People-Centered Economic Development
p-ced.com
people-centered.net