Supporting Charities and Communities

Our Community Affairs programme, focusing on social responsibility was first launched in 2008 to develop strong community partnerships, to support local projects and charities, and to support our colleagues in their volunteering, fundraising and environmental endeavours.

Our community programme is based around three key strands of activity:

Employee Giving

Our staff donated £126,000 to charities they care about in 2013/14 through tax free donations using the ‘Give As You Earn’ company Payroll Giving scheme. This is almost £30,000 more than the previous year due to a series of campaigns to raise awareness and attract more donors to the scheme.

Road shows at our major sites and an internal communications initiative increased the numbers of employees donating through ‘Give As You Earn’ from 4% in 2012 to 8% in 2014. As a result, NATS were awarded The Payroll Giving Silver Award in 2013 for passing the 5% benchmark.

We have continued to strengthen our relationship with Aerobility the disabled flying charity and NATS CEO’s Charity of the Year 2011/2012, supporting through sponsorship and fundraising. Over the last couple of years, working with the trades unions, our employees, their families and friends have now raised £180,000 for Aerobility.

On top of this, our people raised more than £60,000 for their chosen charities through their own fundraising events. Examples of support include:

  • NATS employees at Swanwick, Prestwick and our Corporate Centre supported their local food bank for the second year running. During the Christmas period employees donated 42 trolley loads of food and household goods and £5,000 to support local people in need
  • Employees at our Edinburgh control tower, in aid of Sport Relief, scaled the height of Everest by repeatedly climbing the tower stairs and raised over £3,000

A ‘your fundraising’ portal on the company’s internal website highlights upcoming events with links on how to donate to people’s nominated causes.

This has been an amazing achievement for a relatively small company.

Corporate Giving

We have an established corporate social responsibility fund – the ‘Footprint Fund’ – which aims to encourage employees individually, or in teams, to give something back to the communities in which they live and work. Our people can apply for funding to support their active involvement with local charities and communities.

In addition to the amount raised by our employees in 2013/14, the Footprint Fund donated a further £31,000 to over 50 local causes including:

  • Scottish Dark Sky Observatory, which educates people in astronomy, and provides outreach activities to local schools and community groups
  • Julia’s House, a local children’s hospice dedicated to helping life-limited children and their families
  • Coxford & District Youth Project, which provide arts, crafts and sports activities for local disadvantaged children
  • Order of Malta Ambulance Corps, a voluntary ambulance and first aid organisation which provide first aid training, care facilities and services in the community
  • Trinity Concert Band, a band which bring together musicians spanning a wide technical ability

Employee Volunteering

Many of our people volunteered their services during the year in support of community and charitable initiatives. Examples include working with local schools to give children an insight into careers in science and technology, developing an educational area to enhance outdoor learning, and conservation work in support of our local nature reserve.

Our Maths mentoring scheme which has changed young people’s lives since 2008 by increasing the grade A-C GCSE Mathematics pass rate from 21% to 58%, was awarded ‘Community Project of the Year’ by the International Association for Project Management.

To support employees, we provide a community volunteering team leader’s handbook and the ‘NATS Gives’ community volunteering portal that connects volunteers with each other and with volunteering opportunities in the community.

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