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Behind the numbers in 2014: Charity
6th July 2015
Target:
Undertake formal stakeholder engagement programme to establish the future direction of our charity and community activities.
How we did:
In 2014 we engaged 30 leading thinkers inside and outside our business and around 500 members of the public to hear their ideas about how we should use our business, brand and people to make a difference.
The detail:
At the beginning of 2014, Virgin Media was supporting 27 charities across the UK. Although we were making an important difference at a local level, we felt that having a big focus would give everyone’s hard work the recognition it deserved. We also wanted our charity and community initiatives to better reflect of our vision around responsibility and sustainability – digital that makes good things happen.
Getting this right isn’t just about delivering greater social impact. We know it brings real business benefits too. It means we can demonstrate to customers that we’re taking action on issues that matter and create a platform for engagement with NGOs, interest groups, policy makers and other stakeholders. In other words, it will help us build trust in the Virgin Media brand.
Through other projects like We’re all ears and Our digital future, we’ve learned that one of the best ways to develop breakthrough ideas is to listen to diverse viewpoints. For this programme we spoke to 30 leading thinkers inside and outside of our business, including from organisations like NESTA,Virgin Unite and Tinder Foundation. We also ran an online co-creation programme with over 500 members of the public to explore and develop different options for making a bigger difference.
From all the conversations we had, some key themes emerged.
Our strategy should build on our unique capabilities – the power our brand and network, our amazing people and the national footprint we have across the UK. It should resonate with customers by using digital technology to create positive change at a local level. And it should tackle a set of issues where we can make the biggest difference.
This activity fed into our new strategy and our new Transforming Lives goal. Find out more about the new goal here.