Waitrose & Partners Community Matters
We support good causes. You decide who gets what.

Online, Waitrose.com also shares a donation of £25,000 between 3 national causes. After checkout, you will be asked to vote for one of the national causes we are supporting. Each cause will receive a share according to the number of votes - just as we do in our branches.

Find out more about the good causes we support>

National causes we are currently supporting on Waitrose.com

The Big Issue Foundation

Your support will better the lives of vendors, like Julie, who have chosen to embark on a journey of self-help and change by selling The Big Issue magazine:  

I began selling The Big Issue in Bournemouth 15 months ago but that’s not where my story begins.

After both my parents passed away in quick succession, I moved to Bournemouth for a fresh start. I quickly found work and settled in a flat. Everything was going well until I started to get ill.

Two years previous, I was diagnosed with Grave’s disease. Eventually I couldn’t make it through a day’s work and I lost my job. I ended up being hospitalised and when discharged, I discovered I had been evicted from my flat. I was suddenly alone and homeless.

The council placed me in a hostel and although I was grateful for a roof over my head, I’d lost my independence. At this time, I started with The Big Issue.

It was challenging at first and so different to office work but I threw everything into it to earn money. Selling the magazine also gave me an identity beyond being homeless. People talked to me and I no longer felt like an outcast.

After four months of hard work and saving, I moved into my own unfurnished flat. The Big Issue Foundation helped me source funds for furniture and window blinds.

Now I had to think what to do next. I didn’t want to sell The Big Issue forever. I enrolled on an employability programme with Southampton FC where I achieved my Level 1 Customer Service Certificate and Level 2 Certificate in Understanding Stewarding at Spectator Events.

Since then I have stewarded over 10 matches and love it.

The Big Issue Foundation has given me back my independence.

Anaphylaxis Campaign

The Anaphylaxis Campaign aim is to help people with severe allergies to be more confident in control of their lives and to create a safe environment for them by working with and educating the food industry, schools, health professionals and other key audiences. Our focus is on medical facts, food labelling, risk reduction and day-to-day management of allergies. People of all ages are being affected, with a notable increase in instances of severe allergies in young people.

Luisa Menendez, Anaphylaxis Campaign supporter/fundraising and mother of 14-year-old Oinat, who has had severe allergies since age 3 said:

“The Anaphylaxis campaign is vital for parents like me. This organisation provides very good guidance for parents or carers who might feel isolated, or be unable to gain answers to questions about severe allergies from their general practitioners. Parents need their children’s health issues to be acknowledged and explored. Anaphylaxis is a condition that carries so many risks and that can be fatal, with precaution and awareness, lives can be saved”.

Through our national helpline, support groups across the UK, news updates, awareness projects and online training, we are able provide vital information to healthcare professionals, industry updates and legal changes to help people to live safely and manage their allergies. We want to develop our community network, to ensure that everyone with a severe allergy has access to the support and information they need.

Our supporters, with first-hand experience of allergies, are amazing advocates for our work and do all they can to raise awareness and funds, but we need to reach further with our information and support as the issue of anaphylaxis continues to grow. A report comparing the number of hospital admissions (as a result of both allergies and anaphylaxis) in 2011, to those in 2015, reported a 33% rise in admissions (NHS digital Hospital Episode Statistics).

With your help the Anaphylaxis Campaign can continue to support and help individuals, carers, schools and employers, through awareness and training projects to create a safer environment for people with severe allergies. Thank you.

The Rivers Trust

Water is life. Healthy rivers are essential to human life, they provide us with drinking water, they water our crops, they are a home to important species of wildlife, they provide recreational spaces for our health and wellbeing. Yet, only 14% of rivers are at good ecological status and have been declining over recent years.

With your support, we can organise more river clean-ups to help local communities take action on the tide of plastic and litter  threatening our rivers and seas, plant more trees to reduce the risk of flooding to communities, remove barriers to fish migration to support an abundance of wildlife, carry out essential research to find solutions to improve the water quality of our rivers,  educate more school children and work closer with government, businesses and landowners, to ensure they manage water more efficiently, and continue our work to protect river life and the surrounding communities.

Together with our 60 local member trusts, we are the only group of environmental charities in the UK and Ireland, dedicated to protecting and improving river environments for the benefit of people and wildlife.

Join us in our fight against pollution, plastic and climate change, and help us make our rivers fit for people and wildlife.

Join the Riverlution - protect rivers, support Rivers Trusts.

Community Matters results

To see the results and amounts that we have donated to previous charities click here

Contact us

If you are a UK-registered national charity and would like to be considered for our Community Matters Online initiative then please post your applications on headed paper for consideration to:

Waitrose & Partners Community Matters Team
Waitrose & Partners
Doncastle Road
Bracknell
Berkshire
RG12 8YA

Please give a brief outline of the work your charity does along with details of any current projects that you are seeking funding for. This should be no more than one side of A4. The Community Matters Team will then only contact you if your application is successful or if they require further details.

If you are a local charity or not for profit organisation and you would like to be considered for Community Matters in one of our branches, please go to your local branch, complete a nomination form and hand it in at the Welcome Desk.  If you are successful the branch Community Matters Champion will be in touch.  All applications are held for 6 months.