Community supports throughout Covid-19

At Tesco Ireland, we’re proud to be a good neighbour and contribute to the communities we serve.  A core value embodied by colleagues and our business is that ‘every little help, makes a big difference.’ 

As our traditional operations of our Community Fund were paused due to Covid-19, we worked hard to support our communities by supporting charities nationally and locally with a series of donations to help those most in need, through the Tesco Community Fund.  

National charity donations

In March 2020, we made three special donations of €50,000 each through the Community Fund to ALONE, Age Action and Family Carers Ireland to help them respond to the Covid-19 emergency and scale up the resources they needed to support the people that needed their services. These causes were chosen in consultation with Business in the Community.

These charities said the donations made a huge impact, at a time when they needed it most.

Local community donations

Since 2014, the Tesco Community Fund has supported local good causes in the communities we serve.

Although the traditional operations of the Fund were paused during Covid-19, we worked with our local store teams and Community Colleagues to identify those most in need, so we could continue to support these causes through the Community Fund - even without the traditional blue tokens - with each store's Fund split evenly between their chosen causes during each round.

Throughout Covid-19, we donated over €1 million to causes all over the country through the Community Fund, including causes supporting the elderly, health impaired and vulnerable; projects who provide mental health support services; supports for victims of domestic abuse; people experiencing food poverty; supports for young people; organisations working with the homeless; and health-related community groups, among others.

The feedback we received from recipients of these donations has shown that ‘Every Little Helps’ is now more important than ever. Some causes put the donations towards providing meals for vulnerable and cocooning members of their communities, while others used the contribution to stock up on vital PPE.