IMC ANNUALREPORT 2020 - Flipbook - Page 36
12 GIVING BACK
IMC ANNUAL REPORT 2020
GIVING BACK
AT IMC WE believe that businesses
and those who work for them should
contribute towards a better world.
Therefore, we give our time, talent,
and money to enrich the lives of
people in the communities where
we live and work.
Through our charitable foundations
we donate for impact, supporting
those that share our commitment
to helping young people develop to
their fullest potential. At the same
time, we encourage, empower and
enable employees to make their own
contributions to the causes they care
about.
Compassion, responsibility, and
teamwork are the guiding principles
of our approach and engagement.
IMC’s 2020 giving program was
anchored by two key values: the
importance of giving back, and an
emphasis on the health and safety
of employees. Those values were
demonstrated in a pledge to donate
an additional €10m to charity in
2020 over and above our normal
contribution, bringing our total
contribution to charities in 2020,
through our foundations, to
around €16m.
Our primary focus remains the most
vulnerable and youngest in society. We
contributed significantly to relief work
in the world’s poorest regions. Our
locally donated funds were directed
towards those most impacted: in
Chicago this included communities
where systemic racial inequities were
amplified by the Covid-19 crisis; in
Amsterdam it embraced projects
including Hulptroepen.nu, Forgotten
Child, and the Dutch Food Bank;
and, in Sydney, it included significant
support for the homeless. We
continued too to support long-term
partnership projects, such as IMC
Weekend School.
Approximately €9m of the
total was directed to Covid-19
relief, underpinning our focus on
supporting health and relief work in
our local and global communities.
We contributed to large response
funds and to international
relief organisations, which are
able to leverage expertise and
networks across a wide range of
locations and relief efforts. These
included the Center for Disaster
Philanthropy COVID-19 Response
Fund, which assists healthcare
workers, hygiene initiatives, and
vulnerable populations. We also
made a significant donation to
Medecins Sans Frontiers, where
relief work included supplying more
than 1 million masks for developing
countries.
In selecting organisations
to support, we prioritised the
populations they were serving,
their ratings for effective giving,
and their ability to respond rapidly
to Covid-19 needs. A practical
example is our support of a longterm partner New Life Centers,
which established a food donation
program in Chicago to serve more
than 7,000 families weekly in a part
of the city with the highest infection
rate. New Life received our largest
donation for a single organisation in
Chicago in 2020.
We continue to support the
causes that mean most to our
own people, donating more than
€1m to more than 300 causes by
double-matching donations to
address critical issues, including the
Australian bushfires, Covid-19 relief
and racial equity.
In more than two decades of
charitable involvement, IMC,
through its charitable foundations,
has built lasting relationships
with individuals and organisations
improving lives through diligent
effort and a commitment to making
a positive impact. In 2020 we
continued that support, aiming to
help sustain these partners so that
they can retain staff and adapt
their missions for unprecedented
circumstances.
We are proud that we were able
to respond so rapidly and robustly,
and to get funds to so many places
where the immediate need was
greatest.
We continued our long-term commitment to Room to Read, a child literacy
project in Africa with which IMC has established a strong partnership. In
2020 we committed €2m to Room to Read, including from our annual Trading
Day for Charity, our largest unified charitable effort where one day’s trading
revenues are donated to an international cause. We donated an additional
€1.7m ($2m) to address Covid-related challenges, and broadened our support
to include Room to Read programs in South Africa as well as in Tanzania.
Room to Read demonstrated creativity and innovation in adapting to serve
at-risk children in Africa by offering literacy programs via radio, and in
expanding its Literacy Cloud to include more languages and titles.
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