The Warehouse Group’s vision is to help communities throughout New Zealand live better every day, as well as contributing to a more sustainable country and planet. All brands within the Group share this commitment and the last few years has seen a continual evolution of each brand’s activities and relationships with community partners.

The relationships we have with many of our community partners have grown well beyond that of just fundraising. Collectively, we’ve worked with more than 800 charities and community organisations from Kaitaia to Invercargill to help them assist the most vulnerable New Zealanders. Thanks to company contributions and the continuous engagement and generosity of our customers and suppliers, we have raised and distributed more than $67 Million in donations since 1982.

Recent customer insights have highlighted that customers prefer their donations to be received locally, so they feel more connected with campaigns. If toys are donated, they want to know their donations are reaching local children. Due to this, we are moving towards hyperlocal activation, ensuring fundraising efforts are local to each store. We will also be focussing more on products and experiences as a catalyst for raising money and stepping away from traditional till-based fundraising.

In addition, the potential impact of Group-focussed campaigns was clearly demonstrated in March this year when we ran our first Group fundraising campaign to raise money for Victim Support, following the tragic events in Christchurch. Collectively, the generosity of team members and customers across The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming and Torpedo7 raised an incredible $265,000 in just one week. This was the most ever raised in such a short period of time in our fundraising history.

“The money raised and the financial support that has since been provided to the families impacted, has made a huge difference. We’ve funded families to travel here from overseas, provided cash assistance for a wide range of costs, and funded much of the funeral costs including repatriation," says Cam Cotter, General Manager Fundraising and Communications at Victim Support.

Planning for the next financial year, our attention has been directed on functioning more synergistically across brands to have an even bigger impact. We will be shifting our focus from brand-specific campaigns to a Group-wide approach to increase awareness amongst team members, customers and the communities we work with.

We will be concentrating on six Group campaigns throughout the year which fall under five categories: Mental Health, Growing Communities, Education, Family Violence, and Healthy Planet. Our next campaign under the new group-wide approach kicks off in September and aligns with Mental Health Awareness Week, with each brand applying their individual flavour to fundraise for charities such as Youthline, Life Education and Parenting Place.

Torpedo7 will also continue to run their new members club in partnership with Got To Get Out, encouraging more kiwis to get outdoors and into nature to improve their health and mental wellbeing.

We are confident in this new holistic approach and look forward to giving even more back to Kiwi communities across New Zealand.