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Guiding Principles: Charity Donations

Our position:

Charities, big and small, frequently approach colleagues across Penguin Random House UK to ask for

our support - from books for the school raffle, to sponsorship for a creative arts prize.

As much as we would like to, we simply aren’t able to support them all. Our aim is therefore to focus

our efforts and resources where we can make the biggest difference.

These guidelines are designed to help colleagues across the business respond to charity requests for

monetary and book donations.

Charity partnerships

From joining forces with the Anti-Bullying Alliance on Wonder, to publishing Dear Stranger in

support of Mind, we know that working in partnership with charities on individual titles or with

specific authors can have a significant positive impact – for us, for the author and for the charity

involved.

We actively encourage colleagues across the business to consider working with relevant charities in

this way.

We have created a toolkit which incorporates feedback from colleagues involved in similar projects

across the business, setting out some helpful guidelines for working with a charity partner. You can

download this toolkit from ROOST.

Central support for charities

Centrally, we work with our chosen charity partners to help us deliver our 2020 Creative

Responsibility goals and our company-wide communication channels will focus on promoting these

partners and activities. Individual teams or Departments are of course free to support their own

charitable causes, but please note that any associated costs would need to be covered by the

relevant team or Department.

If you have received a request from a charitable organisation which you think might fit with our

Creative Responsibility objectives and you feel is worth exploring further please pass it on to Siena

Parker, Creative Responsibility Manager, for consideration.

Author or customer-related donations

We may occasionally be asked to support charitable projects which are backed by one of our authors

or other important stakeholders such as our retail customers. As there isn’t a central pot available

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for these kinds of requests this support is at the discretion of the relevant Publishing Division/

Department who would need to cover any associated costs.

Book donations

Our ambition is to donate 500,000 books to charity by 2020.

As with our monetary donations to charity, we want to ensure our book donations are having the

greatest impact and are reaching the people who need them the most. For this reason, we give our

books to the following causes:

Read On. Get On partners

o As part of our commitment to Read On. Get On, a national campaign which aims to

get every child in the UK reading well by the age of 11 by 2025, we may donate

books to selected programmes and activities as appropriate.

o Any request for book donations from a Read On. Get On partner including The

Reading Agency, Book Trust, and the NLT should be sent to Siena Parker for

consideration in the first instance.

Local schools

o We will donate books to our primary school partners local to each of our sites on

request to help re-stock their school libraries. These donations will primarily be

made up of books from our office clear-outs.

Book Aid International

o Book Aid are a global charity operating across Africa, working with partners on the

ground including local governments, libraries and schools to take English-language

books into some of the world’s poorest communities.

o Book Aid are our preferred partner for unwanted adult books from office clear-outs

and all over-stocks from our warehouses, and we offer them the chance to choose

the most relevant and appropriate titles to send overseas.

Prison Reading Groups

o A small charity operating in 30 prisons across the UK, Prison Reading Groups

coordinate and support monthly book clubs for prisoners.

o We provide books for the groups to read and discuss, and the participants are able

to select the titles they want to discuss from a long list. We also offer appropriate

unwanted returns to help re-stock their prison libraries.

Through Facilities and our Non-London sites, we also give to a range of local community

organisations on request including schools, hospitals, hospices and community-run libraries.

Keeping track of our donations

Please let Siena know via email if you make a monetary or book donation to a charitable cause

including details of how many books you have given. This helps us track giving across our business,

and measure our progress towards our 2020 goal.

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Saying no

We feel it’s always best to respond to requests for our help, rather than leaving them unanswered. If

you are unsure how to respond please get in touch with Siena who can help you draft an appropriate

response.

Individual Giving

Please note that we support causes which are important to our colleagues personally in two

different ways - first through match-funding which provides up to £100 per colleague per year for

colleagues fundraising for any cause, and second through the tax-efficient payroll giving scheme Give

As You Earn. Visit the ‘Your Giving’ section on ROOST for more information.

If you have any questions relating to our charity or book donations please get in touch with Siena

Parker on sparker2@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk

Updated 16 October 2015