Deloitte Impact Foundation
At the Deloitte Impact Foundation, we aim to make an impact that matters by leveraging our talent's core competencies, knowledge and network to help address some of society’s most challenging problems, next to the impact we make on society through our client work. WorldClass, Sustainability and Inclusive Society are the three themes we focus on. Through pro bono work via a large variety of initiatives for NGOs, Foundations and social enterprises, we contribute to society by helping to reduce inequality and create a better environment for people and the planet.
Our approach
The Deloitte Impact Foundation has two approaches to its initiatives to impact our society, but also our people and our clients – creating a win-win situation for all stakeholders involved.
Maximising impact through collaboration via Deloitte-wide priority programmes
Worldwide, we all face major global and local challenges on societal, environmental and economical levels, and urgently need to find new sustainable paths. Deloitte’s global network enables us to contribute by collaborating with external partners to address some of society’s most challenging issues. Examples of these Deloitte-wide initiatives are the WorldClass programme and the Financial Health programme within the ‘Inclusive Society’ theme. Together, our people connect to accelerate our impact on society.
Employee-led initiatives
Through our internal social engagement platform, all Deloitte Netherlands colleagues can start their own initiative or join an existing one to create societal impact. All colleagues can spend a percentage of their working time on such initiatives, and they are encouraged to get involved in issues and causes that are close to their hearts. These initiatives are supported by the board of Deloitte. All these employee-led initiatives together make a great impact on society but that’s not all. Participating in initiatives our colleagues are most passionate about gives them the satisfactory feeling of doing good, but also increases their engagement at Deloitte by providing unique learning experiences, broadening their internal and external network and teaching them new possibilities of collaborating.
How did we make an impact in 2021/2022?
In 2021/2022, we have contributed 36,284 hours to a variety of social causes via Deloitte Impact Foundation which is an increase compared to 2020/2021 when we contributed 17,529 hours. Compared to the results before COVID-19 started, we have exceeded the number of hours contributed by our colleagues but also the number of engagement and employees involved throughout all of our businesses.
We are proud of our achievements, but also the lessons we have learned in the prior years that resulted in our strategy 2020-2023, with a focus on our themes WorldClass, Sustainability and Inclusive Society to make a more significant, visible and inclusive impact.
WorldClass
Globally, millions of people are still being left behind. And even though we all agree that every talent counts, not everyone has the chance to develop his or her talent to the fullest. At Deloitte, we believe that we make the biggest societal impact when our professionals use their skills and expertise to help people to develop job skills, improve educational outcomes, and access opportunities to succeed in our society.
With the adaptation of the WorldClass Programme in the Netherlands, we are committed to broadening the horizon and investing in the talent development of vulnerable young people in the weaker economic districts of the major metropolitan regions: Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
Our WorldClass collaboration with CampusNL
This organisation ensures that the child acquires ownership of its own lifelong learning trajectory. CampusNL offers a personalized learning trajectory by focusing on stimulating curiosity, effective learning through intensive supervision, and outside-in experiences to which (new) talents can be discovered.
We use the professional skills and expertise of our employees to organize scalable and sustainable interventions:
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We develop extra and new teaching material for children in primary and secondary education in areas such as energy, entrepreneurship, computer science, digitisation, technology, network- and job application, presentation skills, and skills & jobs of the future. We do this together with the education and business community in the Netherlands.
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We help professionals to play a structural role within our education system through guest lecturers, teaching assistants, and other forms of in-person and/or virtual help. By doing so, we try to contribute to the existing problem of teacher shortage.
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We give students advice and support in finding internships and/or jobs. Both at our own offices and through our own employees, as well as through our clients and partnerships.
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All these interventions together represent a concept that we call the Enriched School Day: equal opportunities for every child to develop broadly. Through multi-year public-private partnerships, we are building a sustainable ecosystem around the school for the child in which we mainly focus on scaling up working principles of existing projects in the Netherlands. Ultimately, it is all about scaling up the concept of the Enriched School Day for the target group in every region of our country.
JINC
This programme helps young people to get a good start on the labour market. Through ongoing activities, they are being introduced to all kinds of professions for them to discover which work suits their talents and how to apply.
Building Bots with Kids
This initiative is all about bringing technology closer and making it able for children to play around with this ever-existing topic at an early age. We find it important to allow children to become acquainted with as many aspects of technology as possible to better prepare for the future.
Sustainability
Through our sustainability theme, we protect our natural environment by addressing the root causes and effects of global warming and degradation of land, water, air and food with an impact directly, but also indirectly in The Netherlands. Two of the initiatives within the Sustainability theme are:
WWF Netherlands
Nature is declining faster than ever, and financial institutions have an impact on nature through their financing and investing activities, such as deforestation and pollution. Therefore, they have a key role to play in shifting global financial flows toward nature-positive outcomes.
The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is developing a disclosure framework for corporates and financial institutions to act on, manage and disclose the risks and opportunities associated with their own impacts and dependencies on nature.
Together with WWF Netherlands, Deloitte has researched how the Dutch financial sector is integrating nature-related risks and how prepared it is for the TNFD framework, as financial institutions can use the TND as guidance to perform nature-related risk assessments and to start disclosing nature-related risks and opportunities.
The findings of the desk and market research are summarised in the report “Nature is Next: Towards integrating nature-related risks in the Dutch Financial Sector”. The report provides ten recommendations for financial institutions to progress in assessing, managing and disclosing nature-related risks and opportunities across the three different dimensions of Learn, Act & Engage. These recommendations also have a global relevance, considering that financial institutions have global impacts and dependencies on nature via their international clients with activities and operations that cross multiple borders.
Digital Food Brigade
The Digital Food Brigade aspires to reduce food waste by transporting surplus food from supermarkets to a place of high demand.
In the Netherlands, almost 2 billion kilos of food is wasted annually in the food chain including some in supermarkets. At the same time, the number of customers of the Voedselbank is increasing due to due to the negative effects of higher energy prices and inflation on household income. The goal of the Digital Food Brigade is to reduce food waste by transporting surplus food from supermarkets to places with high demand.
In February 2022, a pilot of 6 weeks started in Amsterdam. Deloitte initiated the idea, brought together all partners and facilitated the pilot design, execution and evaluation. During these six weeks, PostNL drove by 17 locations of Dirk van den Broek in Amsterdam for four weeks, to pick up desired products that were approaching their expiration date and delivered those to the Voedselbank distribution centre. Here, the products were sorted and distributed to make their way to clients of the Voedselbank.
Inclusive Society
This broad theme provides support for challenges related to the quality of life in the Netherlands such as living conditions, financial health, wellbeing, loneliness, and safety for all Dutch inhabitants.
Within the Inclusive Society theme, the Financial Health programme started with the aim to raise awareness and improve the financial health of households in the Netherlands. By reducing the number of people that experience financial stress and by contributing, through various projects, to a society in which people are in control of their finances, now and in the future. One of the projects within our Financial Health programme is:
Schuldenlab
In the Netherlands, two million households across all income groups already have payment arrears, 1.4 million of which are potentially problematic debt, and the economic fall-out of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher energy prices and inflation is likely to push these numbers even higher.
SchuldenLabNL is a non-profit aimed at fighting debt and the stress surrounding it. It does so by connecting the many local debt help initiatives scattered across the country, fostering innovation and getting their very best practices rolled out nationwide.
Through Deloitte Impact Foundation, Deloitte and SchuldenLabNL signed a partnership agreement and are committed to a working towards a debt-free Netherlands!
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