Corporate Social Responsibility

Engaging with Our Communities

Commitment to our communities is one of KPMG's values, and we are passionate about our corporate social responsibility (CSR). The reason is simple. Communities provide us with the human resources-our partners and professionals-to serve our clients. Engaging with our communities as individuals and as an organisation is at the heart of The KPMG Way.

KPMG people derive personal satisfaction from helping those in need.

However, our people gain other benefits from contributing time and effort to those who are disadvantaged. They develop their professional skills and enhance team building and communication-and they learn how to cope with adversity by turning difficult situations into rewarding experiences.

KPMG member firms in nearly all of the 25 countries and 5 subregions that make up the Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMA) network are actively involved in CSR programs. Similar programs are currently being developed in the Americas by Canada, Latin America, and the United States. KPMG has recently taken further steps to develop a more coordinated approach across the region by becoming the first accounting organization to develop a pan-European CSR programme. The Americas region is working closely with the European CSR programmes to help ensure alignment across the organisation globally.

Initially, nine countries- UK, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, South Africa, and Spain-have joined to develop and implement an EMA-wide CSR project in collaboration with key agencies such as Engage. KPMG is a founding corporate sponsor of the Engage initiative, a three-year campaign initiated by the Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum and Business in the Community to increase the quality and extent of company-supported engagement in the development of healthy and sustainable communities worldwide.

KPMG International Chairman, Mike Rake, is also chairman of UK's Business in the Community.

KPMG is committed to providing financial and humanitarian support to our communities. One way is by matching individual contributions of our employees. In response to the Asian tsunami disaster, the KPMG global network donated in excess of US $5 million to help victims, and we are working with our business partners globally and in the region to raise money for relief efforts. In addition, member firms sponsored fund-raising drives whereby the individual donations of partners and employees were matched and contributed to the most needy causes.
In the United Kingdom, KPMG works with Barclays Bank, Marks & Spencer, Marsh, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Business Action on Homelessness to develop a training module to better prepare homeless people for job placement and increase their skills after the placement.

This led on to an employment search and support once in work. The results speak for themselves - by May 2005 more than 1,000 ex-homeless people had gone through the programme and almost 50 percent were in sustained employment - that is employed for longer than six months.

The firm's efforts in 2004 earned an award for corporate social responsibility from The European Managing Partners Forum, with 250 members ranging from accounting and law firms to global corporations voting the overall programme outstanding and an aspect that made KPMG stand out " head and shoulders" above their peers. , KPMG was again named 'Best Corporate Citizen' by the Forum in 2005. The UK practice is also integrating environmental best practice through an internal programme which focuses on the firm's direct impacts: energy consumption, paper, water, waste and car and air travel, with programmes to minimize the impacts associated with these areas; at the same time it has formalised its environmental management system being certified to ISO14001, the leading international standard for environmental management systems.

In South Africa, the HIV/AIDS pandemic has left children homeless, with no ongoing care. KPMG in South Africa actively supports several organisations caring for children living with HIV/AIDS, including The Lambano Sanctuary, which helps abandoned or orphaned HIV/AIDS infants by caring for them physically and emotionally in a family environment.

In the United States, KPMG encourages social responsibility through Involve, which enables KPMG partners and employees to make a positive impact on their communities. Through Involve the firm's partners, employees, and alumni can carry out their own vision of volunteerism.

Involve also teams with leading non-profit organisations, such as the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Red Cross, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Habitat for Humanity, and March of Dimes. KPMG in the United States is an active sponsor of KPMG Foundation, which contributes more than US $10 million annually to U.S. educational institutions and individuals. It is also cofounder and administrator of The PhD Project, which reaches out to encourage bright, highly motivated minority individuals to consider doctoral studies in business and careers as business professors.

The PhD Project has helped double minority faculty since it began in 1994.

These and other programs and professional practices such as the Global Grants Program and our Public Sector practice-are helping to transform the ideals of corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship into successful business practices.

The firm's efforts in 2004 earned an award for corporate social responsibility from The European Managing Partners Forum, with 250 members ranging from accounting and law firms to global corporations voting the overall programme outstanding and an aspect that made KPMG stand out " head and shoulders" above their peers, KPMG was again named 'Best Corporate Citizen' by the Forum in 2005. The UK practice is also integrating environmental best practice through an internal programme which focuses on the firm's direct impacts: energy consumption, paper, water, waste and car and air travel, with programmes to minimize the impacts associated with these areas; at the same time it has formalised its environmental management system being certified to ISO14001, the leading international standard for environmental management systems.