LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — (Marketwire) — 11/07/12 — Today, is launching a major initiative to boost the nation-s capabilities in housing, money management skills and communities with support from a number of charitable partners including Shelter and National Numeracy.
Over the next five years, under the pillars of Your Home, Your Money and Your Community, Nationwide will:
Graham Beale, Chief Executive at Nationwide, said: “I believe Nationwide is ideally placed to take a lead on tackling the serious issues of housing, money management and communities. Our mutual status enables us to meet the needs of our members, rather than chase short-term profit for shareholders, and that means we can focus on addressing the issues that really matter to our customers, their families and the communities where they live. We look forward to working with our partners and, where possible, with MPs and the Government in our Citizenship activities.”
Nationwide conducted extensive research with its customers, employees and wider stakeholders that highlighted housing, and community investment as their three main areas of concern. With 232,000 new homes needed each year(1), 28% of households having no (2) and community charities seeing levels of giving fall by 10% since 2008(3), it is easy to understand why.
Nationwide has a strong heritage of tackling social issues such as housing and financial education. For example, since 2009 over 200,000 people have been given financial skills training by over 1,700 new volunteers trained through our MoneyActive Programme with Citizens Advice Bureau.
Living On Your Side will initially focus on creating offerings specifically designed to enable people to access homes and savings for the first time, mobilising Nationwide-s 16,000 employees to engage with community projects and supporting housing and personal finance charities such as Shelter, MoneyAdvice Trust and National Numeracy.
For Your Home, the Society will explore further how it can support affordable housing and develop new innovative products for the housing market as it did with . Nationwide is also launching a new GBP 1 million partnership with Shelter, aimed at helping 16,000 people who are either at risk of losing their homes or vulnerable people with no housing at all. For Your Money, Nationwide has launched a new four-year partnership with National Numeracy. For Your Community, the Society is launching its new Community Match programme giving customers the chance to choose the local charities they want Nationwide to support when in-branch, online and at member events.
Campbell Robb, Shelter CEO, said: “It-s good to see a financial services organisation like Nationwide Building Society really putting effort into making a difference to the lives of those in housing need. Shelter is a lifeline for anyone who is homeless or suffering bad housing and we-re proud to join forces with Nationwide to share our ideas and develop creative ways of tackling these difficulties.”
Mike Ellicock, CEO at National Numeracy, said: “We are really pleased that Nationwide is showing its support by helping people learn how to manage their money. Everyone needs to have decent numeracy skills so they can plan their spending and saving wisely, and the backing of Nationwide in our campaign to improve the UK-s numeracy is invaluable.”
Launch photographs are available to download via this link: .
An online video of the photo-shoot taking place is available via this link:.
Notes to editors:
Living On Your Side
The report is available online and PDF is available .
Your Home: help 750,000 people into a home of their own by 2017
First time buyers
Affordable & social housing
Rental market
Homeless & people at risk of losing their home
Your Money: help one million people to start saving by 2017
Championing saving
Improving financial education
Helping people out of debt
Your Community: investing and unlocking GBP 15 million in local communities by 2017, as directed by customers and employees
Employee involvement
Empowering our customers
Schools and young people
Background on Targets
Your Home
We define -home of your own- as covering the support we give to four key groups: a) first-time buyers; b) people in affordable and social housing; c) landlords and tenants in the important rental market; d) helping the homeless and those at risk of losing their home. Our target is based on the number of people we help, rather than the number of families or number of homes.
Nationwide supports other forms of home ownership in addition to our 750,000 home of your own target. For example, we help around 100,000 people per year to move into a new home. This has a positive social and economic impact on the UK, but we have excluded that activity from our Your Home target to focus on those groups where we feel we can make the biggest impact from a citizenship perspective.
How will we get to our 750,000 goal?
Your Money
We define -start saving- by those people who are not currently saving and this includes young people opening their first savings account. Our aim is to help people save on a regular basis and our primary focus is going to be on young people. The form of saving is multiple, so includes ISAs, young people-s savings accounts and other saving vehicles.
How will we get to our one million goal?
Your Community
We define -investments- as donations made by Nationwide and -unlocking- as support through employee and customer fundraising, employee volunteering and funding from our suppliers, government and other stakeholders. Critically, the charities and causes we support through the GBP 15 million will be determined by our customers and employees.
Nationwide will make other charitable contributions in addition to our GBP 15 million commitment. Nationwide is the sole funder of The Nationwide Foundation, which has distributed GBP 29 million of grants to charities and good causes since it was established in 1997. Our strategic national charity partnerships with Shelter, National Numeracy and Money Advice Trust will also be in addition to the GBP 15 million, as the investment will not be directed by our customers or employees.
How will we get to our GBP 15 million goal?
Link to Nationwide Education and money guides:
Link to Your Nationwide:
Link to Nationwide Foundation:
(1) Source: DCLG
(2) Source: Department for Work & Pensions (2010)
( 3 ) Source: NCVO
Contacts:
Media information:
Nationwide Building Society
Jennifer Williams
01793 654680
Nationwide Building Society
Lynsey Hallam
01793 656215