Supporting Our Communities - Corporate Sustainability | Ulster Bank

Our Skills & Opportunities Fund is open for applications from not-for-profit organisations, for individual awards of up to £/€35,000. Those applying must be a charity, social enterprise, community group, state-funded school or a college located in UK or Ireland running projects aimed at helping disadvantaged communities. These projects must be focused on helping people in our communities to learn new skills, get into work, or start up their own business. We believe that by helping others to help themselves, we build stronger communities and we can all grow.

How it works

It’s important to us that the Skills & Opportunities Fund supports local communities – which is why the UK and Ireland has been split into seven regions, each with its own decision-making board, to distribute a total of £2.5m of funding this year. The allocation for 2016 for the island of Ireland is £220,000 / €300,000, with priority given to small to medium size projects supporting education and employability.

The 2016 Fund

In 2016, there were two funding rounds – in February and again in August - when organisations could submit an application. Once all applications were submitted, they were assessed to create a shortlist of projects. These then went forward to a public vote, where anyone can vote for their favourite project across the island of Ireland. The opinion of the public vote counted as one vote. A judging panel, with independent representation from the Community Foundations for Ireland and Northern Ireland, then made their recommendations on the final list of projects to be funded.

To find out more about the Skills & Opportunities Fund, visit the Skills & Opportunities website.

In Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank has a long-standing partnership with The Prince's Trust, helping young people aged 14 to 30 overcome personal challenges and get their lives in order.

It's not about handouts or prescribed solutions, it’s about breaking habits, tackling problems, getting on and changing things. The Trust encourages people to take responsibility for themselves – helping them to realise their potential, gain confidence and achieve a positive outcome.

The young people that The Prince's Trust helps haven't had the best start in life. They may be struggling at school or unemployed, or they've been in care or in trouble with the law.

So far The Prince's Trust has helped around 10,000 young people in Northern Ireland. Visit the Prince's Trust website.

Ulster Bank launched a new partnership with Young Social Innovators(YSI) in January 2016. Through its programmes, training and events, YSI enables young people to grapple with difficult social issues, advocating reform and advancing change. Since its launch in 2002, over 100,000 students have participated in the programme tackling a wide range of social issues.

Our goal as a business is to enable growth through innovation, whether it is support for our business customers or for the communities where we live and work, in what matters to them. For the past 10 years we have focused on investing in financial education, entrepreneurship and skills-building programmes for young people. This relationship builds on our strong community legacy of education whilst at the same time helps reposition Ulster Bank as future-focused and supporting social innovation – a force that’s set to drive Ireland’s growth and inclusive economic recovery.

To find out more about YSI visit their website

Charitable giving is very much part of our culture at Ulster Bank. We do not focus on one single charity of the year, preferring to provide ongoing support to many charities and good causes through our Payroll Giving Schemes and our Community Cashback Award programme.

Payroll Giving Schemes

We currently run two payroll giving schemes to facilitate donations from our employees to their favourite causes.

Staff Charity Fund

Our employees can choose to donate from their salary each month to the Ulster Bank Staff Charity Funds. These are registered charities managed by voluntary employee committees. All donations are collated and then distributed by the committee on a quarterly basis. To make an application to the Ulster Bank Staff Charity Fund, please click here 

Direct Payroll giving

Payroll giving, Ulster Bank Group's charity scheme allowing employees to donate directly from their monthly salary to their choice of charity (NI) or one of twenty approved charities (RI).

Community Cashback

Ulster Bank also wants to make a difference to the many small local community and charitable organisations that our staff support around the country.

All our staff are entitled to claim a Community Cashback Award each year for their local community organisation or charity. The award is for €250/£250 paid directly to the charity that our people support in their spare time, either through fundraising or regular volunteering.

ATM Giving

Ulster Bank has developed a new and easy way for its customers to donate to their favourite causes - becoming the first bank to introduce a charity donation facility through its ATM network in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Customers can donate between €1/£1 and €250/£250 in any one transaction to one of the participating charities. Participating charities were chosen using independent research reports to identify the most commonly supported charitable causes and leading charities for each cause in both in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

• Northern Ireland Cancer Fund for Children
• Barnardo's Northern Ireland
• Simon Community Northern Ireland
• Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke
• Northern Ireland Hospice
• Disability Action
• BBC Children in need
• Disaster Emmergency Commitee ( DEC, activated for international aid appeals).
• Rehab
• Barnardos
• Irish Cancer Society
• Concern Worldwide
• Irish Heart Foundation
• Irish Hospice Foundation
• Society of Saint Vincent de Paul
• Simon Communities of Ireland

No service charges or transaction fees apply to charitable donations via ATM or online.

Real community involvement goes further than financial support. Our Give a Day programme encourages all our people a take an extra day’s leave each year to support the communities where we live and work.

In the process, we build new relationships and gain a greater understanding of the needs of the communities in which we operate.

Our involvelment helps to strengthen our communities in a variety of ways, whether by mentoring young people in start-up businesses, delivering financial education in schools, providing interview skills training to help people get back to work or raising funds to support many small voluntary and community organisations up and down the country.

If you would like to know more about Give a Day, or have volunteering opportunities you would like us to support, please contact us

Financial Education

Financial literacy and enterprise education will be critical to drive cultural change in the way young people manage money and engage with entrepreneurship. Today’s teenagers are tomorrow’s adults.

Their ability to lead financially healthy lives and to be employable – whether as employees or as employers providing jobs for others – deserves positive and proactive support.

That’s why we invest forward, working at community level in schools across Ireland, to help develop the financial capability of young people through our MoneySense programme.

MoneySense is Ireland’s largest financial education programme, providing a range of online, interactive learning resources for teachers and students.

Any school is free to use these resources, with content tailored to meet the needs of students from the age of 5 to 18.Through teaching an understanding of money, debt, credit, earning and saving, we can give the next generation the ability to make their own financial decisions, leading to greater choice and freedom in adult life.

Modules include interactive activites and exercises to bring learning to life. Teachers can use the MoneySense resources themselves or ask us to visit their school and support them in delivering a MoneySense session.

There are also resources available for parents and carers to enable them to support their children in learning about money.

MoneySense has won a number of Corporate Social Responsibility awards in recent years:

• Best Community Volunteering Programme Chambers Ireland 2015
• UTV Business Eye, Business Education Award 2014
• Business in the Community Northern Ireland Highly Commended Education Partner Award 2013
• Chambers Ireland Community Award 2012
• Irish Sponsorhip Best Grassroots Community Sponsorship Award, 2012

View our MoneySense website.

Over the past 4 years Ulster Bank staff have worked together during the month of June to raise much needed funds for the great causes they support.

Our aim is to make a difference and to support the most vulnerable in our local communities. In 2016 our One Week in June campaign raised money for cancer charities throughout the island of Ireland.