Supporting Our Communities - Corporate Sustainability | Ulster Bank

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.

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 Fund. This is a registered charity managed by a voluntary employee committee. All donations are collated and then distributed by the committee on a quarterly basis. 

Direct Payroll giving

Payroll giving, Ulster Bank’s charity scheme allowing employees to donate directly from their monthly salary to their choice of charity.

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 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.

Customers can donate between £1 and £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.

• 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 Emergency Committee (DEC, activated for international aid appeals)

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

Give a day

Real community involvement goes further than financial support. Our Give a Day programme encourages all our people to 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 involvement 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, to help develop the financial capability of young people through our MoneySense programme.

MoneySense is a free financial education programme that aims to help 5-18-year-olds in the UK and Republic of Ireland towards a better financial future. It uses the key money moments in a young person’s life – starting to save their pocket money, opening a bank account or getting their first mobile phone – to make learning about money feel relatable.

Any student, parent or 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 activities 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.

View our MoneySense website.

Over the past several 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 2019 our One Week in June campaign raised more than £135,000 for AWARE NI and Macmillan Cancer Support in NI. This takes the total we have raised through One Week in June to over £1m.