SUPPORTING
OUR
COMMUNITIES
SUPPORTING
Go to Section:
With the help of our generous customers, since 1982 The Warehouse Group has raised more than $83 million for New Zealand charities and communities to help Kiwi families thrive.
Since we opened our doors in 1982, our purpose has been clear: to help Kiwis live better every day. We’re proud of our ongoing efforts to help our communities in meaningful ways and be there for them in moments that matter.
We focus on areas where we can truly make a difference, like bringing joy to families at Christmas, ensuring young people have access to period products, supplying essential school supplies to help kids thrive in school, and providing the essentials in an emergency.
This year, through the generosity of our customers and the engagement of our store team members, we raised $4.1 million for New Zealand charities and community groups.
Our community highlights
Be the Joy
Together with our partners at Women’s Refuge and Variety – the Children’s Charity, we helped to bring joy to thousands of Kiwi families by giving them a gift to open on Christmas Day. With the help of our customers purchasing $5 Be the Joy gift tags in our stores, we delivered over 17,500 gifts to children who would otherwise go without.
The Warehouse stores became a drop-off hub for customers to donate new, unwrapped gifts for each store’s local Women’s Refuge. Our Store Support Office and North Island Distribution Centre teams took part by collecting and donating gifts to Auckland City Mission too.
Our customers could add a dollar in store or at checkout online as well, and this raised over $130,000 for Women’s Refuge and Variety – the Children’s Charity.
Back to School
This year for our Back to School campaign, The Warehouse and Warehouse Stationery partnered with KidsCan to donate over 100,000 essential stationery items to 73 lower-decile KidsCan schools across New Zealand, including sun hats, pencil cases, pencils, pens, notebooks, rubbers, rulers, glue sticks and sun cream.
We also invited our customers to join us by adding $1 at checkout in Warehouse Stationery and The Warehouse stores. Our customers donated over $66,000 to support KidsCan and help children access the essentials they need to start the school year successfully. With an additional donation from MarketClub, over $74,000 was donated to KidsCan to help get food, raincoats, shoes and essentials to kids who need them.
Cyclone Gabrielle support
To help Kiwi families affected by Cyclone Gabrielle and North Island flooding, we turned on our emergency fundraising for customers to add $1 at our checkouts in all The Warehouse Group stores.
During this time, our customers gave an incredible $250,000. The Warehouse Group donated $200,000 (cash and product), resulting in over $450,000 going to a mix of community groups who were on the ground helping families in the affected regions, including the Hawke’s Bay Foundation, SuperGrans Tairāwhiti Gisborne, The Northland Foundation, ButtaBean Motivation, The Middlemore Foundation, Te Hā Oranga, and The Salvation Army foodbanks.
Our store teams in the affected regions played an incredible role for their local communities during this time, donating essential products and opening the doors to our stores to serve the community’s needs.
Mega Toy Donation
For our Mega Toy Sale, The Warehouse joined up with the Kindness Collective and donated $50,000 of vouchers for toys for deserving kids across New Zealand. Every The Warehouse store team used the funds from their reusable bag proceeds to get behind this campaign to donate an additional $55,000 of new toys to kindies, kōhanga or whānau services in their local area.
Our customers got behind this campaign as well, adding $1 at checkout and raising $77,900 to help the Kindness Collective.
Noel Leeming 50th Birthday
As part of our 50th birthday celebrations, Noel Leeming partnered with Orange Sky Aotearoa, a charity that provides laundry services, warm showers, and genuine connections for Kiwis experiencing homelessness and hardship. With our generous customers’ $1 donations at Noel Leeming checkouts, we raised over $20,000 for this organisation.
P-TECH Programme
In FY23, we continued our role as a key partner in the Pathways in Technology (IBM P-TECH) programme. P-TECH helps get students job-ready by developing their digital skills and is now in 28 countries globally.
As an industry partner, The Warehouse Group provides financial assistance, paid internships, mentors who coach, guide and support the students throughout the programme, and the opportunity for P-TECH graduates to apply for employment roles within our Company.
This is our fourth year as a partner, and seven interns joined The Warehouse Group for a six-week internship. Over the course of the programme, students were introduced to gathering insights and data, design thinking, and interviewing customers in our stores.
Gateway students programme
We are proud to offer Year 12 and Year 13 school students work experience and the opportunity to achieve unit standard credits through the Gateway programme. In partnership with ServiceIQ, this programme provides students with hands-on work experience in the retail industry and a chance to make helpful, professional contacts for when they leave school.
Red Shirts in Schools in The Warehouse, Blue Shirts in Schools in Warehouse Stationery, Torpedo7 bike hub, and Discovering Passionate Experts in Noel Leeming reached 1,255 student enrolments in FY23.
The programme has a 90% completion rate across our 122 supporting stores, and this year, 24 students have been employed in roles on completion of the programme.
Access to period products
We’re continuing to make period products accessible and affordable through our range of $1 pads, with one in every 10 sold donated to local organisations in need through the support of our community partner, The Period Place.
More than 86,400 period products have been donated through this initiative this year. Bringing our total donations to date to over 266,000 period products. We also provide free period products for our team members across our stores, support offices, and distribution centres.
Reusable bags and local giving
Every time a customer buys a $1 red reusable bag from The Warehouse, a portion of the proceeds remain with that local store team to use to support the communities they serve at a local level. Our local stores also play a vital role in giving back to their communities, and this year, we raised $1.4 million through the sale of our red reusable bags.
Sausage Sizzles
This year, our The Warehouse store teams have given back to their local community by firing up the barbecue and bringing back the sausage sizzle.
For the opening weekend of our Warkworth The Warehouse store, four local community groups – Coastguard Kawau, Heart of Springboard, Warkworth Lions Club, Warkworth Scouts raised over $4,000, which the store matched to a total of $8,000 through sausage sizzles.
MarketClub donations with every scan
Every time a MarketClub member scans at The Warehouse we donate a portion of the proceeds to a charitable cause of their choice. Since launching the platform in October 2021, we have donated over $1.6 million to various causes in New Zealand. Our charity partners include Life Education, Whānau Āwhina Plunket, Variety – the Children’s Charity, Sustainable Coastlines, and special campaigns like Be the Joy, helping Kiwis in need at Christmas.
Our National Community Partners
