Jaguar Land Rover Building Stronger Communities Award

Recognising genuine partnerships between businesses and community organisations, where businesses have worked with a community partner to identify and address a key social issue. The award will recognise sustainable projects or initiatives that are making a lasting impact.

This category welcomes entries from both multi-business partnerships and single businesses and is open to businesses of any size. It seeks to recognise business action that, in terms of both scale and longevity, has had a significant and measurable societal impact on key social issues in the communities that companies operate in and those in greatest need.

Exceptions and specific guidance: Programmes that are focused on education/school partnerships which should be entered into the  Education Award and programmes that focus on partnership with arts based initiatives should enter the Arts & Business award.

All programmes entered into Building Stronger communities need to demonstrate the following characteristics:

• Clear evidence of working in partnership – additionally verified through partnership verification form
• Clear evidence of tackling a social issue
• Clear evidence of benefits for wider society (focusing on the social issues), and for the business
• Application focused on a project or initiative with clear objectives – we do not ask for your whole community investment programme (this is recognised by our CommunityMark).

If you are unsure whether your project, or initiative meets these criteria we suggest that you speak to a staff member of business in the community. If you are a member you could speak to your account manager, if not contact the awards team on awards@bitc.org.uk.

We are expecting entries to this national award to be able to demonstrate significant impact (with evidence) on the key social issue(s) they identified. We also run a community impact award in some regions (North West, East of England and Northern Ireland), if your project activities take place in one of these regions you might want to consider entering our regional award. For more information on regional awards please contact awards@bitc.org.uk.

Demonstrating the principles of good community investment: Entries should be able to demonstrate the five principles of good community investment at a project level (we have outlined in which sections of the application form we would expect you to be able to demonstrate the principles):

• Identify the social issues that are most relevant to your business and most pressing to the communities you work with
• Work in partnership with your communities leveraging your combined expertise for mutual benefit
• Plan and manage your community investment using the most appropriate resources to deliver against your targets
• Inspire and engage your employees, customers and suppliers to support your community programmes
• Measure and evaluate the difference that your investment has in the community and on your business. Strive for continual improvement

Evaluation should demonstrate genuine partnership working with the community and relevance at local level. We are looking in particular for examples of businesses working with communities to identify social issues, targeting disadvantage and developing sustainable projects and initiatives that will make a lasting impact on both the organisations that you are collaborating with and the community that you are working in.

Relevant business action may include (but is not limited to) the giving of significant employee time or skills, including supporting the take up of civic roles, and/or the giving of considerable business resource, such as the provision of premises and materials. This in turn should enable the delivery of positive outcomes for local communities.

To find out more about previous winners click here