Our Make a Difference Guild at Auto Trader was set up in 2015 - with the aim of; empowering, educating and enabling our staff to make a difference in our communities. The guild's made up of a number of colleagues, from across the business, who all help drive this purpose forwards alongside their day-to-day roles.
The Make A Difference guild look after 4 key areas:
- Volunteering
- 3 types of Auto Trader sponsorships
- 4 Auto Trader community funds
- Employee giving (Give As You Earn)
Volunteering at Auto Trader
All employees can spend two working days a year to spend time out in the community volunteering.
To make it easy for our colleagues, we surface lots of volunteering opportunities via a tech platform, which connects our people with the charities who have volunteering opportunities available.
In addition to this, our colleagues can organise their own volunteering opportunities close to their hearts.
Some opportunities which have been very popular with our teams include planting trees to help rewild a golf course at Frodsham Woods, dog walking at Manchester Dogs Home, helping at Speed of Sight track days for people who are unable to drive or helping at a Christmas party for the elderly.
Auto Trader Sponsorships
Our sponsorships provide 3 impactful ways to help drive positive change and make a difference:
- Employee Sponsorships
This sponsorship fund is geared around helping people reach their goal faster. Aimed at helping to boost charity fundraising efforts for our employees, whether they're running a marathon, hosting a bake sale, or organising a community event.
- Sports Sponsorships
This sponsorship can provide valuable support to get teams on track. It's open to Auto Trader employees and their families who are actively involved in a sports team or club. It could be used for; new uniforms for someone's local football team, upgraded gear for their cycling club or training equipment for a youth sports league. Watch AFC Bolton - Make a Difference video
- Partner Sponsorships
Can help our partners accelerate their fundraising goals. This one is aimed at our customers or partners who may be hosting charity events or participating in other fundraising activities.
Auto Trader Community Funds
Our Community Funds at Auto Trader are geared towards delivering real and visible change in our communities. They aim to deliver financial support to local community groups and charities in our homes of; Manchester, London, Hemel Hempstead & across the UK.
Employee Giving (Give As You Earn)
This is a tax efficient way for our employees to donate to a UK charity, or charities, of choice. A monthly donation is taken straight from their pay, before tax andAuto Trader offers a monthly contribution towards donations. We're proud to say that we've been awarded the Diamond Payroll Giving quality mark for 2024 due to the number of our employees opting in and donating regularly to charities close to their hearts.
We hope this gets you up to speed with all the ways we support you to Make A Difference at Auto Trader!
If you're still wanting to learn more, you can hear from 2 of our guild leads on our Roadmap podcast here