Winning the 2020 EGR Operator of the Year award, Gamessys Group is well known for its strong influence and reputation as a leader in the industry, especially in terms of responsible gaming and consumer engagement, which earned the company many accolades over the year.
Less well known, however, is the group's philanthropic work, which is best known for the Gamesys Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to helping individuals and charities dealing with mental health issues. Established in early 2020, the foundation has donated over £2.5 million to charities across the UK and aims to increase this philanthropy throughout 2021, especially given the mental health impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
EGR Compliance Company met with Gamesys Group Chairman and Gamesys Foundation Trustee Neil Goulden to evaluate the social responsibility foundation's performance over the past 12 months and how philanthropic operations link the wider Gamesys group.
EGR Compliance: It's been a year since the Gamesys Foundation was founded, what was your biggest success so far?
Neil Gulden (NG): I believe that the biggest success for me was the creation and work of the foundation. Gamesys Group made a commitment. We have found several independent trustees and agreed with the company on a funding regime for the first 15 months whereby they will contribute £150,000 per month, which is a serious commitment. This started in October 2019 and extended us until the end of 2020 and then they decided to continue with that commitment. Gamessys has donated around £2.5 million so far and I think this has been the biggest achievement to have created and received funding.
We have invested a significant portion of this money, not all of it, but a significant portion - £1.9m through 2022 - will go to mental health charities or mental health charities. For example, together with Sue Ryder, we gave them £100,000 to launch their online bereavement support system. We donated £100,000 to Family Action, which focuses on mental health issues in families, and we donated £100,000 to the British Red Cross as part of their Loneliness Research Project. Perhaps the biggest pledge is helping Women's Aid, £624,000 over three years plus an initial donation of £200,000, and a further commitment to their chat line over the next two years, resulting in us donating over £1 million for Women's Aid.
Women's Aid is designed to help women and children cope with the effects of domestic violence. There is a terrible statistic that about three women a week are killed in their own homes by men, and isolation has not helped. There has been a significant increase in violence against women during the pandemic, apparently as families have been stuck at home due to lockdown measures. Women's Aid not only deals with domestic violence, but also provides counseling support to women who have experienced any kind of violence from men they know.
Women's Aid is launching a campaign to improve the mental health of survivors who have escaped violence through a volunteer line and help them find shelter. Violence has long-term consequences and we are trying to help survivors with mental health problems. We have a lot of faith in this campaign, especially considering Covid. As a company, Gamesys along with our foundation decided to stop advertising through our TV sponsorship and we donated this to women's aid and recorded a promotional video for them that aired during the lockdown. The campaign showed people where they could get help if they were being abused, and then we funded that solution.
Gamesys Foundation Executive Chairman Neil Goulden
EGR Compliance: The Covid pandemic has affected every aspect of modern life. How does this challenge the goals of the foundation, especially when it comes to helping mental health charities?
N.G.: We certainly had a lot more applications, it's no secret that in terms of mental health, so many people have been affected by the lockdown for various reasons. Some may experience abusive relationships and some with children struggling, being at home and unable to see their friends and go to school, so a range of mental health issues develop due to Covid. We didn't know anything about Covid when we started the foundation, we just decided that mental health is a growing problem in society and that we would like to address it with a charity. Yes, we've had more apps and mental health has become more relevant during the pandemic, but that hasn't changed our goals.
EGR Compliance: Gamesys is becoming known in the industry for things like a safer gambling experience and its stance on responsible gambling, which have come to prominence during the pandemic. How did this policy affect the work of the fund?
NG: For me, it is the work of Gamesys that influences what the foundation does, and not vice versa. For example, our staff are well aware of what we do in regards to mental health and have been encouraged to participate and give us advice, help us in our work, and indeed, some of them are taking action. as volunteers. Through things like Helping Women, we've raised our employees' awareness of being good citizens.
What we did at Gamessys at the same time as the foundation was to consolidate all of our corporate social responsibility work and give it the more current name of ESG (environmental, social and governance). We have formed an ESG committee that includes several executive directors. Lee Fenton [CEO of Gamesys] is on ESG, I'm on ESG, and our other two non-executive directors are on it, one as chairman, and the non-executive directors effectively manage ESG matters.
We've done a lot of work at ESG. As a group, we have signed the UN Global Compact, which contains 10 principles relating to human rights. The Carbon Trust has made us carbon neutral. ISS, one of the major trust holders looking out for companies, gave us a Prime rating, and we were recently ranked number one for ESG in the gaming sector by Bloomberg. We know we're doing the right thing, and the foundation is a big part of that, but only one part, especially given our work on the ESG committee. The three non-executive directors that make up ESG (myself, Andria and Katy) are also three of the five trustees of the foundation, so it's very integrated into our work at ESG.
EGR Compliance: Last year, Gamesys was awarded Operator of the Year at the EGR Operator Awards. In your opinion, does this success confirm the benefits of a more sustainable approach both for players and for sustainability in general?
N.G.: We are very proud of our Operator of the Year, Employer of the Year awards and highly regarded in the Responsible Gaming category. These three awards meant a lot to us. I have always had a saying that people consume products and buy brands and it is important for us that our brands are perceived correctly. Over 90% of our employees are very happy with how we have worked with them during the Covid-19 pandemic to make sure they work well from home, are safe and taken care of. We have increased our ongoing customer interactions by over 70% and that is what our brand stands for. People are at the center of everything Gamessys does, so employee well-being and a positive attitude are important to us. We have been financially successful and every member of the group has received company shares as a bonus. Our clients are very loyal to our brands and it all comes down to the work the foundation does. Employees appreciate the work we do with the fund; they want to participate in this process and respect our work. Our clients love it, especially what we do with Women's Aid. We have a strong female client base and they love what we do, so it's all part of our positivity. The work we do at the foundation, the way we interact with our employees and our clients, and what our brands do are interconnected, so we are naturally happy to be recognized for our efforts.
EGR Compliance: Do you have any information on how the Gamesys staff generally feel about the fund?
NG: They are very, very supportive of this, and some of the things we do have either been suggested by the people in the company or what they are associated with. For example, our team in Malta has spun off a charity called Victim Support Malta that supports suicide related issues. The Government of Malta funded it and stopped funding due to pressure from Covid and we have been asked to provide funding to help the charity overcome the pandemic. We ended up allocating £37,000 for this. Our customer service team in Stoke identified the charity Alice which is basically a food bank helping the homeless and they wanted to develop their mental health strategy going forward so we said we would be giving them £20,000 a year for the next three years.
In November, we supported the Movember campaign and many of our employees wore mustaches for a month to match donations made to charity. In Gibraltar, we supported Clubhouse Gibraltar, a safe place for people with mental health issues to return to working life, with a £30,000 investment. On top of that, we're currently running a campaign for our staff called Smiles where we've given £100,000 of the fund's money and said, "Listen, if you have a local cause that you think is worth donating, give us to know and we can help'. We set aside £100,000 and said the maximum you can get is £2,000. Based on this, we could fund up to 50 small projects, whether it's a local football club running out of money or a hockey club that takes care of children with autism and other mental health issues. So we made it available. Many of our employees apply for £2,000 grants, not only in London, but also in Stockholm, Malta, the USA, Manila and Gibraltar.
EGR Compliance: What are your plans for the rest of 2021 and the fund's goals for the future?
N.G.: The goals of the fund for the future do not change. We are here to reduce the harm caused by mental health issues in the widest possible context, and we do not limit ourselves in any way. The last charity we were involved with is called Missing, which helps people dealing with missing loved ones. This is truly a great charity. We're also going to continue our work with Women's Aid and we'll take on other incoming applications, like we just made a small grant to the Royal Marines to help with the effects of PTSD on soldiers returning from war. zones, etc.