YPO gives back £19.2 million to UK schools over 15 years
Schools throughout the UK are celebrating a windfall thanks to a loyalty scheme that has seen one of the UK’s largest public sector buying organisations give back £19.2 million over the past 15 years.
Publicly-owned YPO has revealed that 9,785 of its customers have been given a total of £355,316 as part of its annual commitment to share its profits with them.
Wakefield-based Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which manages 41 schools in the north of England, received £5,477.62 in the latest payout, which rewards customers for the purchases they made at ypo.co.uk during 2023. Vouchers are issued and can be spent on any of YPO’s range of more than 22,000 products.
The academy said it was delighted to receive the funding boost.
Chief executive officer Lee Wilson said:
“This benefits all of our 41 schools. We had already decided that YPO was the best place to buy the products we needed and having done that, YPO hand back a share of their profits so that we can use it to invest in our children.
“Our schools will all get their share of the vouchers and are free to use them as they see fit. Heads of department and teachers will be able to boost the resources available to them. In some cases, this might simply make their budgets go further, while in others the vouchers will be used for ‘nice to have’ items.”
YPO’s managing director Simon Hill said:
“We’re delighted to play a part in helping customers that regularly buy equipment and resources from us by offering them a share of our profits.
“Giving back to the public sector is our purpose and has been at the heart of everything we have done since we started out more than 50 years ago.
“Through this scheme, we’re able to offer a significant bonus to schools, which enables teachers to allocate funds where they think they would benefit their pupils the most.”
The largest voucher awarded to a single educational setting was £509.58 for Exmouth Community College in Devon. Schools in Sheffield received the highest cumulative total, with more than £24,400, followed by Manchester (£21,800), Newcastle (£18,000), Leeds (£14,600) and Liverpool (£14,500).
Schools in Wakefield received £12,898, followed by Birmingham with £12,316, Bradford (£12,054) and Warrington (£10,057).
Wakefield-based YPO is owned and governed by 13 local authorities across Yorkshire and the North West, and returns all profits back to the public sector - totalling £165m in dividends to local authorities across the country since its formation in 1974.
Ian Dixon, regional business development manager at YPO, marked Outwood Grange’s windfall by handing over a cheque to Mr Wilson. He said:
“Customers love our loyalty scheme because it’s so simple to build up vouchers and redeem them online, just by logging in to your YPO account and going to the loyalty voucher dashboard.
“The vouchers don’t have to be redeemed all at once, but customers should use them before April 1. You can find out if you have loyalty to redeem by logging on to your account.”
More information about YPO’s Loyalty scheme is available at ypo.co.uk//loyalty
