Corporate Philanthropy

BlackRock came to us with an ambition: They wanted to invest in exceptional small charities doing things differently whilst engaging their staff in volunteering roles that allow them to share their skills with grassroots innovators at a vital stage in their development.

They wanted their philanthropy to reflect how they think about investment - backing high-potential organisations with the capacity to grow, whilst offering meaningful opportunities for staff to support grassroots innovators at a vital stage in their development.

The challenge was doing this without placing the burden of due diligence on their teams. That’s where we came in.

Today, BlackRock funds seven new high-potential small charities every year, with staff sitting on our funding panels to help make decisions on who receives a grant. What’s more, through our Pro Bono Network, over 120 of their employees have taken on volunteer roles spanning strategic support, trusteeships, and micro volunteering projects.

And they can be confident the partnership is delivering. Bespoke reporting tracks impact against their CSR objectives and benchmarks their charities against the wider sector. This means they can see exactly how their investment is creating impact - and so can their people.

This private bank came to us with two goals: to create a partnership that would equip their advisory team to have confident conversations with clients about high-impact giving, and to back the best small charities in the UK in the youth opportunity sector.

In recent years the bank had noticed a significant increase in demand from their clients to think more strategically about philanthropy. They wanted to strengthen knowledge in their team so advisors could feel confident they were giving the right guidance – and so they could deepen client relationships and support retention in a competitive market.

So we created an ongoing tailored partnership spanning staff training and client engagement opportunities, whilst creating a ringfenced funding round that allowed them to give in a way that reflected their priorities.

We delivered practical staff training on how to talk confidently about charitable giving, alongside in-person client sessions including our Next-Gen and Small Charity Selection workshops. Not only that, we engaged their senior staff in our Dragons' Den funding panels to help make decisions on which charities the business backed and keep their awareness of innovation in the sector up to date.

The result: advisors and their clients felt equipped and informed talking about charitable giving, the private bank was able to back three of the best small charities in the UK addressing youth inequality, and senior staff could access volunteering opportunities that put them in the driving seat.