2018 was a busy and productive year. Our latest Annual Report illustrates our support across the Arts, Children and Young People, Environment, Food and Social Change, as well as Social Investment.
Across our funding sectors and partnerships we’ve better understood the areas where we can truly add value, as we begin to recognise how best to use all our resources.
We believe it’s essential to strengthen the sector’s resilience and infrastructure, and it’s been a pleasure to learn and develop as part of initiatives including Act for Change, Creative Civic Change, LocalMotion, and the Listening Fund. We’ve helped develop digital and data infrastructure with CAST, 360Giving, DataKind and Shift Design by providing funding, time and resources. And with IVAR and partners we’re collaborating on approaches to reduce the burden of grant reporting on funded organisations.
Our funding
As well as this, we’ve provided £40.5m in grant funding to 250 remarkable organisations. 71% of new funding agreed was for unrestricted or core costs and 34% was for longer than three years. And we’ve added value through our Grants Plus support by awarding £452,000 to 170 organisations; a record year to date.
Charities wasted less time preparing unsuccessful applications
Part of being an effective grant-maker is doing our best to reduce the precious time charities waste on preparing unsuccessful applications. For the third year, application numbers have continued falling and we’ll keep working to reduce wasted effort.
Environmental, social and governance investment approach
2018 also marked the first year of our environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment approach, providing key learning and inertia to integrate ESG across our whole investment portfolio. From gender equality to environmental issues, we’re eager for our investments to reflect our mission and values.