Using all the tools in our toolbox
Participatory City
We use all our tools to unlock change
We want to play an active role ourselves in responding to the critical issues facing our society. As a funder we have a range of tools – including grants and investments - we can use to effect change.
We will now use all our tools to broker alliances, use our influence and remove barriers to achieve our impact goals.
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Grants
We support organisations' charitable work with unrestricted, core and project grants. Learn more about our approach to funding and what you can expect from us.
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Social investment
We believe that social investment is a powerful and financially sustainable tool we use, alongside grants and our own actions, to achieve our impact goals. Learn more about our approach to social investment.
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Funding Plus
We offer a range of capacity building support to organisations we fund to help them achieve greater impact.
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Convening and connecting
We connect people and organisations to foster dialogue, share learning, create joint opportunities and develop new, collective approaches. We also work in partnership ourselves.
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Insights and learning
We share insights from our work along with research and evaluation we've commissioned, and key publications from work we fund.
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Research and evidence building
We are not a research funder, but we will commission research and build evidence where it can help us to achieve our impact goals. We share this under insights and learning.
New ideas
We support new ideas which contribute to our impact goals as well as those which work across our aims to unblock barriers, test new approaches or build movements for change.
Influencing and co-design
We back the work we care about: co-designing initiatives, making links, and amplifying impact through our communications. We push for change on issues that are key to our impact goals. We recognise the expertise of others, through the Involving Young People Collective, and Our Natural World Advisory Panel.
Data and digital
We value the role that data and digital play in both our own strategy and those we fund. We publish our funding as open data, and embrace opportunities brought by tech innovation and are open to experimenting with new technologies that support our aims.
Infrastructure and intermediaries
We support key infrastructure organisations and intermediaries, which contribute to our impact goals and work across our aims to ensure the independence, capacity and integrity of the charity sector.
Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) Investment Strategy
We are exploring how we might better use our role as an asset owner in support of our impact goals. We have also signed up to the funder commitment on climate change.
Impact Investing
We are testing the potential in achieving market-like returns by investing into impact funds which align to our impact goals and which generate a measurable impact. This work will be used to inform our longer-term investment strategy. Learn more about our approach to impact investing.
Endowment
We aim to align our investments with our charitable objectives, whilst maintaining a consistent real value for the endowment over the longer term. This ensures we can keep working to improve our natural world, secure a fairer future and strengthen the bonds in communities in the UK for decades to come.
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Communications about our funding
Guidance for organisations we work with on communications about our funding, including logo files, press release quotes, and how to get in touch with our Communications team.
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Useful Sector Resources
Useful sector resources on a range of topics including legal, fundraising, campaigning, digital and safeguarding.
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Meeting rooms
Meeting room facilities in our central London office are available for organisations we fund to book, free of charge.
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Our portfolio
We publish all our grants and social investments on 360Giving, an initiative that aims to help UK funders share their data in an open and standard format online.
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You might be interested in
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04 January 2022Temporary closure to applications in A Fairer Future
As we develop our strategy for A Fairer Future, we will close to new applications - in funding priorities for A Fairer Future only - from January to May 2022. We remain open to applications in Our Natural World and Creative, Confident Communities.
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Environmental Finance and Learning Fund
Together with the Environmental Funders Network (EFN), we have launched a collaborative Environmental Finance and Learning Fund to help unlock significant new funding for nature recovery.
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Young People Leaving Care funding: Insights from our Learning Programme
As part of our support for organisations we fund through our Young People Leaving Care funding, we commissioned a Learning Programme to facilitate learning, collaboration and alliances between the funded organisations, and with Esmée ourselves. This Insights report outlines our approach and what we've learned so far.
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Supporting capacity and capability of organisations working to improve freshwater environments
To help us make progress towards our impact goal of ‘clean and healthy freshwater’, we commissioned the Cardiff University Water Research Institute to undertake a review of organisations working to restore the freshwater environment across the UK.
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