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 use social investment as a tool, alongside our grants and our own actions, to achieve our impact goals. Learn more about our social investment opportunities.
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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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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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Funding partnerships
We want to be at the forefront of new approaches to funding - working in partnership with other funders and organisations to increase our reach and make more of a difference.
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Infrastructure support
We want to enable a sector fit for the future by supporting work that contributes to our impact goals and work across our aims by enabling a stronger, inclusive and innovative sector.
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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.
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
We want to enable a sector fit for the future by supporting work that contributes to our impact goals and work across our aims by enabling a stronger, inclusive and innovative sector. This includes key infrastructure organisations and new ideas that unblock barriers, test new approaches or build movements for change.
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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Leave feedback for Esmée
Find out about the different ways you can leave feedback for Esmée.
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Our language and classifying our data
Learn about what language we use when talking about people and communities.
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Our funding data
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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Safeguarding
Learn about our approach to safeguarding at each stage of our funding process.
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Living Wage Funder
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is a Living Wage funder. Read more to find out what that means for our funding.
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Useful sector resources
Find useful sector resources on a range of topics including legal, fundraising, campaigning, digital and safeguarding.
Find out moreYou might be interested in
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25 April 2025Supply Chains Reform in Food Systems
Following conversations with partners and a review of our strategy, we’re pleased to share a new report by Vicki Hird exploring how agricultural supply chains are limiting progress towards nature friendly farming - and where Esmée could play a stronger role in supporting change.
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Launching the Involving Young People Fund in May 2025
The Involving Young People Fund launches in May 2025 in Wakefield and Barnsley, putting young people in the lead to fund projects that tackle the issues they care about most.
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Pre-application Q&A Webinar: 12 May 2025
We're hosting a pre-application Q&A webinar on 12 May 2025 for organisations interested in applying to Esmée for support who have questions about our application process or guidance.
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Invitation to Tender: Expanded Land Purchase Facility options
Invitation to Tender: We're looking to work with a consultant to scope and design options for an expanded and collaborative Land Purchase Facility.
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