Our support

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Latest

You might be interested in

02 March 2021
Webinar: Innovative funding to restore nature

WEBINAR: 19 March 2021 - Join us to learn about the challenges and opportunities of innovative finance models for restoring nature from Devon Wildlife Trust, Moors for the Future, National Farmers Union, The Rivers Trust and Triodos Bank.
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18 February 2021
Increasing our funding for racial justice: a first step

We are offering organisations in our portfolio that are led by and for racialised communities additional unrestricted funding. A total of £1.5m has been made available, which will be split equally between the organisations that meet the criteria for this funding.
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19 January 2021
Q&A on Esmée's new strategy and how we make decisions

Watch our webinar on our new strategy and how we make decisions. The Esmée Team also share more detail around our impact goals and priorities under each aim.
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07 January 2021
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation welcomes two new Trustees

We are thrilled to welcome two new Trustees to Esmée's Board: Professor Claire Alexander and Dr Wanda Wyporska.
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