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. Please note: our meeting rooms are currently closed to reservations.
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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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27 July 2022A Fairer Future – developing a new strategy
Veda Harrison, Director of Creative, Confident Communities and A Fairer Future, shares our new strategy for A Fairer Future. We will open to applications in A Fairer Future in October 2022.
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What we're doing to protect and restore freshwater in the UK
As part of our series of blogs on our roadmap to improving Our Natural World, Simon Wightman, Esmée's lead on freshwater, writes about our support and work with others towards protecting and restoring freshwater environments in the UK.
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Using Most Significant Change to understand outcomes for young people leaving care
We asked the Centre for Youth Impact to run a series of workshops on ‘Most Significant Change’ for organisations on Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care Learning Programme. Learn more about the approach and read the stories of change from participants.
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How we work with the Involving Young People Collective
Catherine Hillis, Esmée’s children and young people lead outlines how we’re working with the Involving Young People Collective to improve our practice and support for young people.
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