A quick guide to corporate foundations

Co-written with Andy King, an award-winning Corporate Partnerships specialist and curator of the upcoming Corporate Partnerships Everywhere conference.

There are many ways in which companies can support charities, one of which is to form a separate charity or ‘corporate foundation’. Here’s a quick overview of how and why corporate foundations can offer new opportunities in the increasingly competitive world of trusts and grants fundraising:

1. What are corporate foundations?

Generally speaking, corporate foundations rely on the parent company for a large part of their income, although the exact legal structure will depend on what the foundation wants to do and how it will raise its income. As part of a company’s overall Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), a separate foundation gives the opportunity to achieve a longer-term philanthropic mission as well as build trust and reputation. As fundraisers, we’re most interested in the foundations whose purpose is to give grants to other organisations and data suggests that there a growing number of these foundations (the Directory of Social Change Guide to Company Giving 2023/24 lists 162 company charities compared to 128 the year before).

2. Do we need a corporate volunteering offer?

It’s important to remember that corporate foundations are related to, but legally separate from, their ‘parent company’. Where a company might have several thousand employees, their foundation team is likely to be very small. This means that what appeals to the parent company and what appeals to the foundation team may vary.

For example, Norton Rose Fulbright have more than 3,500 lawyers and less than a handful of staff working at the Norton Rose Fulbright Foundation. This means their parent-company partnership with Save the Children focusses on employee engagement and they are constantly looking for skilled volunteering opportunities. The foundation, however, are time poor and more interested in having the largest impact possible per grant.

So whilst having a corporate volunteering offer can be beneficial to an overall corporate partnerships programme, it’s not a deal breaker when it comes to corporate foundations.

3. How do we find corporate foundations to apply to?

The easy answer is that if you’re looking for foundations that have an open application process, a lot of the opportunities will come up in your usual funding alerts, newsletters and funding directories alongside other trust and grant opportunities. You can also try:

The Directory of Social Change Guide to Company Giving 23/24 has a list of 162 company charities and is probably the most up to date
The Association of Charitable Foundations publishes an annual report on Giving Trends which identifies the top 300 foundations by giving and whether they are corporate foundations or family foundations
Charity Connect has a list from 2019.

Although corporate foundations will also be listed on the Charity Commission site, there isn’t currently any filter to identify those that are linked to or funded by a company.

4. How do we make our application stand out?

Corporate foundations are usually headed up by one to three key colleagues within a company. Whilst the foundation may have trustees, it is usually the choice of these colleagues which applications are presented to the trustees and therefore which ones are successful. Due to the corporate nature of the foundation, these people are much more likely to be on LinkedIn – making it easier to have a conversation with them prior to submission. It can help to go for a virtual coffee to run them through your idea, get any insights and tackle any challenges before submitting the application.

When it comes to the application itself, the key here is to think about your audience and who you’re applying to. What are the priorities of the Foundation and how does your application help the Foundation to meet those aims? Looking at the company’s CSR agenda will give you additional insight into their overall objectives although remember that the foundation won’t be looking to directly promote their business (and in fact if they did, this would be questioned by both HMRC and the Charity Commission). It’s worth noting that many corporate foundations will have corporate executives on their Board and the usual principles for building relationships with potential prospects will still apply.

5. Who should manage corporate foundations?

Where corporate foundations sit in the pipeline, and which team their income gets credited to, can often be the subject of debate in larger charities. We’ve once heard the conversation get as difficult as the statement “anything with an application form is a trust or grant credit” – which seems hard to imagine!

We would generally advocate that corporate foundations sit with the trusts team. Whilst they are linked to companies, the prospecting, cultivating and stewardship process is far more in line with the skills of the trust team. We would suggest that whenever working with a corporate foundation, the trust team look for opportunities to engage the wider company and hand this part of the relationship to the corporate team. Similarly, when corporate teams are working with a company known to have a foundation, bringing the trust team into the conversation can be hugely beneficial. We’ve seen this work well with charities growing relationships with both the DHL foundation and DHL in the past, for example, spearheaded by separate teams.

Just with normal trusts and foundations, some organisations won't take 'unsolicited requests'. This means they will only accept applications from people they know. It is worth ensuring you know who your charity beneficiaries, fundraisers and volunteers are and where they might be able to open doors. One of the delegate bag goodies at the upcoming Corporate Partnerships Everywhere is a session on how to identify warm connections to corporates and foundations in your database.

Corporate foundations are a great place to look for support – particularly if you have a well networked board. The important thing to remember is that the decision is made by people. Regardless of whether you’re in individual giving or trust fundraising, people are always the ones deciding – so remember to be emotional, concise and authentic.