Corporate Connections: how to bring in investment

By Sarah Reece-Mills, Groundwork’s UK Director of Partnerships

Groundwork has been working with businesses since it was established with pro bono support from Pilkington’s Glass in St Helens 45 years ago. We see businesses as both supporters and beneficiaries of our work. Some provide funding to support our community projects, some help us find jobs for young people, others join our local green business clubs or support the Business Improvement Districts that we manage.

Corporate connections of all kinds enable us to deliver on our charitable mission and have far reaching, on-the-ground impact that improves places and transforms lives.

A charity becomes more sustainable when it has a diverse portfolio of income, and working with corporate partners adds value to our work in many ways. This investment usually comes in three forms: time, money and voice. Financial investment and volunteering help us increase the scale and pace of what we can achieve, but business relationships also extend our reach to new and wider audiences. From resharing LinkedIn posts to publishing thought-leadership blogs, corporate channels help amplify key messages and strengthen the impact of any investment.

So how does Groundwork build relationships and generate investment from business?

The starting point is to seek out shared goals and an aligned strategy. Sometimes what stands out is as simple as a common language and a mutual desire to benefit communities and the environment. Having a joint goal is essential to building a long-term, trusting relationship. It provides stability, while exploring opportunities for the partnership to grow, unlocking further investment and sustaining impact over time.

Opportunities for collaboration may arise through a variety of ways, from our own research and outreach, or from a business wanting to demonstrate their commitment to ESG or CSR. Businesses bidding for public sector contracts may also be wanting to find a partner able to deliver on social and environmental impacts as part of social value obligations.

Working with businesses can take a number of forms, from contract delivery, charitable donations, pro bono support, thought leadership, donations of materials or surplus stock, to fundraising from employees, payroll giving, volunteering, and challenge events.

Donating time, especially through skills-sharing, fundraising and corporate volunteering, enables businesses to get to know local needs and understand the benefit of their business working with the charity, which engages more of their workforce and encourages them to shout about the work we achieve together.

Our national employee volunteering programme works with organisations of all sizes to put their corporate responsibility strategies into action, build community connections and improve nature and biodiversity in local spaces. A key example of this is Groundwork’s charitable partnership with PwC through which we have been delivering employee volunteering days, welcoming over 1,000 volunteers to our projects, and pro bono support for a number of years.

Gifts of products can also be beneficial. A recent donation of 11,000 vegetable and flower seeds from Fothergill’s is enabling more people at Groundwork’s Green Community Hubs to grow nutritious and sustainable food from source to benefit physical and mental wellbeing.

Growing a long term, trusting relationship with a business brings multiple benefits to beneficiaries. Groundwork works with the Bupa Foundation as an intermediary funder, delivering a ‘green grants’ programme for communities. The foundation has also provided volunteers to local projects and funds to help Groundwork roll out its Wellies in the Woods programme, which helps families with young children to connect with nature.

When there is strategic alignment, a trusting relationship and an effective delivery model, corporate relationships can be more enduring than other forms of funding. Our six-year partnership with the Cadent Foundation has enabled us to help 21,000 people living in fuel poverty while training the next generation of energy efficiency experts through a Green Doctor Academy, boosting efforts to grow the green economy.

We have also entered into a new phase of our long-term partnership with Tesco. For the last ten years we have worked together to invest over £133m into communities across the UK through projects that have a purpose and a real impact on people and places. The partnership has evolved over time, drawing on insight from local delivery and feedback from Tesco colleagues and customers to ensure the programme is addressing local needs within a clear strategic framework linked to Tesco’s business priorities.

We are very grateful for the support from all our business partnerships that work with us to support our mission to change places and lives.

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