Our Promise to Planet

To be in a good place personally, you need to be able to afford food and fuel. To be in a home that’s a good place to live, it must keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And a community is much more likely to be a good place to belong to if its nature can thrive, its waters are clean, and it’s safe from extreme weather.

To play our part in ensuring the planet is in a good place, we promise:

• To avoid making footprints where we can, and offset our footprints where we can’t avoid them.
• To share with and learn from, what works well on sustainability among the organisations we fund and partners we pay – and be clear where we expect it from them too.
• To explore how we can make our impact more sustainable, because all three of our pillars and the future of the planet are deeply linked.

Cutting our organisational impact on the environment

• We invest our reserves in the Cazenove Multi Asset Sustainable Balanced Fund, one of the leading environmentally responsible investment portfolios available to the charity sector.
• We offer staff access to an electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme.
• Our hybrid working model has materially reduced our travel impact.
• We have provided Carbon Literacy training and certification to around a quarter of our staff.

Holding ourselves to account

• Each year, we commission an independent audit of our carbon footprint. We use this to identify and address our biggest areas for improvement.
• As a signatory to the Funder Commitment on Climate Change, we are required to take action and report annually on progress across education, investment, operations, and grant-making.

Reducing our carbon footprint in communities

• All organisations we partner with are able to access free Carbon Literacy training and certification.
• In partnership with the National Lottery Community Fund and Groundwork, we have funded accredited carbon literacy training for charities across England and Wales.
• We are exploring how we can better back communities and organisations that achieve our intended outcomes in the context of the environment.