Our Partnerships
To truly connect and catalyse community-led change, whether we’re creating capacity or coordinating action, partnership is mission-critical.
We know that, alone, we can’t achieve our vision of everyone in England and Wales in a good place. We have a long history of working with others. But to truly connect and catalyse community-led change, whether we’re creating capacity or coordinating action, partnership is mission-critical.
We partner:
- Across sectors - using our unique position between civil society and business, and links with policymakers to get more resources connecting and catalysing community-led change.
- In deep local partnerships - making the most of our presence in every region of England and Wales.
- With community-led organisations - because they are closest to the change that needs to happen for everyone to be in a good place.
We have particularly close relationships with the infrastructure that supports cross-sector working, local partnerships and community-led organisations. We’re focused on how we support their resilience and transformation to rise to this moment.
Become a strategic partner
Right now, we are looking for strategic partnerships that focus on:
- Impact growth for community organisations across England and Wales. We know that the way we invest in community-led organisations helps them grow, become more resilient, and have more impact. We want to partner with others to offer organisational development and capacity building support that works, and spread it at scale.
- Propelling community-led change in more local places. To knock down some of those barriers, so that proven community-led change can be propelled further and faster, we want to bring more money, more know-how, and more relationships to the places we work in, to lock in change that lasts. The ethos of community-led change is that we can make more of a difference together. But too many go it alone. We want to join forces with philanthropists, foundations, governments and others, to fund and deliver this work across more local places.
If you share our vision, and want to become a Strategic Partner as others have, please contact us.
When opportunities to become a Development Partner arise, we advertise them on our Careers page.
Our Strategic Partnerships
Since our founding in 1985, the Lloyds Banking Group has trusted us to play a role in helping Britain’s communities prosper. As well as providing us with the majority of the funds that make our work possible, Lloyds Banking Group colleagues commit their time and energy to making a difference alongside us. Each year, we multiply the millions Lloyds Banking Group colleagues raise for their communities, and connect them to the community organisations where they can lend a hand. And where we’ve combined forces over deeply shared goals – such as domestic abuse survivors having the best possible support, or disabled young people getting the chance to start their own business - brilliant things have happened.
Lloyds Banking Group
We’re leading a £2 million partnership, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, to strengthen civil society organisations so they can adapt to change and thrive over the long term. Investing in the Power of Civil Society (IIPCS) is a pilot project we’ve co-developed with The AVOCADO Foundation, CAST, Groundwork, IVAR, NCVO, School for Social Entrepreneurs, Voice4Change England, and Access Foundation. Over 2026-27, we aim to ensure that around 640 community organisations have the right support, at the right time, and in the right way – through tailored capacity building and organisational development support.
Investing in the Power of Civil Society
While our focus is on England and Wales, our sister foundations are making a difference across the rest of the UK and the Channel Islands. We collaborate closely with the Bank of Scotland Foundation, the Halifax Foundation for Northern Ireland and the Lloyds Bank Foundation for the Channel Islands. In 2025, we launched our first ever joint fund focused on our shared goal of improving financial resilience, with particular support for people with disabilities. Guided by research from Lloyds Banking Group, together, we invested £4 million, and we continue to work together to share our learnings about its impact. We all work together to help Lloyds Banking Group colleagues make a difference.
Sister Foundations
Our Community Partnerships
Across the country, our expert Development Partners work alongside the people and organisations we invest in. Day after day, they do the work of opening doors, building bridges and nurturing good ideas. With more than 100 experts on hand at any time, our Development Partners have a wide range of specialisms – from fundraising to strategy, HR to technology. They are essential to how we ensure people and organisations in communities have access to the right support, at the right time, and in the right way. Independent research has shown their value. With their support, the charities we’ve invested in over the past decade grew at an average 8.6% annually, and were less likely to close than charities that didn’t take up their support.
Development Partners
Brilliant things can happen when local people are in the driving seat in their communities, able to put their knowledge and skills to use, and backed by the money, time, tools and connections they need. Lasting change starts with local people – when communities are supported and empowered to come together to rethink and redesign how things work. In the local places where we power community-led change, our Local Systems Leads work hand in hand with those local people to tackle problems that can’t be fixed by money alone. They’re also local people themselves. We currently employ Local Systems Leads through partner organisations in Bolsover, Great Yarmouth, Merthyr Tydfil, Redcar & Cleveland, and Telford & Wrekin.
Local Systems Leads
At any one time, we are partnering with more than 600 community organisations across England and Wales. Alongside our Local Systems Leads, they do the work of ensuring everyone in England and Wales is in a good place. The community organisations we invest in include small, local charities - but not only those. We partner with a mix of organisations. Different organisation types: charities, social enterprises, CICs and more. Different organisation sizes. Focusing on different groups of individuals and causes. Working in different ways. Opportunities to become a community partner are advertised on our Funding page and in our sector newsletter.
Community Partner Organisations
