Welcome
Welcome to our latest Impact Report reflecting on our activities and impact in 2021. COVID continued to have an impact but despite that we still delivered a strong performance, raising £8m. We are enormously grateful to the community of St. James’s Place and the company for their enduring support and commitment.
Recognising the challenges for the charity sector and the many charities we funded, we endeavoured to continue to offer flexibility around our grant making, giving extra support and guidance to our charity partners. We provided a webinar discussion series bringing in experts to provide some useful guidance on how to manage the challenges that many faced.
Overall we supported 578 charities across the year, enabling them to provide essential support on the ground in our communities. Our in-depth evaluation also demonstrated that our grant making continues to make substantive/transformational change, as well as capacity build and strengthen the charities we work with so that they have greater impact.
We are honoured to work with so many incredible charities, now more than ever and are committed to facilitating real and impactful change to those in need.
Andrew Croft, Chair of Trustees
Catherine Ind, Head of Foundation
Allocation of funding
In 2021, we pledged £11.7 million in grant funding to 578 charities. This is how the funding was distributed geographically and across our funding themes.
77% of our funding went to enabling positive change for young people with extra challenges in their life, whether social, physical or economic.
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Improving wellbeing - Lucian's story
We continue to see increased demand in support for people's mental health. During 2021, we enabled capacity building of services both at a local and national level.
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Cancer impacts so many lives and we continued to support the development of local services, helping people to get the support they need, when they need it.
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During 2021, we granted £339,000 to hospices across the UK. This enabled the delivery of essential services of hospice care in the community and helped improve hospice facilities.
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COVID Support
Covid continued to impact our world and in particular in overseas communities. With the support of the SJP community, we ran a special appeal to raise funds for the Disasters Emergency Committee who provided frontline support to those most impacted.
Click here to see the impact we made during the India COVID crisis.
Adding value to our grant-making
As well as direct financial support, we were also able to facilitate practical and skills-based volunteering in 2021 through the SJP community. Tapping into their skills, knowledge and experience added value to our charity partnerships.
Street League and WellChild are just two of the many charities that we supported through volunteering in 2021.
Street League
During November 2021, a team of St. James’s Place employees volunteered for Street League in Bermondsey.
Street League aims to get young people into employment through sport and education. Our volunteers were able to support their programme by running mock interviews for a group of young people; helping them hone their skills and build their confidence.
WellChild
Since 2009 we have been supporting WellChild with funding and volunteering.
WellChild provides care, support and research for chronically sick children and their families and carers, to ensure that they have the best possible quality of life, across the UK.
In addition to grant funding to support the charity throughout the pandemic, volunteers from the SJP community also got involved in the WellChild 'Helping Hands Programme’, transforming outdoor spaces at the homes of four young people with disabilities into safe, accessible and stimulating environments which they can enjoy.
Better Society Awards Winners 2021
We were delighted to receive an award at the Better Society Awards for our partnership with international charity, Child’s i.
Child’s i works in Uganda to provide sustainable alternatives to orphanages. They do this by setting up truly social services run by and for communities to strengthen families and support them to raise their children, as well as finding new foster and adoptive families for those who need them.
Since 2015, we have dedicated core funding and a package of ongoing mentorship and support to the Child’s i team, including their Founder Lucy Buck and Ugandan CEO Christopher Muwanguzi.
