Stage 1
Become the candidate somebody puts forward
5 of 6neurological slates a person supplied
Charity of the Year partner targeting study · redacted edition
Which companies are worth asking
The companies to approach are the ones where somebody inside has a brain they are frightened for, and the ones that publish a door.
1
The answer
Read this first
Every question answered, before any of the evidence
Why this page existsA research document that hides its answers inside a narrative has moved the work back onto the person who asked for it. Each answer below is stated in one place, and each says which chapter shows the working.
The companies to approach are the ones where somebody inside has a brain they are frightened for, and the ones that publish a door.
Cause fit does not decide this market. Of the 43 partnerships chosen inside the study period, 22 give no reason at all for the choice, and only 2 of the 54 in the whole dataset publish selection criteria a charity could read before applying. Where a reason IS given for a neurological charity, it is almost always the same reason: a colleague died, or was diagnosed. That is the mechanism, and it is the one thing this charity has already proved it can win on.
0
Charity of the Year partnerships
the charity holds today. It held ONE, and it has ended:
a mid-sized professional services firm chose it for 2025, with a
£ target, in memory of a colleague who died of a neurological condition in
date. Its people raised £. It is the
single most valuable asset in this study and it appears nowhere in the charity's pitch to the next
company.
Target from the charity's own news page; result from the firm's newsroom, both read 16 September 2026. The two are kept apart on purpose: a target is a promise, a result is evidence.
The question that was asked
First the mid-sized professional and financial services firms, then companies touched by a neurological condition, then the published application routes, of which this charity clears only one.
Three groups, in this order. First, the mid-sized professional and financial services firms in London and in the cities where its research sits: 24 of the 43 partnerships chosen in the period came from those sectors, they choose by staff ballot, and they run at a size a no.-person charity can service. Second, any company that has lost or nearly lost someone to a neurological condition, reached through a published route for nominating in memory of a colleague. Third, the published application routes, which are a filter to read and not a wall to climb: none of the 7 found is open today, 3 exclude this charity outright on their stated rules, and the rest recur. The work is to be ready before the next window, and the dates are published. Only ONE of the seven is a route this charity clears on the published rules: the BioIndustry Association, around 1 September 2027. Slater and Gordon (December 2026) and Michelmores are doubtful on their activity and local-presence rules, the London Marathon (spring 2027) is untested on its stewardship rule, and the other three are ruled out.Working in the closing table
How to do it, in the order the evidence ranks
A charity does not nominate itself: somebody inside the company puts it forward, and then the company's people vote.
Two stages, and the evidence is far clearer about the second than the first. A charity does not nominate itself: somebody inside the company puts it forward, and then the company's people vote. Those are different problems, and this study had been treating them as rival answers. On the decision the evidence is strong: of the partnerships that publish how the choice was made, the ballot is 20 of 22, and among neurological ones 4 of 4. On the candidate it is thinner, but it points one way: of the 6 neurological partnerships that say how the charity reached the slate, 5 were put there by a person and 3 of those by a bereavement or a diagnosis. The firm is both at once, which is what corrected this analysis: a colleague's memorial went to a vote of its whole staff, and the year before the same ballot chose another neurological charity, also a memorial fund.Working in chapter 9
A nomination page written for the employee rather than the company; a one-page case they can paste into an internal form unedited; the firm partnership written up with its number; and a priced engagement menu.
Four things, once, and they serve every route. A nomination page written for the employee rather than the company; a one-page case they can paste into an internal form unedited; the firm partnership written up with its number; and a priced engagement menu. The ballot route reuses all four. The industry route adds one application a year. The open application route adds nothing and should be entered last.Working in chapter 9
The six supporting questions
Professional and financial services, then retail.
Professional and financial services, then retail. 24 of the 43 partnerships chosen in the period, more than half, sit in law, banking, accountancy, insurance, consulting and recruitment. Retail contributes 6, but retail partnerships are an order of magnitude larger and are not winnable at this size.Working in chapter 5
Children and young people first, then end of life and emergency care, then cancer.
Children and young people first, then end of life and emergency care, then cancer. Those three take half the register between them (10, 7 and 5 of 43). Health is a top corporate theme in the CIOF research, but neurological research is a thin slice of it: 1 in the general register. A separate targeted search found 16 more in-period ones, which is the honest picture: they exist, and you have to go looking for them.Working in chapter 5
Size sets the money, location sets eligibility, and the employee base sets the mechanism.
Size sets the money, location sets eligibility, and the employee base sets the mechanism. £50,000 is the ceiling for most of this market: 56 per cent of surveyed partnerships are worth less than that, against an average of about £100,000. Location is the commonest hard rule, written as a mileage or a named list of offices. And the bigger the staff body, the more likely the decision is a ballot rather than a committee.Working in chapter 5
The winners are usually not household names, and the mechanism is usually a vote.
The winners are usually not household names, and the mechanism is usually a vote. The CIOF research finds the majority of Charity of the Year partnerships go to charities that are not well known, which it calls an underdog effect. In this dataset 11 of 43 state the MECHANISM outright and 21 give a reason of any kind. Where the mechanism IS stated it is a staff ballot or a colleague nomination far more often than a committee.Working in chapter 6
A person, almost always.
A person, almost always. Personal bereavement or diagnosis, a trustee, a founder, a colleague. Then proximity to the offices, then the marketing opportunity, then whatever the industry next door did last year. 22 of 43 partnerships publish no reason at all, so the honest finding is that the reason is usually private, not that there was none.Working in chapter 7
Stop selling research and start selling the year.
Stop selling research and start selling the year. On the nineteen dimensions a company weighs, this charity scores 3.3 of 5. The benchmark is 4.92, and that figure is a CEILING rather than a rival: it takes the best score on each dimension separately, from whichever charity holds it, so no single organisation reaches it. The four biggest gaps are servicing capacity, geography, communications reach and story assets, and three of those four are presentation problems rather than capability problems. It already has the two things most of its cause peers do not: a named human being with an email, and a marathon.Working in chapter 9
Segment 1
Mid-sized professional and financial services
London and the research cities
Law firms, accountancy practices, brokers, consultancies and mid-market banks of roughly 200 to 2,000 staff. They choose by staff ballot, they run partnerships in the tens of thousands rather than the millions, and they are where this charity's one existing partner came from.
24of 43 partnerships in the period
£the target on its own current partnership
Segment 2
Companies touched by a neurological condition
reached by nomination, not by application
The mechanism that has actually chosen brain charities is bereavement or diagnosis inside the company. It cannot be manufactured, but it can be made findable: a published route that tells an employee how to nominate in memory of a colleague.
17neurological partnerships found in total
1 of 1of this charity's own partnerships began this way
Segment 3
Employers in the cities where the research sits
the university cities where the funded laboratories sit
Local presence is the commonest hard eligibility rule in the market, written as a mileage or a named list of offices. A research funder can satisfy it only by pointing at the laboratory, which means naming the city and the university.
no.cities where funded research is named
1strejection reason in the published rules
Segment 4
Trade associations and industry awards bodies
the right shape of door, currently shut
The BioIndustry Association, an awards body and a broadcast association all ran open competitions in the period. A neuroscience funder arguing to a life sciences trade body is arguing to its own industry. How many charities apply is published nowhere, so this study cannot claim the field is thin, only that the fit is unusually close.
1of 7 routes clear the published rules
1untested, and one of those is the marathon
Avoid
The two largest published programmes
Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale
Both publish full application packs, calendars and criteria, which makes them the most visible doors in the market. Both exclude this charity on their own stated rules: Societe Generale on a voluntary income floor it sits below, Deutsche Bank on the requirement to second a full-time person into the bank.
3companies ruled out by published criteria
no.employees in the whole charity
What this is built onThe evidence behind every answer above
Corporate charity partnership announcements, responsible business and Charity of the Year pages, published application packs, trade press and sector research covering January 2023 to September 2026, read alongside the charity's own public record and its audited accounts to 31 March 2025. 78 partnerships were gathered. 54 met the Charity of the Year definition, 43 of them chosen inside the period. 24 were excluded, each named with its reason in Appendix B. 71 companies are assessed in the closing table, including 23 found by a separate search for health and neurological partnerships and 7 that publish an open application route.
What it cannot tell you. No company was contacted, so nothing here shows that any company would choose this charity. It shows which companies are structurally suitable, which doors are open, and what this charity would need ready when one of them opens. Chapter 4.10 states the six limits that bound every conclusion.
How the segments were derived Counted from the partnership register in Appendix B, the published eligibility rules in Appendix C, and the targeted health search in Appendix D. Every underlying row carries its own URL.
2
Recommendations
Chapter 9
What to change, in the order the evidence ranks it
IndexAnswers sections 9.1 to 9.5, the recommendations of the COTY research index.
Stage 2
Win the vote you have been entered into
20 of 22decisions taken by a vote
4 of 4neurological decisions taken by a vote
The other door
The published application, judged by a panel
2 of 22decisions taken by a panel
The four largest gaps carry 47 per cent of the total weighted gap between them, and none of the four requires a hire.
The full scorecard, ranked by weighted gap
This charityBest in group
Is there evidence the charity can account-manage a partnership for a year without dropping it?
Stop applying to companies whose published criteria require a seconded resource, and say in the pitch what IS guaranteed: one named person, one charity, a reply within a day.
Can the charity show activity, beneficiaries or funded work where the company's people actually sit?
Publish a map of the funded laboratories by city, and negotiate lab visits as the substitute for a service a company's staff can see.
Does the charity have the audience and the production capacity to make the company look good?
Stop selling reach, which cannot be won at this size, and sell the thing a small audience does better: a named scientist who will answer an employee's question.
Are there named, consented human stories ready to put in front of employees?
Package three consented stories and two speakers as a corporate story pack, because the research finding is that stories show impact where data only tells it.
Can the charity name companies it has already worked with, and what they achieved?
Publish the firm partnership as a case study. The number is already public and it beats the ask: £ raised against £ targeted. A company buying a first partnership is buying proof that the last one worked.
Are there real, bookable volunteering activities, including skills-based ones?
Invent the volunteering that a research charity CAN offer: lab open days, a schools science programme, and skills-based work on the grants process. Societe Generale's criteria require skills-led volunteering by name.
Is there a published list of things a company's staff can DO, beyond giving money?
Build a one-page engagement menu with a named activity, a month, a headcount and a cost for each line, and put it behind a download.
Does the charity's cause sit inside the themes UK companies actually name in their responsible business commitments?
Lead with the CONDITION and the person, never with the research. A company votes for a brain tumour, not for a fellowship.
Does the website carry a corporate partnerships page that answers a company's questions in one visit?
Add the three things every published application form asks for and the page does not answer: income band, geography, and what the charity supplies in return.
Can the charity help an employee inside the company become its advocate, with materials built for that job?
Build the nomination kit: a one-page case an employee can paste into an internal form, because in a staff ballot the charity never speaks and the employee always does.
Does the charity publish, or promise, the reporting a company needs for its own ESG disclosures?
Publish the reporting schedule a partner gets: what arrives, in which month, in what form. Two thirds of corporate fundraisers name impact measurement as the thing they lack.
Can a CSR manager lift a number and a proof of what the money did, without asking?
Cut the proof to one page a CSR manager can forward without reading: what £100,000 buys, in one sentence and one number.
How likely is it that someone in a 500 person office has a personal connection to this cause?
Build the bereavement and diagnosis route: a page that tells an employee how to nominate in memory of a colleague, because that is the mechanism that has actually worked.
Would a risk-averse CSR committee find the policies, safeguarding and regulatory record it checks?
Put the exclusion-clearing facts on the corporate page in one line, because a CSR committee checks them first and should not have to look.
Are the accounts, ratios and reserves a CSR committee looks up clean and easy to find?
Answer the reserves question in advance, in one line on the corporate page: what the endowments are, why they are restricted, and why the partnership money is still needed.
Is the charity set up to receive payroll giving and to handle matched funds cleanly?
Give payroll giving its own page and add a match funding explainer, because match funding was over £220,000 of a single peer partnership's total.
Is there a human being with a name, a role and a direct email for partnership enquiries?
Hold the position and make it louder: the named human is the single clearest advantage this charity has over its cause peers, and it is buried on one page.
Is the charity the right size for the company: large enough to be safe, small enough that the money visibly matters?
Use the band as a targeting filter, not a worry: publish the income figure so a company can check eligibility without asking, and screen out companies whose floor is above it.
Does the charity hold the places (marathon, trek, skydive) that employee fundraising runs on?
Price and package marathon and trek places as the headline of the COTY offer, because companies ask for access to challenge events by name.
Source Each dimension's weight is the number of documents in that criteria corpus, of 47 in total, that mention it.
Nineteen dimensions a company weighs, scored against the best charity in the peer group. The charity reaches 3.3 of 5 against a best-in-class ceiling of 4.92. Every gap carries the one step that closes it.
The decision is a ballot, and that is the strongest finding in this study.
There are four ways a charity becomes a company's Charity of the Year. They are not variations on one process: they have different costs, different odds, and they reward different preparation. The counts below come from the typed route field on every row in this study, under the rule printed beneath them, and they say something the market-wide picture hides.
The decision is a ballot, and that is the strongest finding in this study. Of the partnerships that publish how the choice was made, the staff vote accounts for 20 of 22. Among the neurological ones it is 4 of 4. Nobody in this register won a Charity of the Year by persuading a committee.
The candidate is usually a person, and that finding is thinner. Of the 6 neurological partnerships that say how the charity reached the slate, 5 were put there by somebody: 3 by a bereavement or a diagnosis, 1 by a colleague's nomination with no reason published, and 1 by staff who already served the beneficiary group in their own work. 11 say nothing at all.
The correction that produced this model is worth stating plainly. An earlier version of this chapter treated the nomination and the ballot as rival routes and ranked one above the other. That was wrong, and the firm disproved it: its 2025 partnership with this charity was a colleague's memorial and a vote of its whole staff. The year before, the same company's ballot chose a memorial fund at another neurological charity. One firm, two neurological causes in three years, both arriving as somebody's loss and both decided by a vote. The stages are not alternatives. You need to win them both.
Counted from TWO typed fields on all 71 assessed companies, candidate_source and decision_mechanism, derived in code_dataset.py under the rules printed below. Not a keyword count, and not one field: an earlier version used one and forced a false choice between them.
Stage 1
Become the candidate somebody puts forward
High to build once, near zero per partnership afterwards
A charity does not nominate itself. Someone inside the company does, because a death or a diagnosis reached them, because their own work already serves the beneficiary group, or because they simply care. This is what puts a charity on the slate at all.
What the data says. For neurological causes this is where the cause wins. Of the six with a published candidate source, three were a bereavement, one a staff nomination and one occupational exposure. Five of six were a person.
What must be ready
- A page that tells an employee how to put the charity forward in memory of a colleague, written for them and not for the company
- A one-page case they can paste into an internal nomination form without editing it
- 2025 the firm partnership written up with its number, so their argument arrives with proof attached
The risk. Unpredictable timing. It produces candidates and cannot be scheduled, so it is a standing asset rather than a campaign.
5 of 6neurological slates a person supplied
Indirect, and it must stay that waycontrol over it
Stage 2
Win the vote you have been entered into
Low, because the materials are the same ones stage 1 needs
The company shortlists and its people choose. The charity never speaks; the employee who nominated it does, and everyone else votes on ninety seconds of reading.
What the data says. This is how the decision is actually taken, and it is not close. Of the partnerships whose decision mechanism is published, the ballot is 20 of 22. Among neurological partnerships it is 4 of 4.
What must be ready
- The same one-page employee case, which is why the two stages share their preparation
- A priced engagement menu, because a shortlist asks what the year would actually contain
- Challenge event places named as the headline, since companies ask for them by name
The risk. A ballot rewards familiarity, and the published criticism is that staff votes favour well-known brands. The counter is that 2024 the firm vote was won by a memorial fund for one employee's daughter, against the same objection.
4 of 4neurological decisions taken by a vote
Partialcontrol over it
The other door
The published application, judged by a panel
High
A company or an industry body publishes a pack, a window and criteria, and any charity may apply. The decision is a shortlist and a panel rather than a vote.
What the data says. Rare, and rarely winnable. Only 2 of the 22 published decisions in this study were panels. Of the seven published routes found, three exclude this charity outright on their stated rules, two are doubtful, one is untested and one clears.
What must be ready
- Nothing new. The eligibility is read FIRST, and most of these routes end the conversation before the work starts
- The exception is the BioIndustry Association, whose published criteria this charity already meets, and which recurs around 1 September
The risk. It feels like progress because it is the only route with a form. That is the reason to rank it last, not first.
2 of 22decisions taken by a panel
Direct, and that is the trap: it is the only route a charity can enter unaided, which is why it absorbs effort that would earn more at stage 1control over it
Build once for stage 1 and the same build wins stage 2. Apply to the one published route whose criteria you already meet. Do not spend a week on an application before you have spent a day on the page that lets a grieving colleague find you.
The three things stage 1 needs are three of the three things stage 2 needs. That is the efficiency argument in one line: one build wins both stages, and the door with the form on it is the one to enter last.
A conclusion counted by keyword is how a study describes its own strategy wrongly, so both fields are typed under written rules tested in a fixed order. There are TWO fields because an earlier version had one, tested nomination before ballot on the theory that a ballot merely ratifies, and the firm disproved it: a colleague's memorial AND a vote of its whole staff, both true, in the partnership this whole study leans on.
Candidate source, how the charity reached the slate: bereavement (a death or diagnosis reached someone inside), occupational (the staff already serve this group), nomination (a colleague put it forward, no reason published), incumbency (a pre-existing relationship), application (the charity applied), unknown.
Decision mechanism, how it was chosen from the slate: ballot, panel, committee, leadership, unknown.
The honest limit. 55 of 71 companies never say how the charity reached the slate and 49 never say how it was decided. The decision finding rests on 22 observations and is strong; the candidate finding rests on 6 neurological ones and is a direction, not a proof. No significance test is offered: this is a census of what companies chose to publish, not a random draw.
| All causes | Neurological | |
|---|---|---|
| How the charity reached the slate | ||
| bereavement | 4 | 3 |
| occupational | 1 | 1 |
| nomination | 2 | 1 |
| incumbency | 1 | 1 |
| application | 8 | 0 |
| unknown | 55 | 11 |
| How the decision was taken | ||
| ballot | 20 | 4 |
| panel | 2 | 0 |
| committee | 0 | 0 |
| leadership | 0 | 0 |
| unknown | 49 | 13 |
The four biggest gaps are servicing capacity, geography, communications reach and story assets, and three of those four are presentation problems rather than capability problems.
The nineteen dimensions are the things a company actually weighs, drawn from the published application packs, the stated rejection reasons and the sector research. The weights are not chosen. Each dimension's weight is the number of documents in that criteria corpus, of 47 in total, that mention it. A factor no company asks for weighs 1. A factor every pack names weighs the most. The method is printed so that a reader can re-derive it.
Scores run 1 absent, 2 weak, 3 acceptable, 4 strong, 5 leading, and each carries a confidence: high from direct evidence on the charity's own published surfaces, medium from credible external evidence, low from inference. The gap is the product. The weighted total is a decision aid and nothing more.
Servicing capacity
Is there evidence the charity can account-manage a partnership for a year without dropping it?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceno. employees in total, against two published routes that each require the charity to supply dedicated staff of its own (chapter 6.2). Neither is possible at this size.
What the best in group hasDedicated corporate partnership teams, which is exactly what the large published routes are written for.
The step that closes itStop applying to companies whose published criteria require a seconded resource, and say in the pitch what IS guaranteed: one named person, one charity, a reply within a day.
weight 10 of 128
Read from As cited above: Published application calendars from the company packs in Appendix C. link.
Geographic fit with company locations
Can the charity show activity, beneficiaries or funded work where the company's people actually sit?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceRegistered in place and funding research at four named universities. Real national spread, but a research charity has no beneficiaries a company's staff can visit.
What the best in group hasA physical centre in Liverpool that a corporate team can walk into, which satisfies every local-presence rule a regional employer writes.
The step that closes itPublish a map of the funded laboratories by city, and negotiate lab visits as the substitute for a service a company's staff can see.
weight 14 of 128
Read from The charity, research we fund, and the filed accounts. link
Brand and communications capacity
Does the charity have the audience and the production capacity to make the company look good?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceInstagram no., Facebook about no., X no., read on 16 September 2026. A company gets very little reach back from this partnership.
What the best in group hasNational reach a company can borrow, which is half of what a corporate partner is buying.
The step that closes itStop selling reach, which cannot be won at this size, and sell the thing a small audience does better: a named scientist who will answer an employee's question.
weight 7 of 128
Read from Follower counts read on the charity's own channels, 16 September 2026. link
Storytelling and case study assets
Are there named, consented human stories ready to put in front of employees?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ismedium confidencePatient stories exist on the site, including a stroke survivor running the London Marathon, but they are not packaged for a corporate audience and no speaker offer is published.
What the best in group hasA story bank built for reuse, with consented case studies and video.
The step that closes itPackage three consented stories and two speakers as a corporate story pack, because the research finding is that stories show impact where data only tells it.
weight 9 of 128
Read from The charity, supporter stories. link
Corporate partnership track record
Can the charity name companies it has already worked with, and what they achieved?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceOne current Charity of the Year, the firm for 2025 with a £ target, plus a three-year funding partnership with the a sports injury foundation. Real, current, and almost invisible on the corporate page.
What the best in group hasSix named corporate partners including Wickes, whose two-year partnership across 228 stores met a £2m target.
The step that closes itPublish the firm partnership as a case study. The number is already public and it beats the ask: £ raised against £ targeted. A company buying a first partnership is buying proof that the last one worked.
weight 9 of 128
Read from The firm newsroom, and the charity's filed accounts. link
Volunteering a corporate team can actually do
Are there real, bookable volunteering activities, including skills-based ones?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceA research funder has almost nothing for a team of twenty people to do on a Tuesday. The corporate page offers volunteering without saying what it is.
What the best in group hasA building, services and a neurodiversity training offer, all of which a corporate team can physically turn up to.
The step that closes itInvent the volunteering that a research charity CAN offer: lab open days, a schools science programme, and skills-based work on the grants process. Societe Generale's criteria require skills-led volunteering by name.
weight 6 of 128
Read from As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
Employee engagement menu
Is there a published list of things a company's staff can DO, beyond giving money?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceThe corporate page lists Charity of the Year, volunteering, payroll giving, workplace fundraising and sponsorship, in prose. There is no menu a CSR manager can price and no downloadable pack.
What the best in group hasCPD-accredited e-learning and health and wellbeing training: a corporate product, not an invitation to fundraise.
The step that closes itBuild a one-page engagement menu with a named activity, a month, a headcount and a cost for each line, and put it behind a download.
weight 8 of 128
Read from As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
Cause alignment with corporate CSR themes
Does the charity's cause sit inside the themes UK companies actually name in their responsible business commitments?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceHealth is one of the seven cause areas the CIOF research names as a corporate priority, and 15 of the 23 health-cause partnerships found by the targeted search went to a neurological cause. Brain research sits inside the theme, one step back from the patient.
What the best in group hasChildren plus health is the most-chosen combination in the dataset, and GOSH holds separate partnerships in the period with Funding Circle and The Barton Partnership. Its Morgan Stanley partnership is often cited alongside them and belongs to 2015, outside this study's window.
The step that closes itLead with the CONDITION and the person, never with the research. A company votes for a brain tumour, not for a fellowship.
weight 11 of 128
Read from CIOF and Darnell Consulting, what companies want from charity partners. link
The corporate shop window
Does the website carry a corporate partnerships page that answers a company's questions in one visit?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceA live corporate partnerships page that names Charity of the Year, and names the current partner. Better than most of the 31 peers reviewed.
What the best in group hasThree explicitly tiered partnership types, so a company can self-identify before it makes contact.
The step that closes itAdd the three things every published application form asks for and the page does not answer: income band, geography, and what the charity supplies in return.
weight 11 of 128
Read from As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
Internal champion reach
Can the charity help an employee inside the company become its advocate, with materials built for that job?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ismedium confidenceNo employee fundraising pack, no nomination guidance, nothing an employee inside a company can pick up and use to argue for this charity in a staff ballot.
What the best in group hasMaterials built for the supporter to carry into their own workplace.
The step that closes itBuild the nomination kit: a one-page case an employee can paste into an internal form, because in a staff ballot the charity never speaks and the employee always does.
weight 3 of 128
Read from The charity, fundraising pages, searched for a downloadable pack. link
Partnership impact reporting
Does the charity publish, or promise, the reporting a company needs for its own ESG disclosures?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ismedium confidenceAn annual impact report exists. Nothing published shows what a company would receive during a partnership year.
What the best in group hasPartnership reporting built for the corporate partner's own disclosures.
The step that closes itPublish the reporting schedule a partner gets: what arrives, in which month, in what form. Two thirds of corporate fundraisers name impact measurement as the thing they lack.
weight 4 of 128
Read from As cited above: CIOF and Darnell Consulting, what companies want from charity partners link.
Impact evidence a company can reuse
Can a CSR manager lift a number and a proof of what the money did, without asking?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceA 2024 Impact Report, annual reviews back to 2015/16, £ funded since date and audited peer review through AMRC membership. The evidence exists and is findable.
What the best in group hasPublished impact evidence rated strong, alongside six named corporate partners who can each be pointed to as proof the model works.
The step that closes itCut the proof to one page a CSR manager can forward without reading: what £100,000 buys, in one sentence and one number.
weight 7 of 128
Read from As cited above: The charity, supporter stories link.
Personal resonance reach
How likely is it that someone in a 500 person office has a personal connection to this cause?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceOne in six people has a neurological condition, and the single COTY partnership the charity holds was chosen in memory of a colleague who died of a neurological condition. Resonance is this charity's strongest asset and it is not being used.
What the best in group hasAlmost every office contains someone touched by cancer, which is why cancer causes take 5 of the 43 partnerships chosen in the period.
The step that closes itBuild the bereavement and diagnosis route: a page that tells an employee how to nominate in memory of a colleague, because that is the mechanism that has actually worked.
weight 5 of 128
Read from As cited above: The charity link.
Brand safety and governance
Would a risk-averse CSR committee find the policies, safeguarding and regulatory record it checks?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceA registered charity and charitable company with audited accounts, AMRC membership and grant-making audited by AMRC in 2020. Not political, not religious, not animal welfare, so it clears the three commonest published exclusions.
What the best in group hasA governance surface large enough that no risk committee asks a second question.
The step that closes itPut the exclusion-clearing facts on the corporate page in one line, because a CSR committee checks them first and should not have to look.
weight 5 of 128
Read from Charity Commission register, charity no., and AMRC membership. link
Financial transparency
Are the accounts, ratios and reserves a CSR committee looks up clean and easy to find?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceAccounts filed on time and on the register, a published impact report. The audited net movement in funds for the year to 31 March 2025 is £ negative against total funds of £, which a CSR committee will see and should be answered before it asks.
What the best in group hasFinancial reporting no committee queries.
The step that closes itAnswer the reserves question in advance, in one line on the corporate page: what the endowments are, why they are restricted, and why the partnership money is still needed.
weight 4 of 128
Read from As cited above: The charity's report and financial statements for the year ended 31 Ma link.
Payroll giving and match funding readiness
Is the charity set up to receive payroll giving and to handle matched funds cleanly?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ismedium confidencePayroll giving is described in a paragraph on the corporate page. There is no standalone page and no match funding guidance.
What the best in group hasPayroll giving offered as a named, separate route with its own page.
The step that closes itGive payroll giving its own page and add a match funding explainer, because match funding was over £220,000 of a single peer partnership's total.
weight 1 of 128
Read from As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
A named corporate contact
Is there a human being with a name, a role and a direct email for partnership enquiries?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceA named corporate contact is named as the corporate contact with a direct email. Only 2 of the 31 peer charities reviewed publish a named corporate contact at all.
What the best in group hasMotor Neurone Disease Association and Brain Tumour Research are the only two peers in the benchmark that match it.
The step that closes itHold the position and make it louder: the named human is the single clearest advantage this charity has over its cause peers, and it is buried on one page.
weight 5 of 128
Read from As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
Scale credibility
Is the charity the right size for the company: large enough to be safe, small enough that the money visibly matters?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceIncome of £ for the year to 31 March 2025 sits inside Deutsche Bank's published £2m to £20m band. It sits BELOW Societe Generale's £4.5m voluntary income floor.
What the best in group hasCharities in the same band, and the CIOF research finding that most COTY partnerships go to charities that are not household names.
The step that closes itUse the band as a targeting filter, not a worry: publish the income figure so a company can check eligibility without asking, and screen out companies whose floor is above it.
weight 6 of 128
Read from The published income bands in Appendix C, against the filed accounts. link
Challenge event portfolio
Does the charity hold the places (marathon, trek, skydive) that employee fundraising runs on?
This charity
Best in group
Where this charity ishigh confidenceThe TCS London Marathon raised more than £ in one year across no. runners, alongside the Great North Run and treks. This is a genuinely strong, unusual asset for a charity of this size.
What the best in group hasSponsored trek and challenge places offered explicitly to corporate partners.
The step that closes itPrice and package marathon and trek places as the headline of the COTY offer, because companies ask for access to challenge events by name.
weight 3 of 128
Read from The charity, running and challenge events, and the filed accounts. link
The benchmark is a ceiling, not a charity
This is the weighted mean of the BEST SCORE ON EACH DIMENSION taken separately, drawn from different charities. No single charity in the benchmark reaches it. It is a ceiling, not a rival. The scores that make it up come from Alzheimer's Research UK, Cancer Research UK, Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, Headway, Parkinson's UK, The Brain Charity, The Brain Tumour Charity, no peer leads on this dimension, each leading on a different dimension. On two dimensions no peer leads: this charity is level on the named contact and ahead on challenge events, so the ceiling is the best of the market INCLUDING this charity, one dimension at a time.
Method Weights computed by counting mentions across 47 criteria documents. Scores judged against the 31 peer charities in Appendix D. The code that produces both is score_fit.py in the working folder.
The weighted total at the head of this chapter is useful in exactly one way: it can be recomputed next year from the same code, so the direction of travel is checkable by someone who was not here.
It is not useful for deciding anything, because the four dimensions carrying the most weighted gap carry almost half of it between them, and the ranked list above is the instruction. The total is the receipt.
| Dimension | This charity | Best | Gap | Weight | Weighted gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Servicing capacity | 2 | 5 | 3 | 10 | 30 |
| Geographic fit with company locations | 3 | 5 | 2 | 14 | 28 |
| Brand and communications capacity | 2 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 21 |
| Storytelling and case study assets | 3 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 18 |
| Corporate partnership track record | 3 | 5 | 2 | 9 | 18 |
| Volunteering a corporate team can actually do | 2 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 18 |
| Employee engagement menu | 3 | 5 | 2 | 8 | 16 |
| Cause alignment with corporate CSR themes | 4 | 5 | 1 | 11 | 11 |
| The corporate shop window | 4 | 5 | 1 | 11 | 11 |
| Internal champion reach | 2 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 9 |
| Partnership impact reporting | 3 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 8 |
| Impact evidence a company can reuse | 4 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 7 |
| Personal resonance reach | 4 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 5 |
| Brand safety and governance | 4 | 5 | 1 | 5 | 5 |
| Financial transparency | 4 | 5 | 1 | 4 | 4 |
| Payroll giving and match funding readiness | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| A named corporate contact | 5 | 5 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Scale credibility | 4 | 4 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
| Challenge event portfolio | 5 | 4 | -1 | 3 | -3 |
Pitches should be tailored by mechanism, not by sector.
| Company type | Lead with | Do not lead with |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-sized professional and financial services, London | A named fellowship with the firm's name on it, a laboratory the staff can visit, and the firm partnership as proof | Sector alignment, which does not exist |
| Employers in the research cities | The funded research in that city, by name, and the researcher who would host a visit | National reach, which this charity does not have |
| A company where someone has been affected | The condition, the person, and what a year of fundraising would fund specifically | The organisation, its history and its founding date |
| Life sciences and healthcare companies | Shared scientific ground, AMRC membership and the peer review process | Emotional appeal alone, to an audience that will assess the science |
| Companies running a staff ballot | A one-page case an employee can paste into a nomination form | A formal proposal, which in a ballot nobody reads |
| Companies running a committee or a published process | Governance, reporting, the reserves answer and a delivery plan | Emotional resonance alone, which a committee discounts |
Open on the condition and the person, name what a year would fund, and offer the staff something to do that is made out of the research.
This section sets out what the argument has to contain and why. It deliberately stops short of drafting the words: the charity has not approved them, and a research document that writes in an organisation's voice is writing a cheque the organisation has to honour.
| The argument must | Because the evidence says | Which rules out |
|---|---|---|
| Open on the condition and the person, not the organisation | Companies want the problem explained rather than the brand recognised, and stories show impact where data only tells it | Opening on the charity's founding, its history or its grant-making process |
| Name what a year would fund, specifically | A named, fundable unit is what a corporate board can report against; lump sums into general funds are the thing boards struggle to evidence | An unrestricted ask with no named output |
| Offer something the staff can DO, made out of the research | Published packs ask for speakers, skills-led volunteering and in-person sessions, and office attendance mandates have made shared purpose a live corporate problem | Offering volunteering without naming an activity, which is what the site does today |
| Lead the engagement with the challenge events | Companies ask for access to a charity's challenge events by name, and this is the one dimension where this charity is ahead of the best in its peer group | Treating the marathon as a supporter product rather than a corporate asset |
| Answer the reserves question before it is asked | Total funds of £ against income of £ is a ratio a responsible business committee checks first | Waiting to be asked in the room |
| Make the size of the charity the argument, not the apology | Most partnerships go to charities that are not household names, and this charity publishes a named contact that all but one of its peers do not | Competing on reach, which cannot be won at this size |
Source As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
The one thing this study will not do
It will not draft the letter. The charity's voice belongs to the charity, and a consultant who writes it for them produces something that reads like a consultant. The table above is what the argument must carry. The words are theirs.
Keep one register of ten fields for every company, because each field is a question this study had to answer from scratch.
One table, maintained. The fields are not a preference; each one is a question this study had to answer from scratch for every company, and each one is the thing that would have been known already if the table had existed.
| Field | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Company, sector, employee count | Sets whether the mechanism is a ballot or a committee |
| Office cities | The commonest hard eligibility rule in the market |
| Mechanism | Decides which of the two pitch documents is sent |
| Cycle start and end | The only way to arrive before a window rather than after it |
| Current charity and cause | A company in cycle is not a target, it is a diary entry |
| Published criteria and the URL | Two companies in fifty-four publish them; read them |
| Income band rules | One of the two largest routes excludes this charity on a stated band; the other excludes it on a staffing rule |
| Anyone connected to the company | The strongest driver in table 7.2 |
| Approach date, outcome, and the CODED reason | Without the coded reason, a second year of applying teaches nothing |
| Next action and next review date | So a cycle ending in 2028 is not forgotten in 2027 |
Before any of the above: does the partnership you already have continue?
The firm is titled Charity of the Year 2025. This study is dated September 2026 and has treated it as current throughout, because the charity's own page still presents it that way. Nothing published says whether it runs into 2027.
If it has ended, renewing it outranks all 71 companies in the closing table and every route in 9.1. A company that has already chosen this charity once, and whose people raised £ against a £ target, is the cheapest partnership available to it by a wide margin. That is a question for the charity's own records and it takes one email to answer.
Review quarterly, or after every ten approaches, whichever comes first, and rebuild this study annually from the same data files so the scorecard is comparable year on year.
Review quarterly, or after every ten approaches, whichever comes first, and rebuild this study annually from the same data files so the scorecard is comparable year on year. Three things must be re-read each time: the published application packs, because their windows and income bands move; the cycle end dates in the register; and the peer benchmark, because the gaps in chapter 9.1 are relative and a peer that publishes an engagement menu moves this charity's score without it doing anything.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners publish a priced engagement menu, a corporate case study with a number in it, a named contact, and a reporting schedule. All four are pages, not programmes.
Where the charity currently stands
This charity has one of those four, and three of its four largest gaps are things it already does and has not written down.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Work the ranked list in 9.1 from the top. The four largest gaps carry 47 per cent of the total weighted gap between them, and none of the four requires a hire.
3
Findings
Chapter 7
What the evidence shows, and what it refuses to show
IndexAnswers sections 7.1 to 7.6, the findings of the COTY research index.
22 of 43 partnerships fall into not observable.
Every selection driver, graded by how far the evidence goes
- 11 of 43 ConfirmedThe source states the mechanism or the decision itself.
- 10 of 43 PlausibleThe source offers a reason, but not the decision.
- 22 of 43 Not observableThe source describes the partnership and never says why.
Build for the two strong rows: a nomination route for the person inside, and a published map of where the funded research physically is.
Competing explanations, ranked by the strength of the evidence for each
Every neurological partnership with a published reason: a colleague who died, staff who care for clients with the condition, a staff nomination
The commonest hard rule in the published packs, written as a mileage or a named list of offices
Named directly in the mechanics research as the mechanism behind a long-running partnership, and described as almost always helpful
Implicit in which partnerships get announced at all, which is a selection effect on this entire dataset
3 separate firms chose Great Ormond Street inside the period, and 6 chose a brain tumour charity
Asserted throughout the sector guidance, evidenced nowhere, because no company publishes the applications it rejected
The theme lists and the actual choices do not match, most obviously on hospices
Only ONE of the seven is a route this charity clears on the published rules: the BioIndustry Association, around 1 September 2027.
Every published route, the rule it was tested against, and the verdict that rule produces
Charities of all sizes, from organisations that focus on physical and mental wellbeing or provide essential support and services to individuals who have experienced an injury, illness, personal…
A research funder provides neither wellbeing services nor direct support to individuals. The size rule clears; the activity rule does not obviously.
Must be based in Wales or have a Welsh branch in the firm's own regions, and must have a prior relationship with a member of the firm; cold applications are not accepted.
Neither condition holds.
Evidence of successful stewardship of a minimum of 100 participants, and ability to raise GBP 1 million from the title across the places provided.
NOT TESTED, and the study should not have implied otherwise. The charity fielded no. marathon runners in FY2025, but its own accounts record the marathon as jointly fielded with three or four other neurological charities, so whether 100 or more are stewarded in its own name is unresolved. Thirty minutes of the charity's own records would settle it.
Requires a full-time London-based secondee plus administrative support, and gates on work with a direct link to reducing social and economic inequality in the UK.
no. employees in total, and laboratory research does not evidence the gate.
Be UK based and properly constituted; support medical research of interest to a BIA corporate member; be, or become, an AMRC member; state biomedical research spend; propose a patient advocate…
The charity is UK based, files on time, is already an AMRC member and funds UK biomedical research. This is the only route of the seven whose stated rules it plainly meets.
Must have a strong local presence near the firm's offices.
A funder of laboratories has an office, not a local presence in the sense a regional firm means. Untested either way, and this study's own finding is that local presence is the commonest hard rule in the market.
Voluntary income floor of GBP 4.5m, and funding must improve employability prospects for people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Donations and legacies were £, below the floor; neurological research does not improve employability prospects.
Source The application packs and charity partnership pages listed in Appendix C, read 16 September 2026.
Four findings about the market, one classification table that grades every selection driver by how far the evidence actually goes, and a list of the things this study looked for and did not find.
24 of the 43 partnerships chosen in the period came from law, banking, accountancy, insurance, consulting and recruitment: 56 per cent of the cohort, more than double the next block.
Professional and financial services run this marketsector
24 of the 43 partnerships chosen in the period came from law, banking, accountancy, insurance, consulting and recruitment: 56 per cent of the cohort, more than double the next block. They are also the firms whose partnerships sit at a size a small charity can service.
Corporate giving is falling while the need is risingmoney
CAF's Corporate Giving Report 2026 found FTSE 100 companies gave £1.69 billion to charity in the most recently reported year (financial years ending in 2025), equivalent to 0.8% of pre-tax profits. At the same time the public gave less: cAF's UK Giving Report 2026 found the British public donated an estimated £14 billion to charity in 2025, down from £15.4 billion in 2024, the first year-on-year decline in total individual giving since 2021.
Source As cited above: UK Fundraising, FTSE 100 corporate giving falls despite record profits link.
The published average describes a market this charity will never entervalue
The value figures in 5.3 have a shape that matters more than their size. The average is set by a handful of retail partnerships worth tens of millions accumulated over decades, and the typical partnership sits an order of magnitude below it. A charity that plans against the average is planning against the outliers.
The cause themes companies name are not the causes they choosecause
The CIOF research names children and young people, health, social welfare, mental health, environment, social mobility and employability as the corporate priorities. In this register children and young people took 10 of 43, but end of life and emergency care took 7, and hospices appear in no published list of corporate themes. What companies say they care about and what their staff vote for are different lists.
Source As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
2 companies out of 54 in this dataset publish selection criteria a charity could read before deciding whether to apply.
2
companies out
of 54 in this dataset publish selection criteria a charity could read before deciding
whether to apply. Everything else a charity believes about why companies choose charities is
inference, including everything inferred in this document.
The companies in Appendix C publish thoroughly: income bands, geography rules, exclusion lists, staged calendars, thematic gates and, in two cases, a requirement that the charity supply dedicated staff of its own. They are a different population from the two register companies that publish, for the reason given at 5.4.
| Company | The rule it was tested against | Verdict | Why | Next window |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TCS London Marathon (London Marathon Events) | Evidence of successful stewardship of a minimum of 100 participants, and ability to raise GBP 1 million from the title across the places provided. | NOT TESTED | NOT TESTED, and the study should not have implied otherwise. The charity fielded no. marathon runners in FY2025, but its own accounts record the marathon as jointly fielded with three or four other neurological charities, so whether 100 or more are stewarded in its own name is unresolved. Thirty minutes of the charity's own records would settle it. | spring 2027 |
| BIA (Bio-Industry Association) | Be UK based and properly constituted; support medical research of interest to a BIA corporate member; be, or become, an AMRC member; state biomedical research spend; propose a patient advocate… | clears it | The charity is UK based, files on time, is already an AMRC member and funds UK biomedical research. This is the only route of the seven whose stated rules it plainly meets. | around 1 September 2027 |
| Michelmores (law firm) | Must have a strong local presence near the firm's offices. | doubtful | A funder of laboratories has an office, not a local presence in the sense a regional firm means. Untested either way, and this study's own finding is that local presence is the commonest hard rule in the market. | late 2028 |
| Slater and Gordon (law firm) | Charities of all sizes, from organisations that focus on physical and mental wellbeing or provide essential support and services to individuals who have experienced an injury, illness, personal… | doubtful | A research funder provides neither wellbeing services nor direct support to individuals. The size rule clears; the activity rule does not obviously. | December 2026 |
| Deutsche Bank | Requires a full-time London-based secondee plus administrative support, and gates on work with a direct link to reducing social and economic inequality in the UK. | ruled out | no. employees in total, and laboratory research does not evidence the gate. | around 11 May 2027 |
| JCP Solicitors | Must be based in Wales or have a Welsh branch in the firm's own regions, and must have a prior relationship with a member of the firm; cold applications are not accepted. | ruled out | Neither condition holds. | January 2027 |
| Societe Generale (UK) | Voluntary income floor of GBP 4.5m, and funding must improve employability prospects for people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. | ruled out | Donations and legacies were £, below the floor; neurological research does not improve employability prospects. | 2030 or 2031 |
Source The application packs and charity partnership pages listed in Appendix C, read 16 September 2026.
The Bank of England does it deliberately, reserving one slot for a smaller regional charity, which is the single most explicit invitation to a small charity found anywhere in this study.
- Cycle length. 24 of 54 state one. Where stated, one and two years dominate, with a minority at three.
- Scope. 34 national against 9 regional or local in cohort A.
- Slates. 6 of 54 companies hold several charities at once. The Bank of England does it deliberately, reserving one slot for a smaller regional charity, which is the single most explicit invitation to a small charity found anywhere in this study.
- Engagement. Fundraising challenges, quizzes, bake sales, marathons, volunteering days and payroll giving recur throughout. Skills-based volunteering is named as a requirement in the published packs and appears almost nowhere in the announcements, which means companies ask for it and rarely get it.
22 of 43 partnerships fall into not observable.
Confirmed
The source states the mechanism or the decision itself.
11of 43
Strongly indicated
The source names a personal link or a proximity that plainly drove it.
0of 43
Plausible
The source offers a reason, but not the decision.
10of 43
Not observable
The source describes the partnership and never says why.
22of 43
Alternative more likely
A different explanation fits the evidence better than the one offered.
0of 43
The grade alternative explanation more likely exists so that a study can say when it disbelieves a stated reason. It is empty here because almost no reasons were stated at all. You cannot prefer a different explanation to one that was never offered.
22 of 43 partnerships fall into not observable. That single number is the most important line in this chapter, because it means the confident sector-by-cause targeting advice a charity will be given by almost any consultant rests on a public record that is more than half blank.
The evidence that a person inside the company drives it is strong wherever it is published at all.
| Explanation | Evidence for it in this study | How strong |
|---|---|---|
| A person inside the company | Every neurological partnership with a published reason: a colleague who died, staff who care for clients with the condition, a staff nomination | high |
| Geographic convenience | The commonest hard rule in the published packs, written as a mileage or a named list of offices | high |
| Existing relationship or trustee link | Named directly in the mechanics research as the mechanism behind a long-running partnership, and described as almost always helpful | medium |
| Marketing and PR opportunity | Implicit in which partnerships get announced at all, which is a selection effect on this entire dataset | medium |
| Peer behaviour inside an industry | 3 separate firms chose Great Ormond Street inside the period, and 6 chose a brain tumour charity | medium |
| Application quality and timing | Asserted throughout the sector guidance, evidenced nowhere, because no company publishes the applications it rejected | low |
| Cause alignment with published CSR themes | The theme lists and the actual choices do not match, most obviously on hospices | low |
No company in this study states a preference for medical research over medical care.
Seven negative findings, which is what a reader should trust most in a document like this
- No company in this study states a preference for medical research over medical care. The distinction that matters most to this charity is invisible to the market.
- No published data exists on how many charities apply for a single slot, so no win rate can be calculated and any consultant quoting one is estimating.
- No published figure exists for what servicing a partnership costs a charity, which means the return on this activity cannot be computed, only judged.
- No UK-wide Charity of the Year calendar exists. The clustering in 5.4 is drawn from a handful of published packs.
- No consistent relationship between sector and cause survives the data. The expected pattern, that housebuilders fund housing and banks fund financial inclusion, is not there.
- No evidence that a larger charity wins more often. The CIOF research finds the opposite, and this register is consistent with it.
- No match funding prevalence figure exists for the UK. Match funding is recommended everywhere and measured nowhere.
Source The gaps recorded by each research lane, reproduced in full in Appendix J.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners act on the CONFIRMED drivers in 7.4 and the top two rows of 7.2, which means people and places, and treat cause alignment as a filter rather than a strategy.
Where the charity currently stands
This charity's entire corporate history sits in the top row of that table, and it reached it by accident. Nothing in its public material is built to make that row repeatable.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Build for the two strong rows: a nomination route for the person inside, and a published map of where the funded research physically is. Those are the only two explanations this study can defend.
Chapter 8
What it all means, and where the evidence runs out
IndexAnswers sections 8.1 to 8.5, the discussion of the COTY research index.
The seven questions answered a second time against the completed evidence, the four propositions tested, and the tension this charity will have to manage between staying itself and being chosen.
Sector does not predict cause, so the obvious targeting strategy aims at nothing.
The seven questions were answered on the opening page and are not answered again here. This section records what the completed evidence CHANGED about those answers, which in five places is a great deal.
Sector does not predict cause, so the obvious targeting strategy aims at nothing.
What the evidence added
Housebuilders chose dementia, employability and children. Law firms chose brain tumours, hospices and cancer. Banks chose homelessness, children and dementia. Any approach built on matching a charity's cause to an industry would have been built on a pattern that is not in the data.
The market's second largest cause appears in no published list of corporate themes.
What the evidence added
End of life and emergency care takes more of this register than cancer does, and no company theme list names it. That single mismatch is the strongest evidence here that published themes describe what a company wants to be seen caring about, while the staff ballot decides what it actually funds.
Neurological causes are not rare. They are quiet.
What the evidence added
The two sector sweeps found 1 in cohort A. A separate targeted search found 16 more that the sweeps missed entirely, almost all at employers too small for the trade press. That is precisely the segment this charity can reach, and it is invisible to anyone reading the headlines.
The underdog effect is real, which is this charity's best structural news.
What the evidence added
Most partnerships go to charities that are not household names, and the register agrees: Encephalitis International, a local stroke group and a small IT firm's chosen brain charity all appear. Size is not the barrier this charity may assume it is.
The most visible doors are the ones to spend no capacity on.
What the evidence added
Both banks with full published application packs exclude this charity on their own stated rules. Reading the pack costs nothing and saves an application that practitioners describe as weeks of unpaid work for a small chance of return.
Where these five come from As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
That is why a company's stated themes are a poor predictor and a company's bereavements are a good one.
On this evidence the chain in chapter 3.4 holds, but the weight sits in a different place from where a charity would expect. The company's published CSR profile does not select the charity. It filters the field, usually by excluding political, religious and animal causes and by setting a geography. Inside that filtered field the decision is made by people, and the thing that moves people is that they, or someone they sit next to, have been through it.
That is why a company's stated themes are a poor predictor and a company's bereavements are a good one. It is also why this is an uncomfortable finding: the most reliable route to a partnership is one no charity can ethically engineer. What it CAN do is remove every obstacle between a grieving colleague and a nomination form.
Evidence for this reading As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
Alignment operates as an exclusion filter, not as a selector.
P1
Companies select charities whose cause aligns with their published CSR priorities.
The theme lists and the actual choices diverge, most visibly on hospice and end of life care, which takes the second largest share of this register and appears in no published corporate theme list. Alignment operates as an exclusion filter, not as a selector.
weakened
P2
Geographic proximity increases suitability.
The commonest hard eligibility rule in every published pack, stated as a mileage or a named office list. It is the one proposition the documents state directly rather than implying.
supported
P3
A strong employee-engagement proposition makes a charity more attractive.
Named explicitly in the published application packs, which ask for speakers, skills-led volunteering, in-person sessions and access to challenge events, and confirmed by the CIOF research finding that companies now seek shared purpose as office attendance rises.
supported
P5
The slate route varies by cause; the decision mechanism does not.
Two findings of very different strength, which is why the proposition was split. The DECISION half is supported and not marginally: the ballot is 20 of 22 published decisions across all causes and 4 of 4 among neurological ones, with no cause-area variation to speak of. The SLATE half is unresolved: 5 of 6 neurological slates were supplied by a person, which is a direction on a handful of observations, with 11 saying nothing and a selection effect running toward the finding. Chapter 9.1 is built so that resolving it would not change the recommendation.
split
P4
Sector and size explain more variation than cause alone.
Sector and size clearly determine the SHAPE of a partnership: its value, its length and whether the decision is a vote. Whether they explain the CAUSE chosen cannot be tested, because more than half the register never states why.
unresolved
The alternative is to make the research itself the thing the staff engage with: the laboratory they visit, the scientist who answers their questions, the project with their company's name on it and a date when it reports.
There is a real tension here and this study will not pretend otherwise. The evidence says companies want a problem explained plainly, a person to care about, and something for their staff to do. A charity that funds fellowships at a university has a problem that is plain, a person who is usually not its own beneficiary, and very little for staff to do on a Tuesday.
The temptation is to become a support charity in the pitch and a research funder in the accounts. That would be dishonest and it would also fail, because the first partnership report would expose it. The alternative is to make the research itself the thing the staff engage with: the laboratory they visit, the scientist who answers their questions, the project with their company's name on it and a date when it reports. That is a genuine engagement offer built out of what this charity actually is, and nothing in the evidence says companies would reject it. Nothing in the evidence says they have been offered it either.
Source As cited above: Current Charity of the Year: the firm link.
The compatible segment is mid-sized and professional, and it is the segment this charity's one existing partner already sits in.
- The compatible segment is mid-sized and professional, and it is the segment this charity's one existing partner already sits in.
- Regional beats national for a charity of this size, because the local rule excludes the big names as often as it excludes the small ones.
- The mission narrative does not match the observed pattern, and the mismatch is specific: research is invisible where care is visible.
- Pitches should be tailored by mechanism, not by sector. A ballot pitch and a committee pitch are different documents. A sector-tailored pitch is wasted effort, because sector does not predict cause.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners have decided which mechanism they are built for and have stopped entering the other one.
Where the charity currently stands
This charity is built for the ballot and has never entered one deliberately. Its only partnership was a nomination it did not solicit.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Commit to the ballot and the nomination as the route, and build the two assets that route needs: a nomination kit for an employee, and an engagement offer made out of the research rather than around it.
Chapter 10
The conclusion, which introduces no new evidence
IndexAnswers the conclusion of the COTY research index.
The evidence that cause alignment drives Charity of the Year selection is limited. The evidence that geography and employee engagement drive it is moderate to strong. The evidence that a person inside the company drives it is strong wherever it is published at all.
The more significant issue for the charity is not which companies to approach. It is that the market cannot currently see what it would be buying. Medical research is not a recognised corporate cause theme, a research funder has no local service for a company's staff to visit, and this charity has not yet translated what it does into the year of activity a company is actually choosing. Its own single partnership arrived through a bereavement and has never been written up, so the proof that the model works for it exists and is invisible.
On the nineteen dimensions a company weighs it reaches 3.3 of 5 against a best-in-class ceiling of 4.92, and three of its four largest gaps are publication gaps rather than capability gaps. It is already level with the best in the group on the one thing most of its cause peers never do, which is to publish a named human being with an email address, and ahead of the best on challenge events.
The prioritised answer, stated once: the mid-sized professional and financial services firm that decides by staff ballot, in London and in the cities where the funded research sits; the company where somebody has been affected, reached through a published nomination route; and the published application routes, of which none is open on the date of this study and 3 exclude it outright. Not the two largest published programmes, which exclude it by their own criteria.
Because no company was contacted, these findings indicate association and plausibility, not causation. They show which companies are structurally suitable and where the doors are and when they reopen. They cannot show that any company would say yes, and nothing in this document should be read as suggesting that one has.
What the strongest charity partners do
They know which mechanism they are built for, they publish what a company gets, and they can point at the last partnership and say what it produced.
Where the charity currently stands
One partnership, unwritten. Two strong assets, buried. Four gaps, three of which are pages rather than programmes.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Write the four pages. Build the register. Enter the ballot deliberately instead of waiting for a bereavement to do it.
4
The market
Chapter 5
The market is smaller, quieter and more local than it looks
IndexAnswers sections 5.1 to 5.5, the corporate and Charity of the Year landscape of the COTY research index.
Professional and financial services run this market
Which sectors chose a charity in the period
law, banking, accountancy, insurance, consulting and recruitment 24 of 43
Source Counted from the partnership register in Appendix B, the published eligibility rules in Appendix C, and the targeted health search in Appendix D.
The cause themes companies name are not the causes they choose
Which causes they chose
Source Counted from the partnership register in Appendix B, the published eligibility rules in Appendix C, and the targeted health search in Appendix D.
The published average describes a market this charity will never enter
Published partnership totals, smallest first, against what this charity could actually service
56 per centof surveyed UK Charity of the Year partnerships are worth less than £50,000 in total value, cash and in kind together, against a reported average of about £100,000.
inside the band this charity could service
above what a no.-person charity could service
- Victoria Centre (Nottingham shopping centre) two-year charity-of-the-year partnership with Nottinghamshire Hospice raised £24,972 (small/local…
- Posturite (167 employees) raised over £30,000 for the Stroke Association, with 2023 donations 4,944% higher than 2020 (small employer scale)
- For most (56%) UK Charity of the Year partnerships surveyed, total value (financial plus in-kind) is under £50,000; band breakdown: under £10,000…
- Buzz Bingo's three-year charity partnership with the Stroke Association raised £300,000, exceeding its original £200,000 target
- Societe Generale UK's new (2026-2031) charity partner funding is a minimum £40,000 annual financial commitment from the business, plus approximately…
- E.ON UK raised over £500,000 for Mind over a four-year partnership, including over £220,000 in match funding and around £110,000 from sponsored…
- LNER raised over £550,000 for CALM (mid-sized firm)
- Seasalt Cornwall raised £551,081.86 for Mind against a three-year target of £300,000 (mid-sized firm, target far exceeded)
- Royal Mail's four-year (2022-2026) national charity partnership with British Heart Foundation, targeted at £2 million, had raised £1 million as of…
- The Access Group raised almost £1 million for Parkinson's UK during their 2022-2023 charity-of-the-year partnership (mid-sized firm)
Source Practitioner survey evidence collected in the routes lane, and the CIOF and Darnell Consulting research of May 2026.
Corporate giving in the UK is falling. Most partnerships are worth less than fifty thousand pounds. Almost nobody publishes how they choose. These three facts together decide the whole targeting strategy.
Individual giving is falling faster than corporate giving, which means corporate partnership is not merely an additional stream but a partial substitute for one that is contracting underneath it.
Three published totals set the frame, and all three point the same way.
- £1.69bn / 0.8%. CAF's Corporate Giving Report 2026 found FTSE 100 companies gave £1.69 billion to charity in the most recently reported year (financial years ending in 2025), equivalent to 0.8% of pre-tax profits.
- 27% / 17%. CAF's Corporate Giving Report 2026 found only 27% of UK businesses support charities in any form (cash, in-kind or volunteering), and just 17% make cash donations.
- £14bn (2025), £15.4bn (2024). CAF's UK Giving Report 2026 found the British public donated an estimated £14 billion to charity in 2025, down from £15.4 billion in 2024, the first year-on-year decline in total individual giving since 2021.
The third is the one a fundraising director should read twice. Individual giving is falling faster than corporate giving, which means corporate partnership is not merely an additional stream but a partial substitute for one that is contracting underneath it.
Source UK Fundraising, FTSE 100 corporate giving falls despite record profits (citing CAF Corporate Giving Report 2026). Read 2026-09-14. link
Source CAF press office, Britain's largest listed businesses give less to charity despite record profits. Read 2026-09-14. link
Source UK Fundraising, Public donations dropped by nearly 10% between 2024 and 2025, says CAF research. Read 2026-03-16. link
Among UK businesses giving no charitable support, 57% say they simply had not considered it or saw no benefit, while only 18% cite budget constraints as the primary barrier.
That distribution is the argument for targeting rather than volume. If budget were the binding constraint, a charity would be competing on price against every other charity. It is not. The binding constraint is that most companies have never thought about it, which means the winnable company is the one that has just started thinking, and the most reliable trigger for starting to think is something that happened to somebody who works there.
Source As cited above: UK Fundraising, FTSE 100 corporate giving falls despite record profits link.
Source As cited above: CAF press office, Britain's largest listed businesses give less to cha link.
54 met the Charity of the Year definition, 43 of them chosen inside the period.
| Count | What it means | |
|---|---|---|
| Partnerships gathered | 78 | Every named UK corporate charity partnership found in two independent sector sweeps |
| Excluded, not the Charity of the Year model | 24 | Cause-related marketing, grant relationships, service and programme partnerships. Listed individually in Appendix B |
| In the dataset | 54 | The partnerships this study analyses |
| Cohort A, chosen inside the period | 43 | The only cohort used to say what gets chosen |
| Cohort B, running in the period but chosen earlier | 11 | Used only for what partnerships are worth and how long they last |
| Held as a slate of several charities at once | 6 | Counted apart, because a slate is a different arrangement |
| Publishing selection criteria | 2 | The central finding of this study |
| Publishing an amount raised | 29 | Used for the value analysis in 5.3 |
| Stating a cycle length | 24 | Used for the timing analysis in 5.3 |
| Without a stated announcement date | 20 | 20 of the 43 in cohort A. Held there because their sources describe them as current, which is an ASSUMPTION and the largest soft spot in this dataset |
£50,000 is the ceiling for most of this market: 56 per cent of surveyed partnerships are worth less than that, against an average of about £100,000.
Read only against cohort A, the 43 partnerships chosen inside the period.
| Sector | Partnerships | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Banking and financial services | 6 | 14 per cent |
| Legal | 6 | 14 per cent |
| Retail | 6 | 14 per cent |
| Accountancy and audit | 4 | 9 per cent |
| Insurance and broking | 4 | 9 per cent |
| Housebuilding | 4 | 9 per cent |
| Consulting and professional services | 3 | 7 per cent |
| Manufacturing and industry | 3 | 7 per cent |
| Transport and logistics | 2 | 5 per cent |
| Recruitment | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Hospitality and food | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Construction and infrastructure | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Technology | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Utilities and telecoms | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Total | 43 | 100 per cent, before rounding |
| Cause | Partnerships | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Children, young people and opportunity | 10 | 23 per cent |
| Hospice, palliative and emergency | 7 | 16 per cent |
| Cancer | 5 | 12 per cent |
| Multiple causes (a slate) | 5 | 12 per cent |
| Mental health | 3 | 7 per cent |
| Poverty and hardship | 3 | 7 per cent |
| Homelessness | 2 | 5 per cent |
| Armed forces | 2 | 5 per cent |
| Environment | 2 | 5 per cent |
| Community and international | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Other | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Neurological and brain | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Heart and circulatory | 1 | 2 per cent |
| Total | 43 | 100 per cent, before rounding |
They describe this register. They are not estimates of a population, because the register is what companies chose to announce and what the press chose to report, not a random sample of UK employers. A small law firm that quietly picked a local hospice is systematically less likely to appear here than a retailer with a press office.
The neurological count in table 5.3 is the clearest case. The general sweeps found 1 in cohort A. A separate targeted search for health and neurological partnerships found 16 more that the general sweeps missed entirely. The right conclusion is not that neurological causes win rarely. It is that they win quietly, at companies too small for the trade press.
56 per cent
of surveyed UK Charity of the Year partnerships are worth less than £50,000 in total value, cash and in kind together, against a reported average of about £100,000. The average is dragged upwards by a small number of very large retail partnerships that no charity of this size will ever win.
Source Practitioner survey evidence collected in the routes lane, and the CIOF and Darnell Consulting research of May 2026. link
| Partnership | Published total | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
| Victoria Centre (Nottingham shopping centre) two-year charity-of-the-year partnership with Nottinghamshire Hospice raised £24,972 (small/local… | £24,972 | inside the band this charity could service |
| Posturite (167 employees) raised over £30,000 for the Stroke Association, with 2023 donations 4,944% higher than 2020 (small employer scale) | £30,000 | inside the band this charity could service |
| For most (56%) UK Charity of the Year partnerships surveyed, total value (financial plus in-kind) is under £50,000; band breakdown: under £10,000… | £50,000 | inside the band this charity could service |
| Buzz Bingo's three-year charity partnership with the Stroke Association raised £300,000, exceeding its original £200,000 target | £300,000 | inside the band this charity could service |
| Societe Generale UK's new (2026-2031) charity partner funding is a minimum £40,000 annual financial commitment from the business, plus approximately… | £300,000 | inside the band this charity could service |
| E.ON UK raised over £500,000 for Mind over a four-year partnership, including over £220,000 in match funding and around £110,000 from sponsored… | £500,000 | above what a no.-person charity could service |
| LNER raised over £550,000 for CALM (mid-sized firm) | £550,000 | above what a no.-person charity could service |
| Seasalt Cornwall raised £551,081.86 for Mind against a three-year target of £300,000 (mid-sized firm, target far exceeded) | £551,082 | above what a no.-person charity could service |
| Royal Mail's four-year (2022-2026) national charity partnership with British Heart Foundation, targeted at £2 million, had raised £1 million as of… | £1m | above what a no.-person charity could service |
| The Access Group raised almost £1 million for Parkinson's UK during their 2022-2023 charity-of-the-year partnership (mid-sized firm) | £1m | above what a no.-person charity could service |
Of the 54 partnerships in the dataset, 2 publish criteria a charity could read before deciding whether to apply.
The single most useful finding in this study is an absence. Of the 54 partnerships in the dataset, 2 publish criteria a charity could read before deciding whether to apply. Of the 43 chosen in the period, 22 give no reason for the choice at all.
Two different populations, and the study keeps them apart. The 2 are inside the register of 54 announced partnerships. The 7 companies in Appendix C are not in that register at all: they were found by searching for published application routes rather than for announcements, which is why they publish and the register does not. Nothing here says a company with a pack is typical. The opposite: the pack is what makes them findable.
The companies that DO publish are a different market: full application packs, published windows, staged shortlists, income bands, geography rules and stated exclusions. There are 7 of them in this study. They are the most visible doors in the UK market and therefore the most competed, and two of the largest exclude this charity by their own rules.
JanuaryCommon deadline point for applications/nominations opened the previous autumn/winter
FebruaryStaff votes to decide the winning charity partner commonly held here where a company uses an employee-vote model
May-JuneA common window for opening applications/expressions of interest
August-SeptemberShortlisting and further application stages tend to close and be reviewed here
September-NovemberInterviews, panel meetings and final decisions commonly occur here
January / March / MayNew partnership terms commonly commence at the turn of the calendar year or shortly after selection
general/no fixed monthCorporate fundraisers advise working at least a year ahead of a target start, and checking each company's own financial year since budget processes typically begin a few months before it
Source Published application calendars from the company packs in Appendix C. The Deutsche Bank pack is the 2023 application for the 2024-25 cycle and the Societe Generale cycle completed in March 2026, so these are the shape of a calendar and not live dates. link
The months above are where the published windows cluster, not a market timetable. The routes lane looked for a UK-wide calendar and recorded plainly that none exists. The practical rule the sources give instead is to work at least a year ahead of a target start date, and to check each company's own financial year, because a company that runs its partnership on an April to March cycle decides at a different time from one that runs January to December.
For this charity that has a specific consequence. Its own financial year ends 31 March, so a partnership starting in January lands two thirds in one year and one third in the next, and should be budgeted that way.
Almost no company publishes why it chose.
The documents prove four things and suggest a fifth.
- Proven. Professional and financial services run more of these partnerships than any other block.
- Proven. Most partnerships are small, and the published giants are unreachable at this charity's size.
- Proven. Almost no company publishes why it chose.
- Proven. Where a mechanism is published it is usually a vote of the staff.
- Suggested, not proven. That the reason is usually a person. The published neurological cases all say so, but the published cases are a small and self-selecting group, and chapter 7.4 grades this honestly rather than claiming it.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners work the quiet end of this market: the mid-sized employer that never announces anything, reached before a window opens rather than after it is published.
Where the charity currently stands
This charity has never worked the market at all. Its one partnership arrived. There is no register of the roughly 100 UK companies that the sector's own directory lists as offering Charity of the Year partnerships.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Populate the 9.4 register from Appendix C first, because a charity that knows when a company decides is a year ahead of one that reads the announcement.
Chapter 6
Reading the partnerships one at a time
IndexAnswers sections 6.1 to 6.4, the company and partnership analysis of the COTY research index.
Eight case notes, chosen because each one teaches something a table cannot, followed by the cross-partnership patterns and an honest assessment of what this charity's own pitch would look like against them.
Turning any row into an approach needs the one thing no public source carries: the date the current cycle ends.
The index asks for a company profile table carrying CSR priorities, eligible charity types, cycle length, geographic focus, engagement activities, published criteria and deadlines. Here is how often each field could actually be filled from public sources, which is itself the finding.
| Field | Filled | Of | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Company and sector | 54 | 54 | Always |
| Charity and cause | 54 | 54 | Always |
| Announcement date | 34 | 54 | Often given as a year only |
| Cycle length | 24 | 54 | Stated less than half the time |
| Engagement activities | 53 | 54 | Usually described, rarely priced |
| Amount raised | 29 | 54 | Published mostly by the largest partnerships, which biases every average |
| A reason of any kind | 21 | 43 | The single largest gap in the public record |
| The MECHANISM itself, stated outright | 11 | 43 | A reason is not a mechanism, and the two counts differ |
| Published criteria | 2 | 54 | Two companies in the whole dataset |
Strip the sentiment out and a repeatable mechanism remains: a bereavement inside a mid-sized London firm found this charity unaided, and committed six figures to it.
The firm, and the charity
high yestier 1
What happenedNothing about brain research fits a professional services firm's published CSR themes. A person did. Strip the sentiment out and a repeatable mechanism remains: a bereavement inside a mid-sized London firm found this charity unaided, and committed six figures to it.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat this charity can win. The alternative reading is that it won by accident and cannot repeat it, which is exactly the question the recommendations answer.
Source The charity. link
Wickes, and The Brain Tumour Charity
high not statedtier 1
What happenedA two-year partnership across 228 stores that MET a £2m target. Proof that brain causes can carry a national retail partnership, and proof that this particular one needs a corporate team to run it.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat the cause is not the constraint. The alternative reading is that Wickes chose a household name and a smaller brain charity would not have been shortlisted.
Source Wickes plc, partnership raises GBP 2 million for The Brain Tumour Charity. link
The Access Group, and Parkinson's UK
high not statedtier 1
What happenedChosen by staff ballot for 2022 to 2023 and raising close to £1m through a gala ball and staff skydiving. The clearest evidence in the study that a neurological cause can win an open ballot at a mid-sized employer.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat a ballot can be won by a neurological cause at a mid-sized firm. The alternative reading is that someone senior already had Parkinson's in the family, which the source does not say either way.
Source Parkinson's UK. link
Winckworth Sherwood, and The Brain Tumour Charity
high not statedtier 1
What happenedA mid-sized London law firm whose people nominated a brain charity. Exactly the profile of segment 1, exactly the mechanism of segment 2.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat a London law firm is a realistic target for exactly this cause. The alternative reading is a single partner's personal link.
Source Winckworth Sherwood, our new Charity of the Year for 2024-2025. link
The Good Care Group, and The Brain Charity
high not statedtier 1
What happenedHome care providers chose a neurological charity because their own carers support clients living with dementia, Parkinson's and MS. Resonance does not have to be bereavement. It can be the working day.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat occupational exposure to a condition works like personal exposure. The alternative reading is that a care company choosing a care charity is simply sector alignment.
Source The Brain Charity. link
Morgan Stanley, and Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity
What happenedA two-year partnership voted for by employees with a £750,000 target matched to £1.5m. Dated 2015, not 2024: it is carried here as the clearest published example of the ballot at scale, and it is excluded from every count in this study.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat the ballot mechanism scales, and that the servicing requirement scales with it. Chasing this tier would cost more than it returned.
Source Morgan Stanley. link
BioIndustry Association, and an open competition
What happenedA life sciences trade association running an open Charity Partnership of the Year application with a published deadline. A neuroscience research funder applying here is arguing to its own industry, and it is an AMRC member, which the BIA criteria require.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat industry bodies are a door. The alternative reading is that a trade association's award carries prestige and little money, which the study cannot rule out because no figure is published.
Deutsche Bank, and ruled out
low not statedtier 3
What happenedA full published pack, a nine-month calendar, an income band of £2m to £20m that this charity clears, and one rule that closes it: the partner must supply one full-time London-based person to sit inside the bank's CSR team. This charity has no. employees in total.
What it teaches, and the alternative readingThat published criteria are a filter to READ, not a wall to climb. The alternative reading is that the rule is negotiable, and nothing in the pack suggests it is.
Source As cited above: Published application calendars from the company packs in Appendix C. link.
On what a pitch is judged on, the charity's mission is strong and its offer of something for staff to do is weak.
The index asks for an application-quality analysis. Judged on the ten things the published packs and the sector research say a pitch is read for, using only material this charity has already published.
| What a pitch is judged on | What this charity could evidence today | |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity of mission and impact | Strong. Three named research priorities, £ funded since date, AMRC audited peer review | high |
| Clarity of proposed engagement | Weak. Volunteering is offered without naming a single activity | low |
| Strength of evidence and stories | Medium. Stories exist but are not packaged for a corporate audience | medium |
| Realism of the engagement plan | Weak. no. staff, and no stated account management commitment | low |
| Explanation of geographic fit | Weak. The funded laboratories are named in the accounts, not on a map | low |
| Sustainability beyond the partnership year | Medium. A research grant is by nature multi-year, which is a genuine argument and is not being made | medium |
| Alignment with the company's CSR priorities | Medium. Health is a named corporate theme; research is one step behind it | medium |
| Project need against organisational story | Strong. A named fellowship or project grant is exactly the fundable unit companies prefer | high |
| Risk management and safeguarding | Strong. Registered, audited, outside all three commonly published exclusions | high |
| Evaluation and reporting | Weak. No published statement of what a partner receives during the year | low |
Sector does not predict cause.
- Sector does not predict cause. Housebuilders chose dementia, employability and children. Law firms chose brain tumours, hospices and cancer. Banks chose homelessness, children and dementia. Across 43 partnerships no sector shows a cause signature that would survive a second year of data.
- Scope splits by size. 34 of 43 partnerships went to a national charity and 9 to a regional or local one, but the regional ones cluster in the smaller employers, which is where a mid-sized charity actually competes.
- The vote favours the familiar, except when it does not. The published criticism of staff ballots is that they reward well-known brands. The cases here complicate that: Encephalitis International, Brainstrust-scale charities and a local stroke group all won. What they had was a person inside.
- Unsuccessful charities are invisible. No company publishes its shortlist. The denominator of this competition is unknown, and any claim about win rates would be invented.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners can name, for each target, the mechanism, the cycle end date and the person inside. They pitch to the mechanism rather than to the company.
Where the charity currently stands
This charity's one partnership came to it. Its published pitch would score weak on four of the ten things a pitch is read for, and all four are things it could write this month.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Fix the four weak rows in table 6.2 before approaching anybody, because each one is a page rather than a programme, and a pitch that cannot name an activity will lose to one that can.
5
The charity
Chapter 2
What a company would actually be buying
IndexAnswers sections 2.1 to 2.4, the organisational and funding context of the COTY research index.
The profile, the funding model, the partnership history, and the honest read of how this charity looks to a corporate social responsibility manager who has ten minutes.
The charity as a company would look it up: a research funder working throughout England and Wales.
| Legal form | Charitable company limited by guarantee, England and Wales |
| Registered | date |
| Charity number | no. |
| Company number | no. |
| Registered office | place |
| Area of operation | Throughout England and Wales |
| Purpose | Research into diseases of the nervous system, narrowed since date to three named priority areas |
| Income, year to 31 March 2025 | £ |
| Expenditure | £ |
| Research grants awarded | £ |
| Total funds | £ |
| Employees | no. |
Source Charity Commission register for England and Wales, charity no., and the filed accounts for the year ended 31 March 2025. Read 2026-09-16. link
The first is that the charity looks wealthier than it is, and the number to use is not the one a committee will find first.
This is a voluntary-income charity with a large endowed base. Donations and legacies were £ of the £ received, of which legacies were £, no. per cent. Total funds stood at £, which includes named endowments at a university neuroscience institute that can only be spent on the purposes they were given for.
Two consequences follow, and both matter to a company.
The first is that the charity looks wealthier than it is, and the number to use is not the one a committee will find first. Total funds are £. Free reserves are £. The difference is designated grant and investment funds plus expendable endowments at the same institute, none of which can be spent on anything else. A pitch that quotes the total invites the objection it is trying to answer.
The second is that a Charity of the Year partnership does something legacies and endowments cannot. It produces unrestricted money in a known year, on a known timetable, with a known partner, and it does so without hiring anyone.
This is the charity's live proof that the model works for it, and the only corporate relationship it holds that a company would recognise as a Charity of the Year.
A mid-sized professional services firmCharity of the Year 2025
Colleague fundraising followed the nomination. This is the charity's live proof that the model works for it, and the only corporate relationship it holds that a company would recognise as a Charity of the Year.
A sports injury foundationthree-year funding partnership
In its second year, supporting the brain and spinal cord injury programme. A funding relationship rather than an employee partnership, and therefore not a Charity of the Year, but it is corporate-adjacent credibility a pitch can use.
A multi-charity London Marathon collaborationneurological charities
Fielding runners jointly with other neurological charities. Evidence of the one asset this charity is genuinely strong on.
–
Anything written up as a case studythe gap
None of the above appears as a corporate case study with a number, an activity list and a quote. The proof a first-time corporate partner looks for is not on the page.
A corporate income linenot published
Corporate income is not separately reported, so neither the charity nor a prospective partner can see the trend.
Source Current Charity of the Year: the firm. Read 2026-09-16. link
Source A sports injury foundation funding partnership. Read 2026-09-16. link
Source As cited above: A sports injury foundation funding partnership link.
It is better than most of its cause peers in two specific places and worse in four.
The honest read, from the public surfaces only. It is better than most of its cause peers in two specific places and worse in four.
| What the manager looks for | What they find | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| A corporate partnerships page | Present, naming Charity of the Year, volunteering, payroll giving and sponsorship | high |
| A named human to contact | A named head of fundraising, with a direct email. Only 2 of 31 peer charities publish one | high |
| Proof the last partnership worked | The current partner is named, but with no figures, activities or quotes | low |
| Something for staff to DO | Volunteering is offered without saying what it is | low |
| Impact a company can reuse | A 2024 impact report and annual reviews back to 2015/16, but nothing sized to a partnership | medium |
| Reach the company can borrow | Instagram no., Facebook about no., X no. | low |
| Challenge event places | London Marathon, Great North Run and treks, with more than £ raised through the marathon in the year to March 2025 | high |
| A clean governance record | Registered, audited, AMRC member, and outside the three commonest published exclusions of political, religious and animal welfare causes | high |
Source The charity's own website, read 16 September 2026, and the peer review of 31 charities in Appendix D. link
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners publish a shop window built for a company rather than for a donor: what you get, what it costs, who runs it, and what the last partner achieved.
Where the charity currently stands
The window exists and is better than most cause peers, but three of its four panes are empty: no proof of the last partnership, no named activities, no reach.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Write up the firm partnership as a one-page case study with its number, its activities and a quote, and put it at the top of the corporate page. It is the single cheapest gap to close in this document.
Chapter 1
Why a charity that funds laboratories needs a corporate strategy
IndexAnswers sections 1.1 to 1.8, the introduction of the COTY research index.
Its fundraising is growing and one institutional grant ended. The line that did not grow is the smallest one in the accounts, and it is the line corporate partnership sits in.
So the fundraising base is growing, by about £ in the year, and what disappeared was a grant nobody can fundraise back.
The charity is a charitable company registered in England and Wales as charity no. and company no., based in place. It funds research into three named neurological priority areas, and states it has provided more than £ for neurological research since date.
In the year to 31 March 2025 it received £ and spent £, and the audited net movement in funds was £ negative. Total income fell from £. Read at that level, the year looks like a decline, and a study built on the bucket totals would say so.
Note 2 of the accounts says something else entirely. Of the five lines inside donations and legacies, three rose and two fell, and almost all of the movement sits in one of the two: grant income fell from £ to £, because one institutional award for early-career researchers ended. Strip that one institutional grant out and the trustees state the result in their own words: donations and legacies excluding grants increased to £, from £.
So the fundraising base is growing, by about £ in the year, and what disappeared was a grant nobody can fundraise back. That changes what this study is for. It is not a search for money to plug a hole. It is a question about the one line in Note 2 that did NOT grow.
Source The charity's report and financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2025, Note 2 and the trustees' review of the year. A full 12 month period, audit report signed 23 June 2025. Read 2026-09-17. link
£
is the whole of
"trusts, corporates and major donors" in the year to 31 March 2025, down from
£. It is the smallest line in Note 2 and the only one that fell other than the grant.
A single Charity of the Year partnership at the market average would be about three quarters of
that entire line.
£ of £ in donations and legacies. The market average is established in chapter 5.3.
Donations and legacies as a bucket ROSE by £ while total income fell, because the fall is in investments and not in fundraising. Inside the bucket three lines rose and two fell. This is the whole reason a study reads the note and never the summary.
| Line in Note 2 | Year to 31 March 2025 | Year to 31 March 2024 | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Individuals | £ | £ | £ |
| Trusts, corporates and major donors | £ | £ | £ |
| Income from fundraising events | £ | £ | £ |
| Legacies | £ | £ | £ |
| Grants | £ | £ | £ |
| Total donations and legacies | £ | £ | +£ |
The accounts explain the grant line themselves, naming the fund, the purpose it paid for and the year it fell to nil: quote
And the trustees state the corrected reading in the review of the year, giving the excluding-grants figure and the year before it: quote
One further note on the bottom line. The accounts carry two: £ negative BEFORE gains on investment assets, and £ negative after them. The second is the audited net movement in funds and it is the one this document uses.
It HELD one such partnership, which arrived through a colleague's bereavement rather than through a strategy and has now ended.
The study asks which companies the charity should approach for a Charity of the Year nomination and partnership, and to understand what makes certain companies more suitable and more receptive than others. It HELD one such partnership, which arrived through a colleague's bereavement rather than through a strategy and has now ended. It has no register of which companies run these programmes, when they decide, or on what terms.
To assess which types of UK company are most suitable for, and most likely to engage in, a Charity of the Year partnership with the charity, and under what circumstances.
To assess which types of UK company are most suitable for, and most likely to engage in, a Charity of the Year partnership with the charity, and under what circumstances.
Map the market, read what companies publish, compare what was awarded, grade the other factors, and recommend a shortlist.
- Map the current UK Charity of the Year landscape by sector, size, geography and cause.
- Examine the published criteria and CSR priorities of the companies that run these programmes.
- Compare the partnerships that were awarded, by charity type, cause and geography, and in particular those awarded to health and neurological causes.
- Identify the factors other than cause that influence selection, and grade how strong the evidence for each actually is.
- Recommend a prioritised company shortlist and the positioning changes that would make this charity competitive for it.
One primary question and six secondary questions, all seven answered directly in the opening page and each traced to the chapter that shows its working.
One primary question and six secondary questions, all seven answered directly in the opening page and each traced to the chapter that shows its working. Chapter 8.1 does not answer them again; it records what the evidence changed.
What it measures: perceived SUITABILITY.
- Market: the United Kingdom.
- Organisation: a UK medical research charity, unnamed in this edition.
- Period: partnerships announced or chosen between January 2023 and September 2026, with earlier partnerships still running inside that window held in a separate cohort.
- Company types: all UK employers of any sector, with professional services, financial services, retail, industry, technology and transport all swept.
- Excluded: corporate donations, sponsorships, cause-related marketing and grant relationships that are not the Charity of the Year model, listed individually in Appendix B.
- What it measures: perceived SUITABILITY. Not the probability of acceptance, which cannot be estimated without knowing how many charities applied and lost.
A Charity of the Year partnership at the market average would be worth about £100,000 to this charity, roughly no. per cent of its total income, and it would be unrestricted in a way research grants rarely are.
A Charity of the Year partnership at the market average would be worth about £100,000 to this charity, roughly no. per cent of its total income, and it would be unrestricted in a way research grants rarely are. It also compounds: a company that has run one partnership is the easiest source of the next, and the published case study is what persuades the company after that. The cost of getting it wrong is equally real, because the published guidance is blunt that application processes consume large amounts of unpaid charity capacity for a small chance of return. Targeting is therefore not a refinement. It is the whole of the discipline.
Source CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research findings. Read 2026-05. link
Source Practitioner evidence on the cost of applying, collected in the routes lane and cited in chapter 5.5.
From the charity and its market to the findings and the recommendations, with every working in the appendices.
Chapter 2 profiles the charity and its funding model. Chapter 3 sets out what a company is actually choosing. Chapter 4 explains the method and its limits. Chapter 5 maps the market. Chapter 6 reads the companies and the partnerships one by one. Chapter 7 reports the findings, including what was not found. Chapter 8 discusses them against the framework. Chapter 9 recommends. Chapter 10 concludes. The appendices carry the register, the exclusions, the published criteria, the coding frame and the index coverage map, and the document ends on the table that assesses every company in it.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners treat corporate income as a named stream with its own target, its own person and its own pipeline, not as an occasional windfall.
Where the charity currently stands
Trusts, corporates and major donors are reported as ONE line of £, down from £, so corporate income cannot be separated from trust income even internally. One partnership exists.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Set a corporate target as a named line in the budget, and report against it. A stream that is not counted cannot be grown, and a company asked to be part of something does not want to be the exception.
6
How this was done
Chapter 4
How this was done, and what it therefore cannot tell you
IndexAnswers sections 4.1 to 4.10, the methodology of the COTY research index.
What was read, what was counted, and the four places this method cannot see.
It does not claim to establish causation where companies have not disclosed their selection criteria, and chapter 7.4 grades every driver by how far the evidence actually goes.
The study uses a qualitative case-study and market-mapping method: documentary analysis of Charity of the Year announcements, corporate responsibility pages and sector guidance; secondary analysis of published corporate-giving data; and comparative analysis of partnerships across sectors. The charity's own public record was read on the same terms as every company's. It does not claim to establish causation where companies have not disclosed their selection criteria, and chapter 7.4 grades every driver by how far the evidence actually goes.
A company that has run three consecutive partnerships therefore contributes three rows, which is deliberate: the question is what gets chosen, and a company that chooses annually casts three votes.
The primary unit is one Charity of the Year partnership between a UK company and a charity, announced or active in the study period. A company that has run three consecutive partnerships therefore contributes three rows, which is deliberate: the question is what gets chosen, and a company that chooses annually casts three votes. The company-year is used as a secondary unit when reading cycle length and timing.
Every row in the dataset carries the URL it came from.
Every row in the dataset carries the URL it came from. The full inventory is Appendix A. Documents fall into five classes: company responsible-business and Charity of the Year pages; company and charity press releases; trade and regional business press; sector guidance from the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, the Directory of Social Change and Charity Excellence; and published research, principally the Charities Aid Foundation's corporate giving and UK giving reports.
Everything excluded is listed, with its reason, in Appendix B.
A partnership entered the dataset when all four held: the announcement or the active period falls inside January 2023 to September 2026; the company and the charity are both identifiable; the source states enough to code cause, sector and scope; and the arrangement is recognisably the Charity of the Year model, meaning a named charity partner with employee fundraising or volunteering attached.
Everything excluded is listed, with its reason, in Appendix B. Nothing was dropped silently.
Two independent sweeps of named partnerships, the market's mechanics and the published routes gathered apart, then every row coded by fixed rules.
- Build the register of named partnerships from trade press, company pages and charity announcements, in two independent sweeps: professional and financial services, and consumer, industry and technology.
- Collect the mechanics of the market separately, so that the model is not built out of the same rows it is meant to explain.
- Collect the published routes in: application forms, windows, eligibility rules.
- Collect the peer benchmark: what comparable charities offer companies, and which companies have chosen a health or neurological cause.
- Read the subject charity's own public record on the same terms.
- Normalise sector and cause into fixed taxonomies, apply the inclusion rules, and code the selection-driver evidence for every surviving row.
- Score the subject against the peer benchmark on the nineteen dimensions of chapter 9.1, with a confidence rating on every score.
Steps 6 and 7 are executed by code, not by hand, so that the same data always produces the same document.
The last field is the one that produces chapter 7.2, and it is the reason this study can state how many companies publish nothing.
For every document: what it says about CSR priorities; about cause-area preference; about geographic focus; about employee engagement; about the selected charity; about the partnership activities; and, recorded explicitly, what it leaves unknown. The last field is the one that produces chapter 7.2, and it is the reason this study can state how many companies publish nothing.
No company was approached for this study.
Absence of published criteria is recorded as "not observable", never read as evidence
No company was approached for this study. The researcher did not present as a company, a regulator or a prospective partner. The charity's own material was read from public sources and from one internal register entry, identified where it is used.
This matters most for the commonest finding in the document. When a company does not say why it picked a charity, that is a fact about the company's disclosure. It is not evidence that no criteria existed, and it is never treated as one.
If a figure is wrong the data is corrected and the document is rebuilt.
- One coding template, applied by code to every row, so the same wording always produces the same category.
- A fixed sector taxonomy and a fixed cause taxonomy, both printed in Appendix E.
- Every claim carries its source under it, in the body, not in a bibliography.
- Fact, interpretation and inference are separated in the data files and the separation survives into the document.
- The document is generated from the data. If a figure is wrong the data is corrected and the document is rebuilt. It is never edited in place.
All company and partnership material is public.
All company and partnership material is public. No personal data was collected about any individual beyond the publicly published names of corporate partnership contacts, which are reported as a count in table 2.2 and chapter 9.1, never listed individually. The subject charity's internal register entry is used for one figure and marked. Nothing commercially sensitive to any company appears here that the company has not itself published. The subject charity retains the right to correct any factual error, and a correction changes the data file, never only the text.
Company reasoning is mostly not public.
Six limits that bound every conclusion in this document
- Selection decisions have several causes at once. Cause fit, a trustee's phone call and a marketing calendar can all be true.
- Company reasoning is mostly not public. The largest single category in chapter 7.4 is not observable, and that is a finding about disclosure.
- The sample is what was announced. Partnerships that were never publicised, and every charity that applied and lost, are invisible. The denominator of the competition is unknown.
- Corporate reporting lags the decision. A CSR report published in 2026 may describe a choice made in 2024.
- The register is not a random sample and no significance test is claimed. Proportions describe this dataset and are not estimates of a population.
- Causation is not available. Without direct company evidence the study can show association and plausibility, and it says which it is showing every time.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners research the company before they write, and can name the mechanism, the cycle and the cause themes before they make contact. That is the same documentary work this chapter describes, done one company at a time.
Where the charity currently stands
the charity holds no register of companies, no record of cycles or windows, and no coding of why past approaches failed. There is nothing to learn from because nothing was written down.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Code every approach and every outcome, with a reason. A pipeline without a coded reason for each loss teaches nothing in its second year, and the fields that carry it are set out at 9.4.
Chapter 3
What a company is actually choosing when it chooses a charity
IndexAnswers sections 3.1 to 3.5, the conceptual and analytical framework of the COTY research index.
Before the evidence, the model the evidence is read against. A company is not choosing a cause. It is choosing a year of its own internal life, and the charity is the thing that year will be about.
The phrase covers four arrangements that behave differently, and a charity that treats them as one thing will aim its effort at the wrong door.
The phrase covers four arrangements that behave differently, and a charity that treats them as one thing will aim its effort at the wrong door.
The formal COTY partnershipOne charity, a defined term of 12 to 36 months, staff fundraising and co-branded activity. This is the arrangement the study is about.
The concurrent slateSeveral charities held at once, deliberately mixed by type. The Bank of England runs three: one aligned to its diversity agenda, one smaller and regional, one nationally recognised. A small charity competes for the small slot, not against the large one.
Employee-led against board-ledA staff ballot is a popularity contest in which resonance beats merit. A CSR committee decision is a procurement exercise in which evidence beats resonance. The pitch that wins one loses the other.
Local, regional or national scopeA branch, an office or a whole company. Most COTY activity that a mid-sized charity can realistically win sits at office or regional level, where the competition is local.
Source Bank of England, Charities of the year. Read page live 2026-09-16. link
Source As cited above: Bank of England, Charities of the year link.
Source Fundraising Everywhere, Corporate Sponsorship for Charities: Your Complete UK Guide. Read not verified by direct fetch; found via search result summary. link
The categories are not invented for this study. They are the distinctions the sources themselves draw when they describe their own arrangements.
- Term. A UK Charity of the Year partnership typically means a company selects one specific charity to support over a designated period, usually one year but sometimes two.
- Range. In practice Charity of the Year durations range from 12 to 24 months; some companies, such as Dixons, set an 18-month minimum for the deal.
- The slate. The Bank of England deliberately structures its three concurrent charity slots by type: one charity aligned with its diversity and inclusion agenda, one smaller charity with a regional/local focus, and one nationally or internationally recognised charity.
- The drift away from the name. Third Sector commentary argues the 'charity of the year' label is increasingly a misnomer because modern corporate deals often involve multiple charities and multiple years rather than one charity for one year.
Sources Charity Excellence Framework, Fundraising Everywhere, Bank of England and Third Sector, as cited above.
The first three are about the company's own employees.
Seven reasons appear repeatedly in the material, and they are not equal. The first three are about the company's own employees. Only the fourth is about the charity's work.
- Personal resonance. Somebody in the building has the condition, or lost someone to it. This is the single most powerful driver in any staff ballot.
- Shared purpose in the office. With attendance mandates rising, a charity that gives people a reason to be in the same room is solving a live corporate problem.
- Visible engagement. Activities that photograph well, fill a calendar and can be reported in an ESG statement.
- Cause alignment with what the company has already published about itself.
- Geographic proximity to the offices, because staff want to see where it went.
- Brand safety. A charity a risk committee can approve without a conversation.
- An existing relationship. A trustee, a founder, a colleague who already knows the charity. This is the most common single explanation and the least public one.
Evidence As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
Evidence As cited above: CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research f link.
Worked example Cherry Trees, Charity partnership with award-winning technology company set to continue as director steps into new trustee role. Read originally 2021-05-24, updated 2025-11-21. link
These eight moderators decide a great deal of it, and a charity can influence only three.
A study that explains every selection by cause fit is a study that has stopped looking. These eight moderators decide a great deal of it, and a charity can influence only three.
| Factor | What it does to the decision | Can the charity influence it? |
|---|---|---|
| Sector and CSR culture | Sets the cause themes that are even considered. | No |
| Company size and employee base | Decides whether the ask is £10,000 or £1m. | No |
| Geographic footprint | Decides whether the charity is eligible at all. | Partly, by evidencing work near the offices |
| Previous COTY history and cycle length | Decides WHEN the door is open. | Yes, by timing the approach |
| An internal champion | Turns an application into an advocate in the room. | Yes, by building materials a champion can carry |
| Marketing and PR opportunity | Decides whether the partnership is worth announcing. | Partly, through the charity's own reach |
| Peer behaviour in the industry | Creates cause fashions inside a sector. | No |
| Economic conditions and CSR budgets | Decides the size of the pot. | No |
Evidence on budgets UK Fundraising, Most British businesses do nothing to support charities, reports CAF. Read 2025-09-17. link
Evidence on champions search synthesis of corporate-partnership advice pages. Read not dated; page live 2026-09-16. link
It can change what that company perceives, and it can change what it is offered.
The chain the study reads the evidence against runs: the company's published CSR profile shapes its perception of whether a charity fits, which shapes its judgement of the engagement and impact it could get, which produces the selection. Every link is moderated by mission clarity, geographic alignment, engagement capacity, the quality and timing of the approach, the presence of an internal champion, and the other charities competing for the same slot.
The model matters because it says where a charity can intervene. It cannot change a company's CSR profile. It can change what that company perceives, and it can change what it is offered.
These are propositions and not hypotheses in the statistical sense.
P1
Companies are more likely to select charities whose cause aligns closely with their published CSR priorities.
tested in 8.3
P2
Geographic proximity between charity operations and company locations increases COTY suitability.
tested in 8.3
P3
Charities with strong employee-engagement propositions are more attractive COTY partners.
tested in 8.3
P4
Company sector and size explain more variation in COTY choices than charity cause alone.
tested in 8.3
P5
The way a charity reaches the slate varies by cause area, while the way the decision is taken does not.
tested in 8.3
These are propositions and not hypotheses in the statistical sense. The sample is a census of what companies chose to publish, not a random draw, and no company was asked why it decided as it did. The test is whether the documentary evidence supports, weakens or leaves each proposition unresolved.
What the strongest charity partners do
The strongest charity partners treat the four arrangements as four different markets and build a different approach for each. They aim at the slot, not at the company: the regional slot, the small-charity slot, the health slot.
Where the charity currently stands
the charity has no published position on any of the four. Its website does not distinguish a corporate partnership from a company donation, so every approach it makes is aimed at a door it has not identified.
What the charity must do to be chosen
Decide which of the four arrangements is the target and build for it. On the evidence in chapters 5, 6 and 9.1 that is the formal COTY at a mid-sized employer, reached EITHER by a colleague's nomination or by a staff ballot. The two are not alternatives to choose between: they need the same four assets, which is why 9.1 ranks them together.
Before anything else
What is public, what is not, and what the words mean
IndexAnswers the confidentiality and terminology note of the preliminary pages.
Everything in this study is public, and no company was asked
All company and partnership material here is public: announcements, responsible business pages, application packs, trade press and published research. The charity's own figures were public too, read from the Charity Commission register, its filed and audited accounts and its own website, and they are struck out of this edition. One figure comes from 's internal register and is marked where it is used. Nothing was anonymised in the study itself, because no confidential material was used.
No company was approached. This study reads what companies have published about themselves, which is the only way to survey a market without changing it. Chapter 4.7 sets out what that boundary costs the analysis, and chapter 7.4 grades every conclusion by how far the evidence actually goes.
Charity of the YearA company names one charity as its partner for a defined term, usually 12 to 36 months, and its employees raise money and volunteer for it. Where a company holds several at once, this study calls it a slate and counts it separately.
Corporate partnerAny company with a named charity relationship. Wider than Charity of the Year, and the difference is the reason 24 of the partnerships gathered were excluded.
CSR alignmentWhether a charity's cause sits inside the themes a company has already published about itself. It is a perception held by the company, not a property of the charity.
Employee engagementWhat the company's staff actually do: fundraise, volunteer, attend, vote, nominate. In this market it is the product, and the donation is the receipt.
Partnership outcomeWhat the partnership produced, in money and in activity, as the company or the charity published it. Where no figure was published this study says so and does not estimate.
Not observableThe evidence does not exist in public. It is a finding about disclosure and it is never treated as evidence that the thing did not happen.
7
Appendices
The closing table
71 companies that have already chosen, and what each one teaches
Read this before the tableEVERY ROW IN IT ALREADY HAS A CHARITY OF THE YEAR PARTNER. This is a register of companies that have CHOSEN, not a list of vacancies, because a company advertises its choice and never its availability. The tiers rank how closely each choice resembles a choice of this charity, which is what tells you where to look and what to say. Turning any row into an approach needs the one thing no public source carries: the date the current cycle ends. That is the first field of the register in 9.5, and it is unknown for 51 of these 71. No company was contacted and none has expressed any interest.
71 companies, one row each, all of them currently partnered with somebody. 24 reach tier 1, 27 tier 2, 20 tier 3, of which 3 are ruled out by the company's own published criteria. Only 20 of the 71 publish a cycle length, so for the rest the date their slot frees is unknown and has to be asked for rather than looked up. 23 come from the targeted search for health and neurological partnerships and are marked. The cohort B companies, whose partnerships were chosen before the period, are not assessed: a decision taken in 1989 or 2013 says nothing about a slot in 2027. Where a company appeared twice the rows are merged and the worse verdict stands, because a company whose slot is already filled is not a priority target.
omitted from this edition
The closing table itself. It ranks 71 companies for this charity, one row each, every row carrying the sector and cause fit, the geographic alignment, the engagement model, whether the company publishes criteria, the other likely factors, the overall assessment and its own source. 24 reach tier 1, the closest analogues; 27 tier 2, worth watching for the cycle end; 20 tier 3, of which 3 are ruled out by the company's own published criteria. It was built for this charity and it stays with it. The rules that produce every verdict in it are printed below unaltered, because the method is what this edition is shared to show.
Four scores are added, and the total sets the tier. Nothing is judged by hand.
| Rule | How it scores |
|---|---|
| Cause Proximity | 3 the same cause, 2 medical research, 1 health adjacent or a slate, 0 a different theme |
| Mechanism | 2 a staff vote, nomination or published application; 1 unknown; 0 a personal link that cannot be applied for |
| Scale | 2 under £500,000; 1 unknown or up to £2m; 0 over £2m, which needs a corporate team to service |
| Geography | 2 a city where the funded research sits; 1 not stated; 0 elsewhere |
| Tiers | Tier 1 priority, tier 2 worth an approach when the cycle ends, tier 3 lower priority or ruled out by published criteria |
A company is moved to tier 3 regardless of its total when its own published criteria exclude a charity of this size or shape. Three companies are in that position and the exact rule that excludes each of them is printed in its row.
The obvious limitation: a company already in a partnership is not available until its cycle ends, and fewer than half the rows state a cycle length. The table therefore ranks SUITABILITY, and the register in table 9.4 is what turns suitability into timing.
References
Where all of this came from
- Charity Commission for England and Wales, register of charities. Charity no., the charity, including the filed annual report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2025.
- Companies House, company no..
- UK Fundraising, FTSE 100 corporate giving falls despite record profits (citing CAF Corporate Giving Report 2026). link
- CAF press office, Britain's largest listed businesses give less to charity despite record profits. link
- UK Fundraising, Public donations dropped by nearly 10% between 2024 and 2025, says CAF research. link
- Directory of Social Change, The Guide to UK Company Giving 2025/26. link
- NCVO, UK Civil Society Almanac 2024. link
- CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research findings. link
- CIOF, What companies really want from charity partners: new research findings. link
- CIOF, How to secure a Charity of the Year partnership. link
- CIOF, Targeting Charity of the Year Partnerships: A Comprehensive Guide. link
- Deutsche Bank, application form. link
- Societe Generale (UK), application form. link
- Michelmores (law firm), application form. link
- JCP Solicitors, nomination. link
- TCS London Marathon (London Marathon Events), application form. link
- Slater and Gordon (law firm), application form. link
- BIA (Bio-Industry Association), application form. link
All 54 partnerships in the dataset are printed with their sources in Appendix B1, and the 24 exclusions in B2. Every row of the closing table carries its own source link. They are not repeated here.
The corporate partnership pages, annual reports and register entries of 31 charities. Each charity's name in Appendix D links to the page that was read.
Sources are cited inline, under the claim they support, with the publisher named and the URL given. A bibliography that separates a claim from its evidence is how a wrong number survives a review, so this document does not use one.
Appendices
The working, kept where it can be checked
| Class of document | How many | Where they came from |
|---|---|---|
| Company and charity partnership announcements | 78 | Company responsible business pages, charity news pages, trade and regional press |
| Published application packs and criteria pages | 7 | The companies' own sites, listed in Appendix C |
| Sector research and guidance items | 55 | CAF, NCVO, DSC, CIOF, Third Sector, Civil Society, UK Fundraising, Charity Excellence |
| Peer charity surfaces | 31 | Charity websites, annual reports and the Charity Commission register |
| Subject charity documents | 18 | Charity Commission register, filed and audited accounts, the charity's own website |
Every individual document carries its URL in the data files beside this document, and every claim in the body carries its source under it.
54 partnerships in the dataset, 24 excluded. The exclusions matter more than the inclusions, because an over-inclusive dataset would have let cause-related marketing and grant relationships vote on what a Charity of the Year is.
| Reason for exclusion | How many |
|---|---|
| the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity of the Year | 17 |
| a programme or service partnership, not a Charity of the Year | 4 |
| cause-related marketing on a product, not employee fundraising | 2 |
| a funding or grant relationship, not a Charity of the Year | 1 |
All 54 of them, each with the source it came from and the grade chapter 7.4 gave its selection driver. This is the table the References section points at, and the per-partnership classification the index asks for at 7.4.
| Company | Charity | Cause | Announced | Cohort | Driver grade | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A&O Shearman | United for Global Mental Health… | Mental health | not stated | A | confirmed | A&O Shearman - Social Impact link |
| Addleshaw Goddard | Centrepoint (Manchester office) | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | not observable | JustGiving (Addleshaw Goddard… link |
| Azets (Guildford office) | Challengers | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | plausible | Surrey Chambers link |
| Bellway | Cancer Research UK | Cancer | not stated | A | not observable | Search summary of housebuilder… link |
| CBRE UK | Alzheimer's Society | Neurological and brain | 2024-01 | A | confirmed | CBRE UK press release… link |
| Central Co-op | Samaritans | Mental health | 2024-10 | A | confirmed | Central Co-op / Membership… link |
| Cloudflare | UNICEF Giga | Children, young people and opportunity | 2025-10 | A | not observable | UK Fundraising (October 2025… link |
| DPD Group UK | Variety, the Children's Charity | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | not observable | Variety, the Children's… link |
| Eden Tyres & Servicing | Breast Cancer Now | Cancer | 2025 | A | not observable | Search summary citing UK… link |
| Freeths | The Care Workers' Charity | Poverty and hardship | 2023-02 | A | not observable | Freeths news link |
| Goughs Solicitors | Home-Start North Wiltshire | Other | not stated | A | not observable | TheBusinessDesk.com (South… link |
| Goughs Solicitors | Wiltshire & Bath Air Ambulance | Hospice, palliative and emergency | 2026-04 | A | not observable | Business Biscuit link |
| Grant Thornton UK LLP | Magic Breakfast and The Baytree… | Children, young people and opportunity | 2024-09 | A | confirmed | Grant Thornton UK -… link |
| Hays plc | EveryYouth | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | not observable | Hays UK - Charity Partnership… link |
| Howden | Maggie's | Cancer | 2024-04 | A | confirmed | Howden Group Holdings -… link |
| Iceland Foods Charitable… | Together for Short Lives | Hospice, palliative and emergency | 2025 | A | plausible | A1 Retail Magazine link |
| Irwin Mitchell | Teenage Cancer Trust, Maggie's… | Multiple causes (a slate) | 2023-03 | A | confirmed | Irwin Mitchell newsroom link |
| KPMG UK | Marie Curie | Hospice, palliative and emergency | not stated | A | confirmed | KPMG UK press release link |
| Lenovo (via Big Issue Invest) | Big Issue Invest investee… | Poverty and hardship | 2025-10 | A | plausible | UK Fundraising (October 2025… link |
| Lloyds Banking Group | Crisis | Homelessness | not stated | A | not observable | Lloyds Banking Group press… link |
| Lockton | Together for Short Lives | Hospice, palliative and emergency | 2025-04 | A | confirmed | Lockton news & insights link |
| Marks & Spencer | YoungMinds | Mental health | 2023 | A | not observable | Marks & Spencer corporate site link |
| Marsh (Marsh McLennan) | Business in the Community, The… | Multiple causes (a slate) | not stated | A | plausible | Marsh - Partner Charities link |
| Morrisons | Marie Curie | Hospice, palliative and emergency | 2024-11 | A | plausible | UK Fundraising / ehospice /… link |
| NatWest Group (Northern Ireland)… | Northern Ireland Children's… | Hospice, palliative and emergency | not stated | A | not observable | NatWest Group news link |
| NatWest Group (Scotland) | Children's Hospices Across… | Hospice, palliative and emergency | not stated | A | not observable | NatWest Group - Our support… link |
| Nationwide Building Society | Fairer Futures consortium… | Multiple causes (a slate) | 2024-06 | A | not observable | Nationwide - Fairer Futures… link |
| Network Rail | The Tree Council | Environment | 2025 | A | not observable | Search summary citing UK… link |
| PA Consulting | Catch22, Helena Kennedy… | Multiple causes (a slate) | not stated | A | not observable | Consultancy.uk link |
| Persimmon Homes West Scotland | The Beatson Cancer Charity | Cancer | 2025 | A | plausible | Persimmon Homes corporate news link |
| RS Group | SolarAid | Environment | 2025-10 | A | not observable | UK Fundraising (October 2025… link |
| RSM UK | Anthony Nolan | Cancer | not stated | A | plausible | RSM UK Foundation - Our… link |
| Royal Mail | British Heart Foundation | Heart and circulatory | 2023-01 | A | confirmed | Royal Mail Group careers site link |
| Russell Hobbs | Action Against Hunger | Poverty and hardship | 2025-11 | A | not observable | UK Fundraising (November 2025… link |
| Russell Scanlan | Trent Bridge Community Trust | Community and international | not stated | A | not observable | Love Business East Midlands link |
| Sainsbury's | Royal British Legion (Poppy… | Armed forces | not stated | A | not observable | UK Fundraising (November 2025… link |
| Santander UK | The King's Trust | Children, young people and opportunity | 2025-07 | A | not observable | Santander UK press release link |
| Savills (Cardiff office) | The Wallich | Homelessness | 2026-04 | A | plausible | Business News Wales link |
| TalkTalk | Charity of the Year programme… | Multiple causes (a slate) | not stated | A | confirmed | TalkTalk Group link |
| Taylor Wimpey | Every Youth (formerly End Youth… | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | plausible | Taylor Wimpey corporate site link |
| Vistry Group | SSAFA (the Armed Forces charity) | Armed forces | 2024 | A | plausible | SSAFA / Cobseo link |
| Whitbread (Premier Inn) | Great Ormond Street Hospital… | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | not observable | Whitbread PLC link |
| Yorkshire Building Society | FareShare | Children, young people and opportunity | not stated | A | confirmed | Wakefield Express link |
| Aldi UK | Teenage Cancer Trust | Cancer | 2017-01 | B | not observable | Aldi UK / SportsAid and Aldi… link |
| British Airways | Comic Relief (Flying Start) | Children, young people and opportunity | 2010 | B | not observable | Comic Relief link |
| GSK | Save the Children | Children, young people and opportunity | 2013 | B | not observable | Save the Children UK link |
| J D Wetherspoon | Young Lives vs Cancer (formerly… | Cancer | 2002 | B | not observable | Morning Advertiser / Young… link |
| Lidl GB | NSPCC (Childline) | Mental health | 2017 | B | not observable | UK Fundraising / Grocery… link |
| McDonald's UK | Ronald McDonald House Charities UK | Children, young people and opportunity | 1989 | B | plausible | McDonald's Corporate link |
| Superdrug and Savers | Marie Curie | Hospice, palliative and emergency | 2013 | B | not observable | UK Fundraising (October 2025… link |
| Tesco | Cancer Research UK, British Heart… | Multiple causes (a slate) | 2018-01 | B | not observable | Civil Society / Cancer… link |
| Toolstation | Macmillan Cancer Support | Cancer | 2020 | B | not observable | Search summary citing… link |
| Walker Morris | Candlelighters | Cancer | 2022-12 | B | confirmed | Walker Morris news link |
| easyJet | UNICEF | Children, young people and opportunity | 2012 | B | not observable | UNICEF partnerships page link |
| Company | Charity | Why it was excluded |
|---|---|---|
| Barclays | Trussell (Trussell Trust) | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| NatWest Group (Northern Ireland) | Air Ambulance Northern Ireland | a programme or service partnership, not a Charity of the Year |
| Buro Happold | CARE International UK | a funding or grant relationship, not a Charity of the Year |
| Slaughter and May | upReach | a programme or service partnership, not a Charity of the Year |
| RSM UK | Woodland Trust | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| RSM UK | Leadership Through Sport &… | a programme or service partnership, not a Charity of the Year |
| RSM UK | British Red Cross | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Tesco Mobile | Trussell | a programme or service partnership, not a Charity of the Year |
| Iceland Foods Charitable… | Campaign Against Living Miserably… | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Iceland Foods Charitable… | Surfers Against Sewage | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Asda | Breast Cancer Now and CoppaFeel!… | cause-related marketing on a product, not employee fundraising |
| Boots UK | The Hygiene Bank | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Cardfactory | Macmillan Cancer Support | cause-related marketing on a product, not employee fundraising |
| McDonald's UK | BBC Children in Need | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Greggs | Children's Cancer North | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Barratt Foundation (Barratt… | OnSide | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Bellway | Variety, the Children's Charity | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Persimmon West Scotland | Killie Community (Kilmarnock FC… | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Travis Perkins plc | Lighthouse Construction Industry… | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| National Express | Royal British Legion | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Stagecoach | Age UK | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| easyJet | NOAH Enterprise | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| PureGym | British Heart Foundation | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
| Vodafone Foundation (Vodafone UK) | Save the Children | the source describes no employee fundraising or volunteering and never calls it a Charity… |
Appendix C: published company criteria, extracted
| Company | Window and closing date | NEXT WINDOW | Eligibility, in the company's own words | The thematic gate, where one is published | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deutsche Bank | Employee nomination opens 11 May; direct applications open 22 May; deadline 30 June 23:59; shortlist announced w/c 28 Aug; interviews w/c 11 Sept; winner informed w/c 6 Nov; new 2-year partnership starts 1 Jan (cycle shown is for the 2024-25 CotY, applications year 2023) closed 2023-06-30 | around 11 May 2027 Opens around 11 May each year. Printed for completeness only: this charity is excluded twice on the published rules. | Be a stand-alone charity with their own UK registered charity number; reaching beneficiaries in the UK; annual income between GBP 2m and GBP 20m (based on 2021/2022 accounts); not be a religious or animal welfare charity; never have been a Deutsche Bank CotY partner previously; be organisationally ready for a corporate partnership of this size and scale; be able to provide one full-time London-based resource to sit within the Deutsche Bank CSR team for the duration of the partnership, alongside administrative support resource to the programme | Charities should ensure their application demonstrates how their work has a direct link to addressing vulnerability to reduce social and economic inequality in the UK. The pack adds that it is looking for charities with a cross-sectional focus on projects in areas such as education, health, empowerment, social inclusion and employment access. | application page link |
| Societe Generale (UK) | Stage 1 Expression of Interest open 6 May to 20 June 2025; outcome by 11 July 2025; Stage 2 full application due 29 Aug 2025; outcome by 3 Oct 2025; Stage 3 panel meetings w/c 3 Nov 2025; Stage 4 staff vote Feb 2026; partnership starts March 2026 for a 5-year term closed 2025-06-20 | 2030 or 2031 The partnership just awarded runs five years from March 2026. | Be registered with the UK Charity Commission; not have a political or religious purpose or affiliation; have annual voluntary income of between GBP 4.5 million and GBP 25 million; be registered, or happy to register, with the Charities Aid Foundation; have prior corporate volunteering experience with opportunities available from day one; offer skills-led volunteering opportunities; provide a dedicated account manager who covers no more than 2 to 3 corporate partnerships | Funding must support work, either a specific project or covering core costs, that improves employability prospects for people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. | application page link |
| Michelmores (law firm) | Applications close 9 January 2026 for a partnership period of 1 May 2026 to 30 April 2029 closed 2026-01-09 | late 2028 The term just awarded runs to 30 April 2029, so the next call is unlikely before late 2028. | align with our culture and values; have a strong local presence; demonstrate meaningful, measurable impact | none published | application page link |
| JCP Solicitors | Nominations must be received by January of each calendar year; no day is published closed 2027-01-31 | January 2027 Nominations close in January each year, BUT the page requires a prior relationship with a member of the firm and says cold applications are not accepted. A date to act on only if a relationship exists first. | Your charity must be based in Wales or have a Welsh branch operating out of one of our regions. Your charity must have been established for at least 5 years. You must have a prior relationship with a member of our team to be nominated. We apologise that we do not accept cold applications. | none published | application page link |
| TCS London Marathon (London Marathon Events) | Applications for the 2028 Charity of the Year closed May 2026 (title runs for 12 months with additional benefits through 2031) closed 2026-05-31 | spring 2027 Runs annually for the year three years ahead, so the 2029 window follows the 2028 one that closed in May 2026. The binding rule is evidence of stewarding 100 or more participants. | Be a UK-registered charity. Show ability to fundraise at least GBP 1 million from the COTY partnership, based on the 250 charity places provided for 2028, plus 50 entries in 2029, 25 in 2030 and 10 in 2031, all charged at ballot price. Have evidence of successful stewardship of a minimum of 100 participants either in a previous London Marathon or another mass participation event. | none published | application page link |
| Slater and Gordon (law firm) | Applications opened 8 December 2025; closing date 30 January 2026; winner (Royal Osteoporosis Society) announced for 2026 closed 2026-01-30 | December 2026 Opens in December each year and closed 30 January in 2026. The nearest live window. | Applications are invited from charities of all sizes, from organisations that focus on physical and mental wellbeing or provide essential support and services to individuals who have experienced an injury, illness, personal trauma or have a disability | none published | application page link |
| BIA (Bio-Industry Association) | Applications for the BIA's 2027 Charity Partnership of the Year, closing 6 September 2026 closed 2026-09-06 | around 1 September 2027 Deadline falls in early September each year; the 2027 cycle closed 6 September 2026. This is the closest fit of any published route, so it is the date that matters most. | Be based in the UK; be properly constituted and compliant with all areas of charity law, for example filing proper accounts on time; be actively supporting an area of medical research of interest to at least one of the BIA's corporate members; be, or become, a member of the Association of Medical Research Charities; not have received support from the BIA in the past five years. Applicants are also asked to state how much they have spent on biomedical research in the UK in the last three years as a share of overall income, and to propose a patient advocate speaker | none published | application page link |
The thematic gate column is the correction that mattered most in this study's review. Both banks publish a second rule, beneath the eligibility bullets, about the KIND of work they fund. For a funder of laboratory research each gate is a harder exclusion than the income band, and the first pass of this study recorded neither.
Appendix D: the peer benchmark
31 charities: the neurological cause peers and the medical research comparators. 18 publish a Charity of the Year proposition and 2 publish a named corporate contact.
| Charity | Income | Corporate page | COTY offer | Named contact | Impact evidence | Named partners |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Comparison charity 1 link | £8.57m | yes | yes | yes | some | 3 |
| Comparison charity 2 link | not read | yes | yes | no | strong | 6 |
| Comparison charity 3 | not read | no | not observable | no | none | 0 |
| Comparison charity 4 link | not read | yes | yes | no | some | 2 |
| Comparison charity 5 link | £779,260 | yes | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 6 link | not read | yes | yes | no | some | 1 |
| Comparison charity 7 link | not read | yes | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 8 link | not read | yes | yes | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 9 link | £57m | yes | not observable | no | strong | 5 |
| Comparison charity 10 link | £116.80m | yes | yes | no | some | 3 |
| Comparison charity 11 link | £48.57m | yes | yes | no | some | 3 |
| Comparison charity 12 link | not read | yes | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 13 link | £31.40m | yes | yes | no | some | 3 |
| Comparison charity 14 link | £40.79m | yes | yes | yes | some | 4 |
| Comparison charity 15 link | not read | yes | yes | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 16 link | £1.31m | yes | yes | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 17 link | not read | yes | yes | no | none | 0 |
| Comparison charity 18 | £4.10m | no | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 19 link | not read | yes | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 20 link | £735m | yes | yes | no | strong | 4 |
| Comparison charity 21 link | £181m | yes | yes | no | strong | 5 |
| Comparison charity 22 link | £18.46m | yes | not observable | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 23 link | not read | yes | not observable | no | none | 0 |
| Comparison charity 24 link | not read | yes | yes | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 25 link | £27.93m | yes | not observable | no | some | 1 |
| Comparison charity 26 link | not read | yes | not observable | no | none | 2 |
| Comparison charity 27 link | not read | yes | yes | no | none | 2 |
| Comparison charity 28 link | £14.77m | yes | yes | no | strong | 3 |
| Comparison charity 29 link | £14.98m | yes | not observable | no | none | 0 |
| Comparison charity 30 link | not read | yes | no | no | none | 1 |
| Comparison charity 31 link | £140.40m | yes | yes | no | strong | 4 |
Appendix E: the coding framework
Two fixed taxonomies and three coded fields, all applied by code so that the same wording always produces the same category. The code is code_dataset.py and targets.py in the working folder.
| Coded field | Values | How it is decided |
|---|---|---|
| Sector group | 20 sectors | Regular expression match on the source's own sector words |
| Cause group | 16 causes | Regular expression match on cause and charity name; a slate is never given a single cause |
| Cohort | A chosen in period, B running but chosen earlier | The announcement date, with a bare year treated as the whole year |
| Model | single or slate | Whether the company names more than one charity at once |
| Driver grade | confirmed, strongly indicated, plausible, not observable, alternative | What the source says about WHY, never what the researcher believes |
| Suitability tier | 1, 2, 3 | Four added rules, printed under the closing table |
Appendix F: the questions that would have been asked
This study is documentary and holds no interviews, so 6 questions remain open. Each would change the analysis materially, and each is listed so a reader can see exactly where the study is working without it.
- What is corporate income today, as a separate line, and what was it three years ago?
- Which companies have been approached, and what did each of them say?
- Does the firm partnership continue into 2027? It is titled Charity of the Year 2025 and this study has treated it as current. If it has ended, renewing it outranks every one of the 70 companies in the closing table, because the cheapest partnership to win is the one already held.
- What activities ran alongside the £, and which of them would a second company copy?
- Who among the trustees, staff and major donors works at, or has worked at, a UK employer of more than 200 people?
- Would the funded researchers host company visits, and on what terms?
Appendix J: limitations and data quality log
Every gap each research lane recorded, in its own words, because a study that hides its gaps cannot be checked.
The market and mechanics
- Could not find a current, directly-sourced total for UK payroll giving (amount donated, number of employee donors) for the 2025/26 tax year. gov.uk's UK charity tax relief statistics page (updated 1 July 2026) hosts the figures only inside a PDF/ODS download that could not be retrieved via web fetch: not observable.
- Could not find a published figure for what share or percentage of UK companies offer match funding schemes. Multiple guides explain how match funding works but none gave a market-wide prevalence statistic: not observable.
- Could not find the 2026 edition of the NCVO UK Civil Society Almanac; NCVO delayed it, so the most current corporate-income breakdown available is from the 2024 edition, covering FY2021/22 data: not observable for current corporate share of charity income.
- Could not find published data on how many charities typically apply for a single company's Charity of the Year slot, or an average application-to-win conversion rate. Companies that mention shortlisting (TalkTalk, London Marathon Events, University of Reading) do not disclose applicant volumes: not observable.
- Could not find a specific published figure for the average cost, in pounds or staff hours, a charity spends servicing a Charity of the Year partnership: not observable.
- Could not find a Business in the Community (BITC) corporate-giving report with its own headline UK total. Search results returned only third-party citations of BITC-adjacent data (Reach Volunteering, via Plinth) rather than a primary BITC source page: not observable.
- Two Third Sector articles central to the risks and definition topics (staff-vote analysis and the 'sufficiently long' and 'had its day' debates) returned HTTP 403 on direct fetch; facts drawn from them rely on search-result summaries rather than full-text verification, so they are marked medium confidence.
The routes in
- There is no single UK-wide fixed calendar for Charity of the Year selection; timing is set independently by each company and varies by several months even among the examples found here. Confidence in the calendar entries above is medium: each data point is a fact about one named company, but generalising a 'typical month' across the whole market is an inference from a small sample of large/mid corporates that happen…
- The full text of CIOF's 'Targeting Charity of the Year Partnerships: A Comprehensive Guide' PDF and its 'How to secure a Charity of the Year partnership' guide could not be retrieved (404 on the PDF; the HTML page is an index only, not the guide content); this study instead relies on a 2018 CIOF-published article by Darnell Consulting and on independent 2025/2026 survey research (Rachel H Consulting/Wonder…
- Slater and Gordon's and BIA's own charity-of-the-year application pages could not be fetched directly (TLS certificate errors on both), so their entries in open routes rely on secondary reporting (UK Fundraising for Slater and Gordon; search-result synthesis of the BIA page for BIA) and are marked medium/low confidence.
- No source found gives a single authoritative figure for the average value of non-cash contributions (volunteering days, pro bono, gifts in kind) across the market; the only concrete non-cash data points are Societe Generale's 24 paid volunteering/fundraising hours per staff member per year and its roughly 45% match-funding share of employee-raised funds - both single-company data points, not sector averages.
- A current (2026) total for M&S Sparks charity donations could not be independently verified via a primary source; the only source directly fetched and dated is the 2022 press release citing £10 million cumulative since launch. A higher, more recent cumulative figure (circa £19-20m) appeared in unverified secondary summaries and was excluded from value facts on that basis.
- This lane found strong sourcing for banking, legal and large/mid-market retail employers; sourcing for very small UK employers (under 50 staff) running an open, published Charity of the Year application route specifically (as opposed to ad hoc small-business giving) is thin - the Business Charity Awards results page is the best available proxy for small/mid-sized employer value, not for their application processes.
The peer benchmark
- Brain Tumour Support: could not confirm a registered charity number or a distinct corporate-partnerships page in this pass; needs a dedicated search of braintumoursupport.co.uk.
- Epilepsy Action FY2024 income is inconsistent across search snippets (figures of approximately GBP 3.21m and GBP 3.62m both appeared); needs direct confirmation from the Charity Commission filing.
- Headway's income figure returned by search (a garbled 'annual revenue was $6.5 million in 2026') is not trustworthy and was excluded; needs a direct Charity Commission or annual-report check.
- No total-income figure was confirmed for: Epilepsy Society, MS Society, Meningitis Now, Child Brain Injury Trust, Different Strokes, Kidney Research UK, Versus Arthritis, Bowel Research UK, Prostate Cancer UK, LifeArc.
- Alzheimer's Society (GBP 116.8m) and Stroke Association (GBP 31.4m) figures captured are fundraising income for 2024-25, not necessarily confirmed total charity income; should be cross-checked against the Charity Commission accounts filing.
- Bowel Research UK (charity 1186061, in this brief) is a different organisation from Bowel Cancer UK, which is the charity the Bioindustry Association (BIA) named its 2023 charity partner; do not attribute that BIA partnership to Bowel Research UK.
- LifeArc is an endowed medical-research funder rather than a public-fundraising charity; it has no visible Charity of the Year or corporate-donor programme, so it is a weak comparator for a corporate-partnerships benchmark despite being on the comparator list.
- Cure Parkinson's has no visible corporate Charity of the Year proposition; its public partnership activity found in this pass was a research-collaboration workshop with the MS Society, not corporate fundraising.
- The Brain Tumour Charity's named corporate-partnerships contact email did not render cleanly from the fetched page (shown as a placeholder); only the phone number (01252 749043) is confirmed.
- No dedicated corporate-partnerships or named-contact page was confirmed for: Spinal Injuries Association, Brainstrust (beyond the 2019 Siemens Healthineers link), Epilepsy Society.
- Pre-2023 Charity of the Year links excluded from the main answer but found in this pass, for context: Siemens Healthineers x Brainstrust (2019), Bioindustry Association x Versus Arthritis (2020), Bioindustry Association x Kidney Research UK (until 2022), Pegasus Group x Motor Neurone Disease Association (2022), Fletchers x Asthma + Lung UK (2022).
- Sky Bet's 'BHF Corporate Partner of the Year' is an award BHF gives to a partner, not Sky Bet naming BHF as its own Charity of the Year; kept distinct in the data to avoid miscounting it as a company-chosen COTY.
- Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity is a broad children's-hospital charity, not a brain/neurological/medical-research-specific cause; included per the study brief's comparator list but its COTY wins (Funding Circle, Morgan Stanley, Barton Partnership) are not neurology-specific.
The subject charity
- LinkedIn company-page follower count could not be verified because LinkedIn requires an authenticated login to view company pages; the slug the charity's own website resolves to a sign-up wall (suggesting the page exists) but no follower number was obtainable.
- No standalone payroll-giving landing page or a named, downloadable employee fundraising pack (PDF/toolkit) was found; both are only described in short paragraphs on the general corporate partnerships page.
- Reserves figures for FYE 2021, 2022 and 2023 are calculated from the Charity Commission register's own rounded assets-and-liabilities tables (own-use assets + long-term investments + other assets - total liabilities), not read directly from those years' signed accounts, since only the FY2025 accounts PDF (with FY2024 comparative) was opened in full for this lane.
- Employee headcount and pay-band detail (7 employees; 2 in the GBP 60k-70k band, 1 in the GBP 90k-100k band) is available only for the current (FY2025) filing on the Charity Commission register; year-by-year historical headcounts were not obtained.
- The charity's own website already lists an "Annual Review 2025/26" and "Accounts 2025/26" document pair (published ahead of this brief); these were not opened because they fall outside the FYE 2025-03-31 period this brief was scoped to verify, and because the Charity Commission register's most recent received filing as of 2026-09-16 remains the year ended 31 March 2025 (received 20 August 2025) -- so the newer…
- WebSearch tool quota was exhausted partway through this research session (shared session-wide budget), so remaining lookups (e.g. further corroboration of LinkedIn presence, wider press coverage of the firm partnership) relied on direct site navigation and WebFetch only.
Appendix K: the index coverage map
The full Charity of the Year research index, with the chapter that answers each part and an honest mark where the evidence is thin or missing. Nothing in the index was dropped silently.
| Index | Section | Answered in | Status | Where the evidence is thin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preliminary | Title page | Cover | answered | |
| Preliminary | Executive summary | Read this first, merged with the answers | answered | Held as ONE section, not two. A document that leads with the answer cannot also carry a summary of the answers without printing the same page twice. |
| Preliminary | Table of contents | Contents | answered | |
| Preliminary | List of tables and figures | Contents | partly answered | Every numbered chapter table is listed; appendix tables are referenced by their appendix letter. Of the five figures the index names, company size against cycle length could not be built (size is not published), and CSR themes against cause areas is carried as prose in chapter 7.1 rather than as a table. |
| Preliminary | Confidentiality and terminology note | Before anything else | answered | |
| 1.1 | Background | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.2 | Problem statement | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.3 | Research aim | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.4 | Research objectives | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.5 | Research questions | Read this first; 8.1 carries what the evidence added | answered | |
| 1.6 | Scope and boundaries | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.7 | Importance of the study | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 1.8 | Structure of the report | Chapter 1 | answered | |
| 2.1 | Profile of the NGO | Chapter 2, table 2.1 | answered | |
| 2.2 | Funding model | Chapter 2 | partly answered | Restricted against unrestricted split is not published at the level the index asks for. Statutory funding, trading income and investment income are not separately reported. |
| 2.3 | Corporate partnership history | Chapter 2 | partly answered | Built entirely from public sources. The charity's own records were not available, so a partnership that was never announced would be invisible here. |
| 2.4 | Organisational positioning for COTY | Chapter 2 and chapter 9.1 | answered | |
| 3.1 | Meaning of Charity of the Year | Chapter 3 | answered | |
| 3.2 | Why companies might consider certain charities | Chapter 3 | answered | |
| 3.3 | Other factors affecting selection | Chapter 3, table 3.1 | answered | |
| 3.4 | Analytical model | Chapter 3 | answered | |
| 3.5 | Propositions | Chapter 3, tested in 8.3 | answered | |
| 4.1 | Research approach | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 4.2 | Unit of analysis | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 4.3 | Document sample | Chapter 4.3 and Appendix A | partly answered | Appendix A counts the document CLASSES. The index asks for an inventory naming each document with its date, status and inclusion decision. Appendix B1 does that for the 54 partnerships; the guidance and peer documents are counted, not listed. |
| 4.4 | Inclusion and exclusion criteria | Chapter 4 and Appendix B | answered | |
| 4.5 | Data collection procedure | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 4.6 | Document analysis framework | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 4.7 | Interview boundaries | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 4.8 | Reliability and validation | Chapter 4 | partly answered | A second independent review of ambiguous coding was not possible. The coding is applied by code, which makes it consistent, not necessarily correct. |
| 4.9 | Ethical considerations | Chapter 4 | partly answered | Consent and a right of correction are stated. No consent form exists because the subject study is documentary and holds no interviews. |
| 4.10 | Limitations | Chapter 4 | answered | |
| 5.1 | Corporate data presentation | Chapter 5, tables 5.2 and 5.3 | partly answered | Company size bands could not be filled. Employee counts are published too rarely to band. |
| 5.2 | COTY partnership reconciliation | Chapter 5, table 5.1 | answered | |
| 5.3 | Sector and size analysis | Chapter 5 | partly answered | Sector is complete. Size is proxied by published partnership value, because employee counts are not available. |
| 5.4 | Corporate presentation in COTY materials | Chapter 5.4 and 7.2 | answered | |
| 5.5 | Interpretation | Chapter 5.5 | answered | |
| 6.1 | Company profile table | Chapter 6, table 6.1 and Appendix E | answered | |
| 6.2 | Partnership by partnership analysis | Chapter 6.2 and Appendix B1 | partly answered | Eight case notes are written in full. Every other partnership is printed in Appendix B1 with its cause, cohort, driver grade and source, rather than as prose, because a case note with nothing in it is padding. |
| 6.3 | Application quality analysis | Chapter 6.3, table 6.2 | answered | |
| 6.4 | Cross partnership patterns | Chapter 6.4 | answered | |
| 7.1 | Corporate landscape findings | Chapter 7.1 | answered | |
| 7.2 | Company policy findings | Chapter 7.2, table 7.1 | answered | |
| 7.3 | Partnership findings | Chapter 7.3 | answered | |
| 7.4 | Evidence of selection drivers | Chapter 7.4 for the counts, Appendix B1 for the per-partnership grade | answered | |
| 7.5 | Alternative explanations | Chapter 7.5, table 7.2 | answered | |
| 7.6 | Negative findings | Chapter 7.6 | answered | |
| 8.1 | Answer to the research questions | Read this first; 8.1 carries what the evidence added | answered | |
| 8.2 | Interpretation of selection drivers | Chapter 8.2 | answered | |
| 8.3 | Comparison with the framework | Chapter 8.3 | answered | |
| 8.4 | Charity fit against company priorities | Chapter 8.4 | answered | |
| 8.5 | Market implications | Chapter 8.5 | answered | |
| 9.1 | Improve COTY positioning | Chapter 9.1, the scorecard | partly answered | The scorecard diagnoses every gap and names the step that closes each. It does not write the one-page value proposition itself, which would be this study drafting the charity’s words. |
| 9.2 | Align outreach with company type | Chapter 9.2, table 9.2 | partly answered | The Owner names six emphases: local impact, national cause leadership, an innovation or AI angle, employee wellbeing, sustainability, and skills-based volunteering. This study organises by MECHANISM instead, because 6.4 found sector does not predict cause. A deliberate departure, declared here. |
| 9.3 | Strengthen the pitch narrative | Chapter 9.3 | answered | |
| 9.4 | Improve internal tracking | Chapter 9.4, table 9.4 | partly answered | Ten fields are shipped against the nine the index names. Two of those nine are missing: CSR priorities, and Feedback. Both belong in the register before it is used. |
| 9.5 | Evidence review cycle | Chapter 9.5 | answered | |
| 10 | Conclusion | Chapter 10 | answered | |
| Refs | References | References | answered | |
| A | Document inventory | Appendix A | answered | |
| B | COTY partnership dataset | Appendix B1 for the dataset, B2 for the exclusions | answered | |
| C | Company policy extraction table | Appendix C | answered | |
| D | Sector and size analysis sheets | Chapter 5.3 and tables 5.2 to 5.4; Appendix D carries the peer benchmark | partly answered | The sector analysis is in chapter 5, not in an appendix sheet. Size sheets could not be built at all, for the reason given at 5.1, so this is a partial answer in two different ways. |
| E | Coding framework | Appendix E | answered | |
| F | NGO clarification questions | Appendix F | declared gap | The study is documentary and no interviews were held, so the six questions that would materially change the analysis are listed in the open instead. |
| G | Consent and confidentiality form | Not applicable | declared gap | No confidential material was used, so there is nothing to consent to. Stated openly rather than dropped. |
| H | Timeline of announcements and outreach | Chapter 5.4 and Appendix B | partly answered | The announcement timeline is in the dataset. There is no outreach timeline, because no outreach has taken place. |
| I | Anonymisation key | Not applicable | declared gap | Nothing was anonymised, because everything used is public. |
| J | Limitations and data quality log | Appendix J | answered | |
| K | Index coverage map | Appendix K, this table | answered |
Every numbered chapter table appears in the list of tables at the front. Appendix tables are referenced by their appendix letter instead of being numbered.
53 answered, 14 partly answered, 3 declared as gaps, out of 70. The three gaps share one cause: the study is documentary, so nothing confidential was handled and there was no interview to consent to. Each is declared here rather than left as a silent absence.
8
This edition
About this edition
What was removed, and what was not
Why this page existsA shared study is read by people who did not commission it. This page tells them exactly what was taken out, so the rest can be read at face value.
how to read this document
This is a real Charity of the Year targeting study, written in September 2026 about a real UK charity, from public evidence only. It is shared to show the method. The study is written to its subject, so "this charity" throughout means the organisation it was written about. To protect that organisation, six kinds of change were made, and nothing else:
- Names became roles and generic labels. The subject is "the charity"; the companies it already has a relationship with are their trade, such as "the firm" and "a sports injury foundation"; its people are their roles; its offices, its laboratories and the cities they sit in are generic.
- The comparison charities are numbered 1 upwards, consistently, in the order they first appear.
- Every figure from the charity's own accounts and its own surfaces is struck out, marked £, no. or date where it stood. Figures that remain are the companies' own published rules, the sector research this study cites, and this study's own counts and scores, unaltered.
- Quotations from the charity's own documents are withheld, marked quote, and paraphrased only where the argument needs them.
- Every external link is removed, marked link, because links identify. In the full study every claim carries its source on the line beneath it, with a live link where the source is public, so the reader can check any line without us in the room. The source lines survive here; the links do not.
- One passage is omitted outright and marked where it stood: the closing table, which ranks every company this study assessed against this charity. It was built for the charity and it stays with the charity.
What was not changed. No remaining number was rounded or altered, no sentence was added to the analysis, and the findings, scores, verdicts and limitations are exactly as they stand in the full study. Where a figure had to go it was removed, not disguised.
What is deliberately still here. The market. Every company, partnership, published rule and eligibility quotation that belongs to the public record is named as its owner publishes it, because that evidence IS the method and a study with its evidence taken out proves nothing. The subject's broad cause area therefore stays legible; which charity it is does not.