Societe Generale 2026+ Charity Partner Application Process: FAQs

Eligibility Criteria 

Why has the partner’s annual voluntary income threshold been set as £4.5m to £25m? Is there any flexibility on these limits?  

We want to be sensible and sustainable in who and what we’re funding. The £4.5m voluntary income threshold exists to try to ensure our charity partner is not overly reliant on our funding, and that any projects we fund don’t necessarily end when our partnership does. We want our funding to fit into a sustainable pipeline for our partner.  We also recognise the amount of work that goes into a partnership of this nature from both the charity and corporate sides, so we want to ensure there is infrastructure in place to manage it.  

We’ve set the upper limit at £25m as we want to ensure that our partnership and funding is delivering significant impact to the charity and their beneficiaries, as opposed to contributing only a small part to a much larger whole. This is particularly important with regards to being able to deliver a clear and compelling narrative for colleagues to understand what we are achieving together. 

For these reasons, we are unable to offer flexibility on this income threshold. We suggest that charities with annual voluntary income of less than £4.5m take a look at the SG UK Foundation’s recently launched Bright Futures Grants, which may be a more suitable funding route. 

How do you define voluntary income? 

We are referring to any income received by your charity that is, essentially, a freely given gift from donors. This includes: 

1. Donations and gifts from individuals and businesses
2. Legacies 
3. Grants of a general nature which are not conditional on delivering a service or supply of goods 
4. Membership subscriptions and sponsorships where these are donations rather than payment for goods or services 
5. Gift in kind donations for the charity’s own use or distribution and donated services and facilities  

This would not include earned income from the supply of goods or services under contractual arrangements and from performance-related grants. It also does not include income from trading activities and investment income.  

We use the same definition as the Charity Commission.

Can we apply in partnership with other charities (eg. to ensure a greater geographical reach or to get over the £4.5m threshold)? 

We have decided against accepting applications from a consortium or collaboration of smaller or regional charities for this partnership.  There are a few reasons behind this:  

• Practically, it is much simpler to work with just one charity to deliver fundraising and volunteering activities.  We are a very small team, and don’t have capacity for the additional complications of working with more than one organisation.  
• A partnership of this size and type requires significant resource from our charity partner as well, and smaller charities would not have the capacity to provide this.  
• One of the big reasons for bringing our fundraising and YIP delivery together in one partnership is to simplify the narrative around our CSR work.  Staff engagement is a key driver for our CSR work and so we need to be able to easily articulate who we are working with and how. A collaboration of multiple organisations is likely to create complication where we are aiming for clarity.   

Would you consider working with a social enterprise, CIC or other non-profit organisation? 

While we greatly admire the work that many non-profit organisations are doing in the employability and social mobility spaces, this partnership is open to registered UK charities only. 

Are you looking for a charity with local, national, or international reach? 

We are very open to funding work with a national impact, but as our offices are based in London, we need our charity partner to have a presence there.  A key part of the partnership is working together to deliver our Young Influencers Programme, which engages students with our staff at in-person events held at our offices in Canary Wharf. 

We would be open to work or projects with a national reach (England/UK wide) reach, but would not be keen to support anything that is solely focused on other UK nations or regions.  This is because our offices are in London and we have no connections to other parts of the country. 

This partnership will be focused on UK-based charities working with UK beneficiaries. While we would not exclude a charity that had an international arm, our partnership and funding would solely be focused on work in the UK. 

Your KPIs are around the number of people impacted (number in jobs, number of beneficiaries etc). Does this mean that you are looking for a project that reaches a large audience, over one that gives more intensive support to a smaller number?  Do you have an idea of what reach figures should look like? 

Our objectives are to make an impact on each beneficiary and in the community. We are looking to hit a middle ground between quantity and depth of impact.  

In addition, if your project has a specific/niche objective, if it aligns with our overall strategy, we would consider this eligible. For example, a project supporting socially mobile individuals into careers in the tech industry may have only a small number of beneficiaries but would align with our strategy and therefore we would consider it eligible. 

Reach figures are very dependent on what the work/project is that we'd be supporting, but to give a rough idea: 

• The GROW programme that we currently fund has supported over 35 trainees (direct beneficiaries) to date, and we would ideally have a larger reach than this. 
• The Young Influencers Programme has supported over 200 students (direct beneficiaries) in the last 4 years (approx. 70 a year now) and we would not want to go lower than this. 

It’s important that we have real life stories of those impacted by our partnership to support our communications around projects both internally and externally, including impact reporting. 

Are you looking for a new project to fund, or is one already in existence eligible to apply? Do you want to be the sole funders of a project or are you happy to be one of the funders? What if we have another corporate partner from Financial Services? 

Any project that we fund will be considered new to the Bank as this is a new partnership. There are benefits to working on a project that is new to our charity partner, as being the first to do it is exciting and helps engage staff. However, there are also benefits to working on an existing project where the concept and impacts are known and therefore more reliable. We are open to either.  

From a funding perspective, we are also open to being one of a few key funders on a project but would want to know in advance how SG would feature within the profile of other funders and who they are. We would not want to be part of a project involving other financial services organisations. We currently run other collaborative charity projects with other businesses, but with this partnership we are also looking to raise awareness of our own brand and want to showcase our impact as a business.  

A lot of your existing programmes and previous partnerships focus on education and employment with young people, is it okay for charities to apply who work with adults?  

Several of our existing activities are employability skills related programmes, working with young people of school age. However, we also have a number of programmes that seek to boost employment prospects regardless of age, in recognition that being unemployed or under-employed is not unique to young people. 

We would be open to applications from charities that work with adults as well as young people, but the focus of the Young Influencers Programme must be on young people in Year 10-13.  

Can you expand on what you mean by charities with a religious or political purpose or affiliation? 

Our global code of conduct states that we cannot work with charities that have a political or religious purpose or affiliation. This is aligned with the guidance for the SG UK Foundation’s new Bright Futures initiative, which only excludes charities with a religious affiliation where ‘their mission or most of their activities or services promotes the furtherance of the religion or aims to benefit members of that faith only.” 

The Young Influencers Programme

You are keen for your charity partner to help shape the Young Influencers Programme.  Are there set parameters around what the programme should look like? 

We do have some fixed criteria that we know any future version of YIP must meet: 

Must work with young people in year 10-13 who are from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. 

• Must have multiple opportunities for large numbers of staff to volunteer in person at our offices and share their skills and experiences. 
• Must have solid impact measurement built in and be able to feed into our KPIs on improving employability prospects. 
• Must be able to support our talent pipeline in some way. 
• Must be a cyclical programme with multiple cohorts, not just one-off engagement with young people. 
• Must be ready to launch a pilot in Autumn Term 2026. 

We also have a few 'nice to haves' but these are not dealbreakers: 

• Have a range of volunteering types (eg. Short term, long term, individual, mass, virtual) 
• Support early careers pipeline and link to work experience programme 
• Have volunteering opportunities tailored for staff at different levels (eg. We currently have a small number of opportunities for senior people to be judges). 

What is ELBA’s current role in the delivery of the Young Influencers Programme?  What exactly are you expecting the new charity partner to do with respect to YIP? 

ELBA’s current role as our YIP delivery partner encompasses the following: 

1. Recruit and liaise with the schools – we work with three local partner schools on YIP, and ELBA hold those relationship.  They liaise directly with the teachers to arrange the workshop dates, ensure students are recruited who meet the criteria, get attendee lists, etc. 
2. Facilitate the workshops – ELBA supports with the updating of the workshop resources and content (in collaboration with SG) and also have a member of staff who delivers the workshops.  SG volunteers work closely with students on tables, supporting them with the workshop activities.  This model can be likened to ELBA in the teacher position and SG volunteers as teaching assistants.  
3. Manage impact reporting – ELBA manage all of the impact reporting, working closely with us to design the evaluation framework.  The current model is a baseline, midpoint and endpoint survey with the young people as well as a teacher endpoint survey.  ELBA analyse this data and create an annual impact report.  Volunteer evaluations are managed entirely by SG. 

We would want our next charity partner to take on the same level of responsibility for the programme. 

At this stage we don’t have a particularly firm idea of what the next iteration of YIP should look like. We want to work with our charity partner to develop that, and acknowledge that a lot of amazing charities have strong delivery models already.  We don’t need our partner to come in and simply take over what we’re currently doing – we want to meet in the middle, bringing the best of our existing content while also learning from and adapting to the new charity. 

Are the running costs of the Young Influencers Programme funded separately to the money raised as part of the charity partnership, or do these need to be taken into account when creating a budget? 

There is no additional funding beyond the £40,000 annual financial commitment from the business and approximately £250,000 - £300,000 annually from staff fundraising, other business donations and matched funding.  Charities should take all running costs for YIP delivery into account when planning a budget. 

Please note, we are not asking for a budget in Stage 1 to keep the amount of charity time spent at a minimum.

Does the eligibility criteria of YIP (Years 10-13 and from a socially disadvantaged background) have to match the beneficiary group of the project in receipt of fundraising? 

No, the beneficiary age group of YIP does not have to the same beneficiary group supported by the fundraising (whether that is a specific project or the core work of the organisation) but both groups will need to be people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.  NB. The YIP beneficiary group for the next partner is being expanded to include Years 10-13 (was previously Years 12-13). 

How much of the delivery of YIP needs to be delivered at SG offices? 

It is much easier to recruit volunteers when events are held in the office. In the current format we do run about 30% of activities in schools, and we tend to have fewer volunteers for these sessions due to demands on staff time.

We want to make it as easy as possible for our staff to volunteer on this partnership, so our preference is for most of the YIP delivery to continue to be held in our offices.  If the programme is delivered with schools this also has the advantage of hitting Gatsby Benchmark 6 and giving young people experiences of workplaces.  

Would you like all staff volunteering to be via the Young Influencers Programme, or could we engage your staff via other volunteering projects?  Would there be an additional donation for these volunteering activities? 

While YIP is our flagship volunteering programme we would definitely be open to SG staff engaging with our charity partner via other volunteering projects (these would not necessarily need to be associated with the project we are funding).  The advantage of this is that it could offer different types of volunteering activities to engage staff with different interests. We would not expect to be paying an additional donation for any non-YIP volunteering activities with our next partner – this would instead be included in the scope of the partnership. 

We will continue to run separate volunteering initiatives outside of this charity partnership, so providing additional volunteering is not crucial.  Our one stipulation is that any volunteering is actually of real use to the charity, and not something that has been manufactured solely to engage staff. 

Application Process 

As a charity we need to conduct due diligence on potential funders, are you happy for this to take place?  

Yes, of course. Any questions you ask will not affect your application in any way and we understand the needs/requirements of many charities to conduct this.  

Are we able to submit any further materials such as case studies and videos?  

At the application stage we will only accept written submissions. However, you are welcome to use images and infographics to help bring your application to life.  

If we have contacts at SG, can we approach them to help promote our charity?  

We have designed our staff vote stage to be completely blind.  By ‘blind vote’ we mean that our staff will not know the names of the charities, we will not invite them to present or canvas our staff, and highly discourage charities paying for targeted LinkedIn campaigns or similar.  Staff will be presented with the merits of the projects/programmes they will support, and vote based on that information alone.  

In line with this approach, we ask that charities who have contacts within SG do not approach them to help promote on their behalf.  We want to ensure our charity partner is selected on merit alone, rather than the networks it may have.  

Partnership Management 

Do we need to provide a dedicated account or partnership manager?  

We recommend an account/partnership manager works on the account on a full capacity basis, or one manager and one junior on the account whilst working with up to one other large partnership.  

This would be in addition to anyone involved in the delivery aspect of any corporate volunteering offer. For the Young Influencers Programme, we recommend having a delivery manager who is able to dedicate an average of 2 days a week.  

We make this recommendation based on guidance from our previous charity partners.  On the Shelter partnership our account manager works very closely with:  

• Challenges team to help with event sign ups, stewardship and thanking   
• Services team to provide regular reports on impact of funding / project progress  
• Senior Leadership for approximately up to four times per year for events: e.g. CSR drinks and Services visits.  

The partnership requires an account manager, would it be acceptable to recruit a member of staff to manage the partnership in the lead time between announcing the partnership and the start date?   

Yes, this would be possible, please be assured that this would not form a part of our partner selection process. Our preference would be that the new role was recruited from existing staff to ensure the person is already familiar with the charity, and ideally, with managing partnerships. However, if it is not feasible to hire internally, we would expect the new staff member to have good experience of corporate account management.  

Can we use some of the funds raised to cover the costs associated with an account manager?  

Our priority is to fund an exciting project or core work that aligns with our business.  We recognise that for you to deliver a project, there will be overhead costs associated, such as an account manager and delivery manager for the Young Influencers Programme. We therefore understand that some funds will need to be spent in this way but would like to receive this information up front, including a proposed split of funds if possible.   

What senior stakeholder engagement do you anticipate needing from charities?  

With previous partnerships we have set up meetings between the charity CEO and our UK CEO to help facilitate C-Suite level engagement and identify new opportunities to collaborate and expand partnerships. Additionally, our management team have been invited to key events held by the charity giving them an opportunity to learn more about the partnership but also network with peers. This engagement is not essential, but it is something that has worked well for us in the past.  

How would you describe the CSR culture at Societe Generale?  

Our commitment goes beyond just serving our clients. Across all our entities, we take our role in the community seriously. Our team values at SG are Team Spirit, Innovation, Responsibility and Commitment and these are demonstrated through our CSR programmes. 

Our UK staff are made up of a broad range of nationalities and backgrounds, and both our employees and management have a very open and supportive culture. Our team draws on help from a wide range of internal teams and networks and generally people are very approachable and responsive.  There is a strong CSR culture within the organisation with a high proportion of staff making use of their 24 hours of CSR time. 

Engaging Our Staff

What does your annual calendar of fundraising activity look like and how do you expect your charity partner to help shape this? 

We have a well-established annual calendar of varied fundraising activities, which is managed by the CSR team with the support of our charity partner. Our centrally run fundraisers have included team scavenger hunts, static bike challenges, staff auctions and quizzes. We have previously arranged a number of bespoke challenge events for our staff, including a South Downs marathon hike and an office sleep out, and we also ask our charity partner to provide us with challenge event spaces for staff to participate in. Our largest annual fundraiser is our payroll giving campaign, Donate the First, which encourages staff to pledge anywhere from 1 hour to 1 day of their following year’s pay to our charity partner. Additionally, internal teams will often organise their own events such as bake sales. We would expect our charity partner to support and enhance our calendar of fundraising activities, particularly through the addition of any bespoke fundraising products they may have, providing spaces in challenge events and stewarding our staff when taking part in external events.   

What is the expected frequency and scale of staff engagement?   

We ensure that our calendar of activities for staff engagement is balanced in terms of the type and frequency of asks so as not to overload our staff. We aim to schedule our centrally run engagement and awareness-raising activities as spread out evenly throughout the year. We also coordinate our schedule so that fundraising is dialled back at times where volunteering activities are the focus, and vice versa. Scale wise, our largest volunteering and fundraising activities during working hours have engaged 25-30 people at one time from across the bank.  

When you say 'awareness raising' is that raising awareness of the partnership and/or beneficiaries' needs amongst employees?  

It is both as we cannot assume staff will be familiar with the charity, the project or your beneficiaries’ needs. Our staff will not have a full understanding of the challenges faced by many groups. By improving their understanding this then helps to increase their engagement in fundraising as people recognise the need. 

Our Funding 

What is the minimum amount that you will commit to raising for your next charity partner?

The funding that we can offer a charity is split into two streams – a minimum £40,000 annual financial commitment from the business and approximately £250,000-300,000 annually from SG staff fundraising, ad hoc business donations and matching funding from the SG UK Foundation. We do not underwrite our staff fundraising and, while we can only guarantee £40,000 annual commitment from the business, we are confident in our ability to raise £250,000–300,000 a year. We have a strong track record in fundraising as shown by the totals raised for our previous charity partners. For example, our three-year partnership with Young Lives vs. Cancer (2018-2021) raised £1.3m and our five-year partnership with Shelter (2021-2026) is on track to raise £2 million by its conclusion in March 2026. 

How and when are funds likely to be received?  

Funds are donated through several processes. This includes Business Donations (payment of invoices/bank transfers), employee fundraising (JustGiving, or similar fundraising platforms, or through contactless donations – if possible), Give As You Earn (GAYE) through CAF, and from the SG UK Foundation (bank transfers/CAF). Donations come through after events and throughout the year. The largest funds come through in January after our annual Donate the First campaign.  

Does the main project or core work that you want to fund have to link directly to the Young Influencers Programme? 

No, but it can if that’s what works best for your charity.  We definitely do not expect delivery of the Young Influencers Programme to take up all of the funds raised for our charity partner, and the project or core work that we do fund does not need to directly link to it.  Whatever we fund must meet our strategic aim of improving employability prospects for people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds – whether or not it links to YIP is up to you. 

Your KPIs are largely focused around increasing employment opportunities, will SG be offering work experience placements as part of this partnership?  

We have an established summer work experience programme which is successful internally. We aren’t looking for a partner to help us deliver this, but we would be open to beneficiaries of any partnership being able to access placements through our existing structure. This is not a specific requirement but something we would explore with the successful charity if appropriate. 

Are the running costs of the Young Influencers Programme funded separately to the money raised as part of the charity partnership, or do these need to be taken into account when creating a budget? 

There is no additional funding beyond the £40,000 annual financial commitment from the business and approximately £250,000 - £300,000 annually from staff fundraising, other business donations and matched funding.  Charities should take all running costs for YIP delivery into account when planning a budget. 

Please note, we are not asking for a budget in Stage 1 to keep the amount of charity time spent at a minimum. 

The SG UK Foundation provides matched funding for staff but how does this work and what is the limit? How does this contribute to the fundraising income generated? 

The Foundation will commit to supporting the partnership and will be a part of the contracting from the outset with their support outlined in full at that stage. Historically, the Foundation has provided matched funding for SG UK staff fundraising, volunteering and donations matching 100% up to £1000 per event/activity. They also provide matching for payroll giving, in-kind and employee engagement initiatives. There is no upper limit of matched funding for the partnership and, previously, these donations have contributed just under half of the partnership fundraising total.  Please note that the SG UK Foundation matched funding policy can be subject to change.  

How does this partnership relate to Bright Futures that the SG UK Foundation recently launched?  

Bright Futures is a separate initiative launched by the SG UK Foundation which also aims to enhance our commitment to social impact and inclusivity within our communities. 

The SG UK Foundation’s new fund, Bright Futures, is investing £1 million over three years to empower and equip people from marginalised groups to access education and employment, driving lasting social and economic impact. Click here to find out more.  

Can a charity apply for both the Bright Futures fund and to be SG’s charity partner? Would a successful application for one discount the charity from being successful in the other? 

As the opportunities are separate and managed by different entities (Societe Generale/Societe Generale UK Foundation), we are happy to receive applications from the same organisation to both Bright Futures Grants and the SG Charity Partner, if you meet both sets of criteria. Given the different aims and timescales of the two initiatives, an organisation could in theory be successful in both.