As the UK undergoes one of the largest intergenerational wealth transfers in its history, a new generation of business leaders and investors is rethinking what philanthropy actually means.
For too long, giving has been framed in binary terms, where you either write a cheque or you do not, but in reality philanthropy sits on a much broader spectrum.
At one end of that spectrum is traditional charitable giving, with organisations such as the British Red Cross doing vital work responding to immediate need and supporting people facing hardship.
Increasingly, however, philanthropists and the businesses and investors who think like them are asking a different question about how to move beyond responding to crises and start addressing their root causes.
Tech entrepreneur and senior executive Jane Thompson, who has held leadership roles at Match.com and IAC, argues that trust is a strategic asset in philanthropy, not merely a soft one.
Thompson notes that organisations closest to a problem usually understand it better than those funding it, and that backing their expertise rather than controlling every outcome produces greater impact.
Charities are also uniquely placed to reveal where systems are failing, since loneliness, homelessness, and economic exclusion all emerge from deeply interconnected social, economic and community structures.
The most effective philanthropists now recognise that money is only one form of capital available to them, with human capital, networks, expertise and influence all deployable toward building lasting solutions.
That shift has given rise to social enterprise, impact investing and, most significantly, what practitioners are calling catalytic capital, a model designed to occupy the space between pure charity and commercial markets.
Catalytic capital deliberately accepts a different balance of risk, return and time horizon in pursuit of social outcomes that conventional finance routinely overlooks, aiming to unlock possibilities rather than simply fund activity.
By taking early risk, proving new models and attracting further investment, catalytic capital creates solutions that neither traditional philanthropy nor commercial investment could realistically achieve alone.
Thompson’s own interest in this approach stems from a straightforward observation: communities are the fundamental unit of resilience, and yet the spaces that enable community relationships are disappearing across the UK.
Community centres, village halls, local shops and pubs are vanishing, fuelling what Thompson describes as a quiet epidemic of loneliness and isolation in towns and cities nationwide.
This insight underpins CommonGround Capital, which addresses a clear market failure whereby community assets generate enormous social value but struggle to attract the capital needed to preserve them.
CommonGround uses catalytic capital to help communities acquire and protect the assets that hold them together, strengthening social infrastructure before problems escalate and require costly intervention.
Thompson’s message to the new generation of givers is direct: start somewhere, support organisations you trust, and think beyond what you can give to what you can help build.
The future of giving, she argues, will not be defined solely by how much money changes hands but by how effectively donors and investors deploy every form of capital available to create lasting change.