A year of building skills and growing opportunity with the BGF Foundation

As the year draws to a close and we head into the festive period, it feels like a good moment to reflect on what ‘giving’ has looked like for BGF this year. Alongside the BGF Foundation’s support for charities working with disadvantaged young people, BGF employees have also given their time, skills and experience. Throughout 2025, we’re proud to have supported more than 30 charities, through a mix of BGF Foundation funding, strategic advice and community volunteering days.

Over the past three years, the amount of time that BGF employees have dedicated to volunteering has increased by over 60%, reflecting both our enthusiasm for these causes and a cultural shift in how we use our Social Impact Days. Almost half of our team have taken part in volunteering activity across the UK this year and, crucially, skills-based volunteering is becoming a defining feature of our social impact. We’re increasingly using our professional expertise to support charities in ways that build confidence, capability and long-term impact.

LTSB: Leadership in action

A standout moment this year has been the commitment from BGF’s Executive Committee. They dedicated an afternoon to helping Leadership Through Sport & Business (LTSB), a social mobility charity that prepares and supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds into meaningful roles with major firms.

Welcoming a number of young people to our offices, the team ran an interactive session, centred on a negotiation game. Working alongside senior BGF leaders, the young people were encouraged to:

• Weigh up competing priorities
• Consider different stakeholder perspectives
• Articulate their thinking clearly
• Reach a collective outcome under time pressure

The activity was designed to build confidence, communication and problem-solving skills. It also gave participants a hands-on introduction to how decisions are made in businesses. For our Executive Committee, meanwhile, this was an opportunity to engage directly with the next generation of talent and to show, in a practical way, what inclusive leadership can look like.

Building on this negotiation session, the same group of young people also spent time with our Value Creation team — one of our most cross-functional teams, in terms of remit and responsibility. They heard how we support our portfolio companies on everything from commercial strategy to people, data and operations, and how different disciplines can come together to help businesses scale. The conversation covered:

• The breadth of careers on offer within growth equity and portfolio support
• Example projects we’ve delivered and how they’ve created value for our portfolio
• Different routes you can take into various business roles and functions

Charlotte Moses Rains, COO of the BGF Foundation, said: “Seeing our Value Creation team demystify their own career journeys, and openly share the paths that led them here, made the session especially powerful. We’re hugely grateful to the team for helping create an environment where these talented young people could ask questions, build confidence and see what’s possible for their futures.”

ThinkForward: Insight into the world of work

Another highlight this year was when our Birmingham team welcomed young people from ThinkForward for a business insight day. ThinkForward provides long-term coaching for young people who face barriers on their path to employment, helping them build the skills, experience and confidence they need to move successfully into education, work or training.

The day included:

• An introduction BGF and how we help growing businesses to scale-up
• Small-group conversations about different roles and career journeys
• Practical discussions about workplace expectations, skills and pathways

For the young people, it was a chance to see a professional environment up close and to ask candid, career-related questions.

Staff grants: Supporting our local charities and communities

As well as enabling these skills-based volunteering sessions, the BGF Foundation has continued to support charities that mean the most to our team this year, through its staff grants programme. This month, five new grants were awarded to organisations nominated by BGF team members across the country:

• CHAS (Children’s Hospices Across Scotland)
• Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice
• Moya Cole Hospice
• Birmingham Irish Association
• The Little Princess Trust

These grants reflect the breadth of causes our colleagues champion, from hospice and end-of-life care to community support, and services for children and families. They also ensure that BGF giving remains closely connected to the places where our teams live and work.

Building momentum into 2026

This year’s activity has illustrated how skills-based volunteering and locally rooted giving are becoming embedded across BGF. In giving their time and sharing their experience, our team are opening up networks and helping young people, communities and charities prepare for what comes next.

In 2026, the BGF Foundation will continue to build on this momentum, with further opportunities for colleagues to get involved, new programmes with its charity partners, and more stories of impact to share. To keep up to date with the BGF Foundation’s news and activity next year, subscribe to updates here. Until then, Happy Holidays!