Members of the Ideas Exchange strongly agree that it is important to give back to society.

Within their individual businesses, members support a wide variety of different charitable causes through donation, fundraising and active participation on a voluntary basis.

Naturally, this desire to contribute to the less fortunate is also part of the communal ethos of the Ideas Exchange. In deciding what a group outreach programme should look like, members reflected on the key benefits that they obtain from participation. Consequently, the focus is on three themes: Food & Clothing Provision, Basic & General Education and Financial Education & Support, targeting both children and adults.

For 2024 and 2025, The Ideas Exchange will primarily support the following six charities with these aims;

Theme: Food & Clothing Provision

• The Felix Project - They rescue good, surplus food from the food industry that cannot be sold and would otherwise go to waste. They then sort and then deliver this food to almost 1000 front-line charities, primary schools and holiday programmes in London  https://thefelixproject.org
• The Welcome Centre – We help local families and individuals in crisis with food, toiletries, and other essential items. We also provide advice, guidance, and support to address underlying issues.  https://www.thewelcomecentre.org

Theme: Basic & General Education

• Little Lives UK – who support disabled and disadvantaged children and young people to help them build stronger futures. Working within our communities we identify some of the major problems that children are facing and organise projects that will help try to resolve these issues.  https://www.littlelives.org.uk
• Read Easy – this charity targets adults who have – for whatever reason – not acquired the transformational life-skill of literacy. Learning to read improves the chances of employment, independence and generally improves self-esteem  https://readeasy.org.uk/what-we-do

Theme: Financial Education & Support

• The Money Charity – is the UK’s financial capability charity, proactively providing education, information, advice and guidance to people of all ages throughout the UK, helping them to manage their money well and increase their financial well-being  https://themoneycharity.org.uk/about/history
• Surviving Domestic Abuse– One in six women in the UK has experienced economic abuse by a current or former partner. Our primary focus will be on influencing the women’s and financial services sectors, to create a model for improved support for victim-survivors of economic abuse.  https://survivingeconomicabuse.org

We will also contribute to other charities through our member matched-funding programme and thank you payments for guest speakers

In 2022 and 2023, The Ideas Exchange supported the following main charities - Magic Breakfast, The Trussell Trust, Dons Local nameof(Action) Group, Petts Wood Playgroup, Read Easy, MyBnk and The Money Charity. We also contributed to 11 other charities with small donations and matched member sponsored funding.

Conscious of its carbon footprint and the need to protect the environment for future generations, the Ideas Exchange also made a donation to The Woodland Trust for the planting of new trees to carbon offset its face-to-face meetings  https://woodlandtrust.org.uk