Since its inception in 1990, Stewarts has been actively involved in supporting a variety of charities. The Stewarts Foundation was set up in 2010 to formalise and manage the firm’s charitable giving.

In 2021 the partners of Stewarts donated £830k to the Stewarts Foundation to support its chosen causes.

To date, the Foundation has donated just under £7m to well over 200 charities.

The Foundation’s vision is to:

• Create opportunities for the disadvantaged in our society
• Treat people less fortunate than ourselves with compassion and respect
• Make a substantial social impact

The Foundation supports a small number of UK charities carefully selected by its Trustees through its grant-giving programme.

Grant giving

The Foundation refocused its grant giving principles in 2016 to include four key areas:

• Alleviating poverty
• Enabling access to justice
• Supporting disability
• Providing educational opportunity

As part of this, the Foundation committed to donating £1m over four years to the Access to Justice Foundation. This initial commitment ended in 2019 but the Foundation will continue to give to the Access to Justice Foundation for a further five years. The grant will be split between the provision of aid for legal advice centres, and contributing to a new Access to Justice Centre and Network which will be the go-to centre for all things “Access to Justice” related.

As well as Access to Justice, charities supported by the Foundation in 2021 include:

• Alcohol Education Trust: donation towards their core work of enabling young people age 11-25 to make safer choices around alcohol, know where to go for help and support and build their resilience and life skills.
• Back Up Trust: donation towards supporting the Outreach team, which supports both the individual with a spinal cord injury and their families.
• Brainbox: donation to provide two large scale outings, one for mother beneficiaries and one for father beneficiaries, to offer respite and an opportunity to meet and form relationships with other parents in similar positions for peer support and discussions.
• Centrepoint: donation to part fund the continuation of the Senior Mental Health Advisor post who oversees their mental health programme across the City of London.
• City Solicitors Horizons: donation to support a social mobility initiative to improve access to the legal profession. In addition to the grant a number of solicitors are mentors for students through University.
• Danny Turnbull Scholarship Fund: funding for a disabled student to undertake their LPC at The University of Law. This has been awarded to Jodie Proctor.

• Feast!: donation to a charity using food being thrown away by supermarkets to create meals for the homeless. The funds will be used to support the co-ordination and costs of the 10 FEAST community meal projects across North London as demand for food parcels increases. This will include securing food surplus distribution to various community centres with kitchens, maintaining community kitchens, volunteer co-ordination and training, maintaining social media presence, partnerships, and service evaluation efforts.
• Finito Education Trust: donation to fund a bursary to support an individual from an underprivileged background to access support.
• Headway: donation towards the continuation of Emergency Fund grants. The Emergency Fund provides grants to help adult brain injury survivors and their families cope with the practical implications in the immediate aftermath of brain injury. This fund was originally set up with early grants from the Foundation.
• Just for Kids Law:: funding for a full-time Youth Opportunities Officer plus project/activity costs including digital connectivity costs for young people they are working with.
• JUSTICE: donation to an all-party law reform and human rights organisation working to strengthen the justice system – administrative, civil and criminal – in the United Kingdom. The grant will be used to support JUSTICE’s core work including their working party on ‘The Impact of privatisation on public authority decision making and routes of redress’.
• Royal Academy of Arts: grant will fund a student bursary. The winners this year were Paul Barlow and Jenkin van Zyl

• Sands (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death): donation (part of which will be allocated to the Sands United FC Solihull), used to enable Sands to provide their national Helpline to those across the UK, continue peer-to-peer support groups locally, and provide bereaved men the support they need through Sands United FC Solihull.
• School Home Support: donation towards their safeguarding and child protection work.
• Spinal Injuries Association: donation to fund the Peer Support Service for spinal cord injured people and campaign activities of the Public Affairs team.
• St George’s Crypt: donation towards the Growing Rooms project which is a part of the Health and Wellbeing programme which includes vital on-site services to help with the mental and physical health which is so often overlooked (eg. Dentaid, Physiotherapy, Visioncare).
• St Mungo’s: donation to support “Putting Down Roots” (a skills and employment project leading to qualifications in gardening and horticulture) and funding staff salaries, client and staff travel, course materials, insurance and IT support.
• The Charlie Waller Trust: funding for two part-time trainers to deliver mental health training to parents caring for a child with mental health problems across the country for a year.
• The Line Art Walk: donation to increase capacity in the team to support the delivery of The Line’s core work and learning and wellbeing programmes.
• Wellbeing of Women: donation towards funding a 15 month research project to evaluate the safety and efficacy of using naturally occurring hormone melatonin to protect the newborn brain after combined infection and birth asphyxia.  Led by Professor Nicola Robertson at University College London.
• WheelPower: donation to restart services for people with spinal cord injuries.

You can find out more about The Stewarts Foundation here.