Neighbourly Limited: Best Community Socio-Economic Impact Platform UK 2020
Good corporate citizenship is about building trust between business and community, providing services that support economic and social development and balancing profit with purpose. Neighbourly Limited partners with businesses to connect corporate goodwill with grassroots causes. The company invites businesses to be more neighbourly – particularly to those most vulnerable in the community – through a corporate giving platform that effectively matches donors with causes. Business partners connect to the platform and support causes by donating time, money or surplus products. They can rally employees to volunteer, fund local initiatives or send surplus to food banks and homeless shelters. As a certified B Corp, ‘Neighbourly believes that business should deliver positive impacts as well as profits. Neighbourly facilitates community investment and stakeholder capitalism, enabling businesses to respond with agility to evolving community needs. To combat the emergency hardships caused by the current pandemic, it launched the Neighbourly Community Fund in March, immediately raising almost £500,000 and started disbursing it to local good causes within 72 hours. The fund has now raised over £1.2m. Corporate partners who have contributed to the fund include M&S, Lidl, Aldi, Danone, Nutricia, Southern Co-op, giffgaff, Heineken and Coca-Cola, and Neighbourly have channelled it – in the form of unrestricted £400 micro-grants – to trustworthy organisations providing essential services to those most at risk. The fund will continue to seek new donors via the web platform and to distribute emergency micro-grants throughout communities in the UK and Ireland throughout this crisis. Neighbourly operates on a hyper-local level in the UK and over the next 10 years anticipates evolving into a global community investment platform for business. The CFI.co judging panel recognises Neighbourly Limited as a facilitator and advocate of strong corporate social responsibility with the 2020 award for Best Community Socio-Economic Impact Platform (UK).
