Giving platform expands ability to support mid-sized businesses

Neighbourly, the Bristol-based giving platform that matches businesses with local good causes, has launched new features to help medium size enterprises increase their local social and environmental impact.

These new features have been built specifically to help mid-tier organisations find and support the local charities and causes their staff and customers care about, across Bristol and beyond through employee volunteering, surplus product redistribution, and financial donations.

The features aim to create transparency around what is needed locally and enable companies to measure the positive effect of their giving programmes through real-time impact dashboards which provide social and environmental metrics for ESG and sustainability reporting.

To date, the Neighbourly platform has worked exclusively with enterprise-sized businesses and facilitated the donation of over 120,000 volunteer hours, £23m in funding, and over 125 million meals worth of surplus food.

This equates to a total financial impact of over £255m and a C02 saving of over 198k tonnes. Neighbourly has supported numerous international businesses global brands including M&S, WSP, Aldi, Gallagher, Lidl, Samsung, B&Q and Virgin Media O2 to deliver UK-wide but locally driven giving programmes.

Now the focus is on engaging the mid-market business community through a city-led activation strategy – starting with Bristol – with a call for leading businesses from across the area to sign up and be part of the movement to create £1bn in impact by 2025.

Neighbourly’s network includes over 25,000 vetted charities and local community groups – in the Bristol region alone there are more than 800 good causes on the platform, including schools, community centres, parks and homelessness charities seeking help.

Steve Bluff, head of Redcliffe & Temple Business Improvement District (BID) said: “We’re pleased to be supporting Neighbourly in the launch. Our businesses have told us that they want more innovative ways to support the local communities they operate in, including through volunteering and allocating grants.

“This programme has a strong alignment with the BID’s vision to help make the Redcliffe and Temple area vibrant, thriving, and sustainable for the whole community. We look forward to seeing the local impact we can collectively create through this platform.”

Neighbourly CEO Steve Butterworth said: “We’re delighted to bring our platform capability to mid-size companies, at a time when demand for support from charities and local community groups is at an all-time high due to the cost of living and energy crisis.

“As a Bristol-based business, our home city was an obvious choice to kick off our mid-tier launch plan. Bristol has an abundance of successful businesses, that operate in the heart of their local communities. Using the Neighbourly platform will not only enable businesses to help build happy, healthy, and more resilient neighbourhoods, but also to measure their positive impact, which is truly unique to Neighbourly.”

Jackie Smith from BS3 Community Development, that runs the Bedminster FOOD club in conjunction with Family Action added: “Since the start of the cost-of-living crisis we’ve seen our regular service users increase from around 30 members to over 60, which is a huge rise in demand, and we know many other local frontline services are experiencing the same.

“The surplus and help we receive through Neighbourly is now absolutely necessary and we would not be able to provide our services without this support and that of other local businesses.”