City St George’s launches Centre for Poverty and Innovation following £1.7m major gift
Howard Lake | 11 March 2026 | News
City St George’s, University of London, has established a new Centre for Poverty and Innovatio. It has been made possible by a £1.7 million philanthropic gift from the Bryson Charitable Group. The three-year funding package will support the Centre in conducting independent research into deep and complex poverty across the UK.
Poverty remains a persistent challenge in the UK, with individuals and families facing intertwined issues related to health, housing, employment, and financial insecurity. Recognising the growing demands on public services and the charity sector, the Centre aims to generate “robust, actionable evidence on effective interventions”.
The Centre’s core mission is to “support leadership and learning across the systems that respond to poverty prevention and alleviation”.
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A distinctive element of the Centre is its cross-school foundation, drawing interdisciplinary expertise from the School of Policy and Global Affairs, Bayes Business School, and the School of Health & Medical Sciences. This structure will ensure research is connected directly with real-world delivery and evaluation. In this way it will work to strengthen effective practice and building leadership capability within organizations tackling poverty.
Professor Sir Anthony Finkelstein, President of City St George’s, emphasised the university’s civic responsibility, stating the Centre “reflects City St George’s commitment to generating robust evidence, supporting leadership and informing policy and practice to improve responses to poverty at local, regional and national levels.”
Two co-leaders
The initiative is co-led by Dr. Matt Barnes, a sociologist with expertise in areas like the cost of school uniforms and poverty typologies, and Dr. Haseeb Shabbir from the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at Bayes Business School, a specialist in leadership development and fundraising training for charities, with a focus on poverty, dignity and the ethics of charitable communications. This leadership highlights the Centre’s commitment to bridging academic rigour with the practical needs of the third sector.
Shane Logan, CEO of Bryson Charitable Group, articulated the donor’s perspective:
“Supporting this Centre allows us to connect our sector to practice-led insight with academic rigour, helping to strengthen evidence and leadership across the systems responding to poverty.”
Setting up
The Centre is currently in its set-up phase, with a formal launch likely later this year, promising to be a significant resource for the fundraising and charity community dedicated to tackling entrenched disadvantage.
City St George’s, University of London came into being on 1 August 2024 and comprises the activities previously undertaken by City University of London and St George’s, University of London.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.