Corporate giving is missing hidden pockets of poverty, Neighbourly report warns

Howard Lake | 13 August 2026 | News

• Tagged with:
• corporate fundraising
• corporate giving
• poverty
• research

Traditional corporate giving models are frequently failing to reach the communities facing the most acute deprivation, according to a new report from giving platform Neighbourly.

The report, Giving Without Guessing, produced in partnership with Lidl GB, warns that although businesses in Britain donate to good causes each year, much of that money could be having a greater impact. It draws on the English Indices of Deprivation 2025, published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, alongside a survey of around 900 frontline charities in Neighbourly’s network.

Government data cited in the report shows that 82% of neighbourhoods that ranked among England’s most severely deprived in 2019 were still in the bottom 10% in 2025, underlining how entrenched hardship has become.

It also highlights the increasingly hyper-local nature of deprivation, with severe disadvantage often sitting just streets away from visible affluence. Consequently broad regional averages can mask the true scale of need. More than 65% of local authority areas contain at least one neighbourhood among the 10% most severely deprived nationally.

Low confidence that corporate support meets local need

Neighbourly’s research among its charity partners found that just 3% believe corporate support currently reflects local need “very well”, while 95% think smaller, less visible charities are overlooked when corporate giving is allocated.

Steve Butterworth, chief executive of Neighbourly, said businesses wanted their community investment to make a real difference but were “too often giving without the full picture”, with need sometimes hidden inside apparently prosperous areas or concentrated in tiny neighbourhood pockets. He argued that smaller charities were often the real experts in their local area but lacked the profile to compete for corporate support.

Matt Juden, head of sustainability at Lidl GB, said a national commitment only became meaningful when delivered with local precision. Lidl GB uses Neighbourly’s services to enable it “to connect every store with trusted local causes”.

The report sets out a three-part model for more effective giving:

• mapping need using public data and live charity intelligence
  
• matching businesses with the best-placed local organisations
  
• and measuring impact as auditable social value.

It argues that blanket giving models risk missing the smaller “last mile” organisations closest to those who need help most.

A founding UK B Corporation, Neighbourly has facilitated more than £2 billion of social value to date through a network of over 45,000 charities and community groups.

• Free guide launches to help first-time local campaigners (22 January 2025)
  
• Place-based giving schemes positively affect local philanthropy, report finds (13 September 2018)
  
• Local Trust relaunches campaign for community wealth fund (18 July 2024)

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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.