Developmental support

We provide developmental support including mentoring to help charities improve their resilience and sustainability. Developmental support is available to Foundation grant holders.

Mentoring

First piloted in 2017 and running successfully ever since, our mentoring scheme matches charities with Lloyds Bank International volunteer mentors. These mentors bring a wide variety of skills to the table, supporting their charity in areas like business support or resilient communications. Usually, mentors are matched with charities for a minimum of 12 months, nurturing a brilliant, face-to-face relationship and offering knowledge to charities that help them to grow and evolve.

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Skills exchange

Through this programme, a charity will be introduced to a group of employees from the Group (known as their Support Team), who, over the six months, will use their skills, knowledge, and insights to help the charity tackle a problem or realise an untapped opportunity which they will need to identify when they sign up to take part. This could be around the themes of Leadership and Management; Communications, Marketing and Digital; Financial Management; Risk; or Strategy. The Skills Exchange programme runs from January to July, and the charity will need to be able to commit to an initial Kickstarter workshop and prepare for and engage in their support sessions, as well as carry out actions between sessions to progress their project. They’ll also need the buy-in from their board of trustees and the involvement of at least two representatives from their charity.

Charity Response Forum

Through our Charity Response Forums, charities can tackle pressing questions, issues, and challenges in a safe, confidential environment. Via a two-hour online session, Lloyds Bank International colleagues can be used as sounding boards, knowledge hubs and advisers to help charities over the hurdles they are facing. Topics can be as wide or as niche as needed, there’ll always be someone on hand to help.

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The ‘Win, Win, Win’ report from the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, highlighted the fantastic benefits for charities, the volunteers, and their businesses that the skills exchange programme creates. Indeed, across all four Foundations, including our own, 91% of charities that engaged with the skills exchange programme reported improvements in professional skills.