Meeting Needs calls on events industry suppliers to back its Foundation Partnership scheme

By Meeting Needs

As event businesses come under growing pressure to show real social impact rather than a CSR page nobody reads, Meeting Needs –  the events industry’s own charity foundation – is calling on more suppliers, agencies and venues to back it as a Foundation Partner. 

The scheme already counts Excel London and MAGS WORLDWIDE among its supporters, and Meeting Needs wants to widen that base ahead of its next funding round.

More procurement teams and clients are now asking event businesses a direct question: what does your social value commitment actually fund, and can you prove it? For many suppliers and agencies, the honest answer is a CSR statement rather than a real outcome. Meeting Needs’ pitch is that a Foundation Partnership provides a clear link between a business’s support and a named project, rather than a donation that gets lost in a larger organisation’s accounts. 

Meeting Needs is run by roughly 16 volunteers from across the industry, with a single part-time administrator and no permanent office. It keeps overheads low, so partner contributions are visible in outcomes, not absorbed by running costs.

Unlike a donation to a large national charity, money given through a Foundation Partnership goes to projects that Meeting Needs’ own volunteer board have found, vetted and chosen directly. In Aldershot, a partnership with Community Grub Hub distributes 1.5 to 1.7 tonnes of food a week, much of it rescued from landfill via FareShare, funding six months of fresh food for around 240 families. In Tanzania, a grant keeps a mountain ambulance running in a village reachable only by a three-hour drive on rough terrain or a two-day walk, which made 52 emergency transfers last year alone. And in the UK, ten couples recovering from the loss of a baby are receiving fortnightly counselling through charity Petals, a project taken on after an event industry professional nominated it directly.

None of these are the kind of headline-grabbing causes a large corporate donation typically reaches –  which is exactly the point: a Foundation Partnership lets a business’s support land somewhere specific enough to point to

Meeting Needs was founded in 2003, after the M&IT Industry Awards Dinner’s long-running partnership with Save the Children, which at its height raised more than £2 million with Princess Anne attending as patron, became unworkable when the charity changed its policy on fundraising shortfalls., Founder Martin Lewis and three industry colleagues, Harry Baum, Charles Blowfield and Charles Robinson, built a charity the events sector could run and direct itself. That same principle still shapes how Foundation Partnerships work today.

“This was the perfect opportunity to create our own charity and choose our own beneficiaries,” says Martin Lewis, founder of Meeting Needs. “We wanted to be able to see, for the first time, exactly what our industry’s generosity was achieving, and to back projects we believed in directly, rather than handing money over and hoping. That’s exactly what a Foundation Partnership offers a business today: the chance to see precisely where its support goes, and what it does, rather than a donation that disappears into someone else’s accounts.”

The charity’s fundraising has expanded well beyond the awards dinner it started from. Its flagship Royal Parks Half Marathon has grown from ten runners in its first year to as many as forty in recent ones, generating over £220,000 to date, including more than £30,000 in 2022 alone, with this year’s total forecast to clear £250,000. It’s a substantial sum for a charity with no paid fundraising team, no corporate machine and a very slim marketing budget.

Foundation Partnerships are designed to be straightforward: businesses commit to supporting Meeting Needs’ work and, in return, get visibility across its channels and fundraising activity, along with direct visibility into the projects their support funds, something that’s harder to get from a donation to a large national charity. For agencies and suppliers, who are increasingly being asked to show what their CSR commitments actually achieve, it’s a way to point to specific outcomes rather than a policy document. It also plugs into an existing calendar of activity, fundraising events, raffles, auctions and challenges such as the Royal Parks Half Marathon, so a partnership can be as visible or as low-key as a business wants it to be.

“There is something incredibly powerful about knowing that the miles you run, the money you raise and the effort you put in can translate into real, tangible change for someone else,” says Charlotte Bliss, Account Director at Northstar Travel Group, who has taken on the Royal Parks Half Marathon for Meeting Needs multiple times. “What makes it even more special is knowing the money raised supports smaller charities, sometimes run by just one incredible person, who are doing life-changing work but often need that extra bit of support to make a real difference.”

The call comes as Meeting Needs’ fundraising calendar moves into its busiest stretch, with runners already training for October’s Royal Parks Half Marathon and a handful of charity places still available here: https://www.meetingneeds.org.uk/the-royal-parks-half-marathon/

Those interested in becoming a Foundation Partner, as well as individuals wanting to fundraise, sponsor a runner, or support through raffles and auctions, can get in touch via the contact details below.