Fifteen years ago, Tim Good and his brother Matthew talked about turning their family business, the John Good Group, into a force for good. Along with Tim, Matthew was in the throes of setting up the John Good Foundation. He died suddenly on 26 June 2011, while running the Humber Half Marathon for charity. Instead, on 25 August 2011, the Foundation was registered with the Charity Commission in his memory, as the Matthew Good Foundation.
That legacy lives on in our long-term support for developments in race medicine. This includes our Race Ready app, which guides runners on medical considerations before they take to the start line. Alongside it, we’ve grown into an organisation that has given over £2 million to small charities and grassroots causes of all kinds. Read the full story of our history and how we reached the £2 million milestone.
What we’ve learned about small charities
We started with two projects: investing in race medicine, and building an employee giving programme for the John Good Group. Through that programme, employees introduced us to hundreds of small, local charities doing remarkable work with very little. We began to notice a gap in how the third sector is funded, and how it’s supported.
Small charities are close to their communities, often founded by people with direct, lived experience of the issues they tackle. That closeness lets them respond quickly. Small charities actually make up 96% of the UK charity sector, yet they receive just 16% of its total income. Much of that income is restricted to project work, with very few funding sources supporting core costs. Without that help small non-profits plan, grow, and keep going.
They’re not just underfunded, though. They need relationships, too. Small charity leaders are often too stretched delivering frontline services to tell their own story, so brilliant work can go unseen. That’s why, as we developed our funding process, we focused equally on getting to know the organisations we support, and understanding how we can help them beyond the grant itself.
How business giving can create bigger impact
We are an independent grant-making foundation. But at our heart, we’re a corporate foundation. We still live and operate in the business world. Our board of trustees and staff have grown a lot in 15 years, bringing experience from both sides, some from the third sector, others from SMEs. As a result, we have a distinctive view of what businesses genuinely gain from supporting small charities well. It isn’t only about writing a cheque.
Currently, three in four UK businesses give nothing to charity at all. Therefore thoughtful business giving is still a meaningful way to stand out and build trust. We’ve also noticed this matters increasingly to businesses of every size, as scrutiny of community impact spreads through supply chains. It matters to staff too: over half say working for a company that supports charities makes them prouder of their job and more loyal to their employer. Giving them a genuine say in that giving deepens the connection further.
The next step in our business giving journey
What we’ve learned about small charities, and about business, is how our flagship programme, Grants for Good took shape. At first, it was simply a way to help the John Good Group direct more funding to smaller non-profits. But we soon realised we were building something that could bridge the funding gap between more businesses and charities across the UK.
After five years of developing and testing the model, we’re now opening it up to other businesses, without them needing to build the expertise from scratch. We handle due diligence, shortlisting, and reporting. Employees help choose which causes receive funding, so support goes where it means the most.
In its first five years, Grants for Good directed £284,000 to 107 charities, drawn from more than 9,000 applications. We’re only just getting started.
If you’re ready to explore business giving that feels personal and effective, we’d love to talk about a Grants for Good partnership.