Partner Content: Delivering strategic philanthropy with the backing of family offices

Families with visionary philanthropic intent have set aside immense sums in donor-advised funds for good purposes, while UK communities face entrenched pathways to poverty and stretched public services.  Anchor Philanthropic Capital is a novel adviser meeting a clear and longstanding need in delivering large-scale, strategic philanthropy: it turns that capital into compliant, effective funding for UK organisations that can deliver social impact at scale.

A capital mismatch

Over the past decade, donor-advised funds (DAFs) in the US have surged, with assets and account numbers continuing to grow even as contributions fluctuate and some charities experience slower direct giving. At the same time, UK child and family poverty has risen to some of its highest levels, with millions of children living in households that struggle to meet basic needs.

Successive governments have not been able to unpick the structural drivers of poverty, leaving local charities, social enterprises and community organisations to absorb rising demand with fragile balance sheets. For business-owning families and family offices with capital available in DAFs, this combination of trapped philanthropy and acute need represents both a problem and an opportunity.

Anchor’s genesis was fuelled by a critical need to respond to the desire of strategic philanthropists to catalyse dramatic positive change for people, place and planet. 

What Anchor does

Anchor’s bold and innovative vision is to focus upon matching philanthropic funding at scale from overseas DAFs with UK-based organisations serving the common good, reliably and successfully. In practice, that means acting as a trusted intermediary that can structure, document and monitor cross-border grants so that US DAF sponsors, families and their advisers can support UK causes at scale without running regulatory, legal, compliance or reputational risks. 

Anchor vets UK recipients, designs compliant grant structures under equivalency determination or expenditure responsibility tests, where necessary, or more innovative impact loan arrangements, and oversees delivery with rigorous governance and reporting. Anchor helps donors, DAF sponsors, and UK organisations navigate complex legal and tax landscapes with simplicity, ensuring capital flows smoothly and compliantly where it is most needed, not trapped by administrative friction.

Why this matters to family capital

Family offices and dynastic philanthropists increasingly want their giving to be measurable, aligned with long-term family values, and tax-efficient. Yet most wealth advice stops at structuring the DAF and obtaining tax relief, leaving families largely on their own when it comes to sourcing credible UK counterparties and building bespoke, multi-year projects that can absorb seven-, eight-, or even nine-figure commitments.

Anchor’s model is designed for families who think in generations, not grant cycles: it supports the creation of thematic or place-based programmes around issues such as housing and family formation, the flourishing of children, healthcare, community resilience and environmental restoration, with clear theories of change and transparent outcomes reporting. This allows donors to turn DAF balances into a coherent philanthropic strategy that can sit alongside investment portfolios and family-governance frameworks.

By discreetly and reliably managing risks, Anchor enables donors with significant vision to improve lives, spread opportunity and boost life chances for people of all ages whilst enhancing places and safeguarding the environment.

From statistics to investable solutions

Recent data show millions of UK children in poverty, with rates rising over the past few years.  Deep material poverty affects a significant share of families. Confronting those numbers are practical interventions that can be funded at scale: quality homes people can afford, early-years support, mental-health services, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, skills and employment programmes and community infrastructure in the places where poverty is most entrenched.

Anchor’s ambition is to unlock hundreds of millions of dollars from US DAFs into such UK public purpose organisations. A live pipeline of pre-vetted charitable or social purpose entities, combined with robust monitoring and annual reporting, will give both donors and their advisers confidence that their capital is achieving the outcomes they demand.

An invitation to dynastic philanthropists

Anchor aims to become the trusted UK-based intermediary for US DAF capital, recognised by DAF sponsors, wealth managers and family offices as the default route for significant cross-border giving into UK civil society. It will also contribute to wider practice by engaging professional advisers through specialist briefings and topical events.

For wealth advisers and philanthropists frustrated by unspent DAF balances and fragmented projects, the proposition is straightforward: use Anchor to deploy capital, at scale, into credible UK partners with the governance, reporting and discretion sophisticated families expect. 

To explore whether this approach fits your clients or your family’s own philanthropy, please email me: [email protected]. 

Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA is chairman of Anchor Philanthropic Capital. Baker is a former British politician who served as Minister of State for Northern Ireland from 2022 to 2024