"Philanthropy has always been at the heart of Grosvenor," says Jane Sandars, Director of The Westminster Foundation. Set up in 1974, the foundation is the vehicle for charitable giving for everything Grosvenor-related, from the Grosvenor family itself to employees of the company, who raised more than £105,000 for the Richard House Children’s Hospice in 2010.

The foundation also supports appropriate registered charities. ‘Appropriate’ in this case means charities that work in parts of the UK where Grosvenor is active, such as Mayfair and Belgravia in London. Like all charitable foundations, it also restricts its funding to organisations working in certain areas: in the case of The Westminster Foundation, these are social care and education, conservation and the environment, and military welfare.

Office accommodation
The same criteria apply to the charities that lease office space on the Grosvenor estate – more than 30 of them, the majority in small units near Victoria station. "It’s a great advantage to them to have an office in central London," explains Jane, who adds that the foundation supports these organisations with a generous donation towards their rent.

There are other ways in which the foundation can help them, too. "Many of the charities on the estate are neighbours, but they don’t know about each other," says Jane. "So last September, we organised a networking event for all the charities in our offices. It led to a lot of positive conversations; for example, several charities who are based in the same building are considering pooling their printing requirements so as to save money."

Initiatives like the networking event are part of a wider desire by the foundation to enable closer community links with its charity activities.

Good causes
Here’s a brief introduction to four of the charities on the estate:

Kidscape helps children who are targets of bullying. For example, its ZAP! programmes are designed to teach children aged between 9 and 15 who have been bullied how to be assertive and give them more confidence.

The National Benevolent Fund for the Aged provides practical help and support for old people living in poverty, such as TENS pain relief machines and emergency alarms. It also organises holidays for elderly people, some of whom may not even have been away from their home for years.

Westminster Befriend a Family provides practical and emotional support to prevent family breakdown in the Westminster area. Many of the families it works with are homeless, refugees or asylum seekers. They are often on low incomes, facing mental or physical ill health, depression or isolation with no support network.

Zaccheus 2000 (Z2K) works to help those in extreme poverty to negotiate the justice system. It takes on individual cases of vulnerable people who are faced with harsh enforcement of council tax, rent, fines and tax credit overpayments, and also lobbies Parliament and pursues test cases through the courts when the law or the benefits system is unfair.