Copyright © 2025 The Indigo Trust
We identify relevant organisations through our diverse networks, proactive research and recommendations from grantee-partners and peer funders.
We provide flexible, unrestricted funding as well as funding for research and contributing to pooled funds. In addition to providing grants we use our influence to champion our grantees to other potential donors and partners.
Indigo holds a minimum of two trustee meetings per year, although ad hoc meetings may also be called. Grant decisions are made on a rolling basis throughout the year with the majority being made between formal trustee meetings. All Indigo trustees are decision makers on all grants and the Trust does not operate any sub-committees.
We aim to keep this as simple and as light touch as possible. We tailor reporting requirements to the grant and will provide clear information on when reports are required. Reporting can be provided in writing or through meetings/calls. The format of reports can be in any format that is most efficient and we are happy to consider reports that have been prepared for other donors.
We continually reflect on our approach to grant-making, through dialogue with our existing grantees, peer funders and a range of ‘critical friends’.
In early 2025, as part of reviewing our approach to grantee-partner feedback, we worked with Modern Grantmaking to develop an anonymous survey which was sent out to our grantee-partners. We had an 80% response rate and were delighted by the open and honest feedback we received, both in terms of what was working well and what could be improved. The main area for improvement related to our grants renewal and exiting processes and we are reviewing these processes internally and will be communicating more information later this year.
For external scrutiny and accountability, Indigo is a partner in the Foundation Practice Rating - learn more here. Previous reports have revealed that Indigo Trust could be more robust in addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and you can read about our actions to address this via the following link Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
In the summer of 2025, we worked with Philanthropy Insight, and other Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts, to host an event for a group of Asian philanthropists, to share practice around our grant making - topics covered included impact investing, power and privilege and participatory grant-making.
As part of Indigo's commitment to being transparent, we publish all of our grants using the 360Giving Data Standard for use by other donors and potential grantees.
We believe that with better information, grant-makers can be more effective and strategic decision-makers. 360Giving provides support for grant makers to publish their grants data openly, to understand their data, and to use the data to create online tools that make grant- making more effective.
To search The Indigo Trust's funding data use GrantNav the 360giving search tool*
* This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means the data is freely accessible to anyone to be used and shared as they wish. The data must be attributed to The Indigo Trust.
Indigo is an active member of the Foundation Practice Rating (FPR), which rates UK grant-makers, without their permission, on their diversity, accountability and transparency.
You can download the full FPR 2024/25 report here and for further information see Shining a light on foundation practice
Our grant-making includes collaborating and contributing to joint funds. We also belong to a number of networks that share learning, intelligence, knowledge and best practice.
Copyright © 2025 The Indigo Trust