What does I.G. Advisors actually do? 2025 Edition
Because we work on such a wide range of things at I.G. Advisors, I often get asked ‘what do you actually do?!’
I get it, we focus on a dizzying array of issues and projects each year. In recent times alone we’ve helped philanthropic, nonprofit and corporate clients explore and solve questions like:
How can we implement more gender equitable policies across our retail supply chain?
Which nonprofits are the most powerful allies for our business to partner with to bring about change for children’s rights in the countries where we operate?
How can we diversify our business model so we’re less reliant on government income?
How can we collaborate with other nonprofits in our sector in the face of massive cuts to USAID?
What role should we play in ending child marriage, given our connections and resources?
How can we get more Global South directors nominated for the Academy Awards?
How can we scale global health outcomes through mass-market media?
How might we reform the global humanitarian response to crises to be more community centric?
To help you understand the breadth of things our brilliant team can do, I’ve put together this summary of our 2025 work (that we’re allowed to talk about publicly), with links to some of the brilliant clients we supported and partnered with across the world last year.
You can also see our 2023 and 2024 editions at those links.
Headlines
£50m+ in philanthropic capital directly mobilised through giving strategies, fund design, and grant making
$100m+ philanthropic capital unlocked or accelerated through facilitation, coaching, training or convenings
Active work across 25+ countries, spanning Africa, Asia, MENA, Europe, Latin America, and North America
300+ funders, fundraisers, and leaders equipped through I.G. programmes, coaching, and learning journeys in 2025
Across I.G. programmes, 90%+ of participants report increased confidence, agency, or readiness to lead change, with over half progressing into more senior or specialist roles within a year
In the last 5 years clients we supported with fundraising saw an average 16.5% growth in income each year, and 10 of our clients have received transformational Mackenzie Scott grants.
72% of I.G.’s work came from repeat clients, multi-year partnerships or referrals
Strategy
Strategy is at the heart of what we do. In 2025, that meant spending our time on a number of ambitious ‘Big Bet Philanthropy’ projects alongside our typical organisational strategies, working alongside global and local funders to ask big questions, collaborate on the big thinking, then turn big ideas into real-world change. Strategy is our core offer at I.G., and we approach it in a collaborative, participatory way - bringing the right people into the room, listening deeply, doing the research, and co-creating strategies that are grounded, equitable, and ambitious. In 2025, this looked like:
Partnering with Gates Foundation to co-design a strategy focused on shifting social norms through entertainment media, particularly for the rights of adolescents and young people. Our work combined deep landscape analysis with co-creation and testing through events, workshops and dinners, strengthening the Foundation’s learning on how catalytic capital can be used in this context.
At a deeper level within the entertainment media industry, partnering with a two-time Academy Award-winning director to design a new film investment fund focused on accelerating underrepresented storytellers. We’re still working on getting everything ready for launch this year so watch this space.
After more than a year of leading the start-up strategy development process, we were so excited to see Resilio Fund’s work become public in 2025. This is a new collaborative fund working to transform the way the world responds to humanitarian crises. In 2025 we continued to support the fund by working with the senior team to convene donors and partners in a co-creation workshop series that clarified the direction and governance for the fund, building alignment and confidence and unlocking substantial anchor funding for the work. The fund has so far been backing successful local response efforts in countries like Myanmar, Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and the Philippines, demonstrating the power of localised, community-led response.
We worked with a large donor collaborative working in the girls rights space to co-lead a participatory strategic refresh of its work, grounded in research, stakeholder consultation, and lived experience from across its global ecosystem.
Research
Our research work combines rigorous analysis with lived experience and practitioner insight, helping clients understand complex ecosystems and identify where change is most possible. In 2025:
We worked with the Gates Foundation and Luminate to explore the entertainment media landscape and identify game-changing investment opportunities for philanthropy to drive social impact and positive norms change. .
We collaborated with Pearl Initiative as their research partner to explore next-generation philanthropy in the MENA (Middle East & North Africa) region, examining how young donors and inheritors make decisions about giving; their approaches, challenges and expectations; and what the future of philanthropy may look like in the region. Report coming soon! Sign up for our newsletter to hear when it’s released
We partnered with Bukhman Philanthropies to produce a major landscape analysis of student wellbeing in London, examining the systemic gaps in funding, accountability, and coordination that leave many young people unsupported. The resulting report sets out evidence-led recommendations for reshaping the system. Report coming soon. Sign up for our newsletter to hear when it’s released.
We worked with a US Catholic Philanthropy Network to carry out in-depth market research on how Catholic-inspired funders give, what support they’re looking for, and where there’s opportunity to increase impact through digital.
Fundraising
With strong foundations in the nonprofit sector, 2025 saw us continue to work alongside exceptional organisations to develop sector-leading fundraising strategies and provide our signature brand of unique coaching, training, and research support across fundraising and business development. We supported:
Partnership for Los Angeles Schools to design a multi-year major gifts strategy aligned with their wider organisational strategy, helping diversify income, strengthen donor relationships, and build a clearer pipeline for long-term, flexible funding.
Trussell as a trusted critical friend during a period of organisational change, providing strategic input, facilitation, and hands-on activation support to strengthen fundraising and communications approaches across a growing directorate.
One of the world’s biggest health equity organisations to carry out a deep health check of their philanthropic fundraising programme, assessing investment levels, audience strategy, and organisational readiness, and setting out clear options for scaling flexible income in the lead-up to their 50th anniversary.
Integrity Action to develop and refine strategic approaches to growth and communications, and translate ambition into practical, resourced plans that could be delivered by a lean team.
Child Bereavement UK to map the current funding landscape in the UK and make sense of the fundraising opportunities for an ambitious legacy organisation undertaking a major transformation.
Philanthropy
Our philanthropy work supports individuals and foundations to move from intention to action - helping people get clear on what they care about, how they want to show up, and how to give in ways that are thoughtful, effective, and aligned with their values. Many of our philanthropy clients choose to remain anonymous, but we can share that in 2025 we were responsible for mobilising £50m of philanthropic capital with our clients. This included:
Gates Foundation, where we acted as an embedded partner helping shape, test, and refine approaches to partner engagement, learning, and systems-level work across complex philanthropic initiatives.
A UK start-up foundation with founding assets of £100m' supporting the development and evolution of a values-led giving approach, with a focus on clarity of mission, thoughtful decision-making, and building a philanthropy that reflects both personal intent and long-term impact. They are focussing on empowering the next generation of leaders to thrive in an uncertain world
An individual philanthropist focused on women, health, and education, supporting her to develop a clear, principled giving strategy that prioritised unrestricted funding, trusted partnerships, and light touch due diligence and reporting.
A family foundation in the UK, supporting a transition from reactive giving to a more intentional, strategic approach, including clarifying priorities, shaping a multi-year plan, and thinking through how best to deploy time, money, and influence together.
A philanthropist with international interests across education and place-based change, providing strategic advice, facilitation, and ongoing activation support to help turn long-held ambitions into a focused, practical philanthropic strategy.
Corporate Impact
One of the hallmarks of our work is our connection to a global movement of businesses striving to deliver meaningful social and environmental impact. We work with businesses across countless industries to figure out and activate what impact means for them within their business models. In 2025, our corporate philanthropy and impact work included:
Continuing our long-standing partnership with Kurt Geiger through the Kurt Geiger Kindness Foundation, which we originally helped to design and launch in 2022. In 2025, a major focus of our work was designing and supporting the Foundation’s new Creative Youth Board - bringing young people with lived experience of barriers to entering the creative industries into the heart of the Foundation’s advocacy and decision-making. We also loved celebrating the Business by Design Academy, which we co-designed, being recognised as Project of the Year at the Business Charity Awards.
Advising The Bicester Collection (who run luxury retail villages like Bicester Village around the world) to continue to develop their DO GOOD charity initiatives and their Unlock Her Future Prize, which supports women social entrepreneurs with start-up funding. Alongside this, we hosted a convening to explore the themes raised in our Chair Alisha’s novel Someone’s Gotta Give, bringing together leaders from philanthropy, business, and social impact to reflect on power, responsibility, and what meaningful philanthropy can look like in practice.
Programmes
2025 was a huge year for the programmes we run at I.G., and a real joy to watch them grow and mature. We spent the year backing fundraisers, funders, and leaders who care deeply and want to get better at what they do - and who also want to change the systems they’re working within:
Our #FixTheFlow Fellowship entered its fifth cohort in four years, and evolved into a finely honed 100 day programme and community for fundraisers and funders around the world, providing coaching, training, and systems-change opportunities to resource activists who want to learn to not only play the game, but also change the game. Through the Fellowship 85% of Fellows feel more energised and confident in their jobs, 50% progress to a more senior or specialist role within 12 months, and 67% feel more empowered to change the funding system and ‘do things differently’.
Our Leadership Lab took on a life of its own, with 80 people across 5 cohorts completing the six week programme to experiment, test and level up their practical leadership skills, personal motivation and professional brands. We had major partnerships with Environmental Funders Network, National Lottery Heritage Fund and Google.org, bringing global impact leaders from across the environmental and technology sectors onto the programme. Our independent impact evaluation found that 91% of participants feel more confident in their leadership.
Facilitation and Learning
Much of our work with clients centres on convening people in shared spaces to explore ideas, co-create solutions, and pause to reflect together. Our team is known for exceptional facilitation, and our workshops are widely recognised as energising, thoughtful, and motivating. We partner closely with clients to shape learning journeys and retreats, and we lead away days and events that are typically focused on participation, peer learning, and strategic development. In 2025 we:
Proudly continued delivering the 100x Impact Accelerator in partnership with The London School of Economics, welcoming 8 social ventures from Southeast Asia, India, Africa and the Middle East to Cohort 4 of the programme which seeks to create ‘impact unicorns’. We taught Scaling Up, Leadership and Fundraising Strategy, and provided coaching, workshops and peer learning spaces. We’ll be jumping into the next cohort this Spring, and can’t wait!
Wrapped up our partnership with The London Community Foundation, where we designed and led a multi-year learning and development programme for grassroots organisations working to end violence against women and girls (VAWG). We facilitated peer learning, skills sessions, and 1:1 coaching, creating safe, trauma-informed spaces that strengthened leadership, fundraising confidence, and collective advocacy, and supported partner-led community-building and collaboration as a lasting legacy of the work.
Coaching
At the heart of our coaching work is a belief that better leadership leads to better outcomes. Through executive, leadership, and impact coaching, we support individuals to strengthen their leadership identity, navigate challenges, and lead in ways that are both effective and values-aligned. In 2025 we coached dozens of people across 16 countries, from the nonprofit, social enterprise and philanthropy sectors.
Out and About
You might know from how often you see one of the I.G. team at an event, on a podcast, or on your LinkedIn / Youtube feed, that we are always out and about in the sector. As well as just being social creatures, we really believe it's an essential part of impact work to build community, convene with likeminded people, and use our platforms to advocate for better practice and better thinking. In 2025 we hosted solidarity workshops, bookclubs, debate-and-networking events, breakfast clubs, VIP shopping events, online communities and spoke at Skoll, UNGA, Edinburgh Book Festival, Blackbaud’s Corporate Social Impact Summit, and many more. We honestly lost count!
To keep up with our future speaking, writing, and event hosting, sign up for our newsletter, follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to our YouTube.
If any of this sounds like a good fit for your needs, or you’d like to discuss making 2026 the year we try something new with you, get in touch!