Are businesses missing the point of charity partnerships?
When businesses choose a charity partner, it is understandable they want to support a cause that resonates with their employees, customers and values. For many, that means choosing a charity dedicated to children. But in making that choice, are businesses sometimes overlooking organisations that make a significant difference to children’s lives simply because they also support adults?
This is often the case, and it risks overlooking organisations making a significant difference to young lives. Increasingly, companies look to demonstrate meaningful social impact, and partnering with a charity delivers a ‘win, win’ for all parties, as it gives employees and customers a cause to align to, and the cause exposure and income from fundraising. But the most effective partnerships should be judged by the difference they make, rather than the category a charity occupies.
At Leukaemia Care, we support people affected by blood cancer at every stage of life. Yet because we are not exclusively a children’s charity, the work we do with younger patients is not always the first thing prospective corporate partners hear about us.
Our latest figures demonstrate just how significant young people are to our support work. In 2025/26, 63.4% of applications for our CAR-T support service (Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy, an advanced treatment that uses a patient’s own immune cells, modified to recognise and attack cancer) were aged 18 and under. The average age was just nine years old.
Accessing it can mean travelling a considerable distance from home, and the average distance our patients travelled to the nearest hospital providing the treatment was 113 miles, illustrating the challenges families face.
Through a charitable partnership with Dalata Hotel Group, in 2025/26, 13 of our 64 applicants aged up to 18 used our hotel accommodation service, accounting for 254 nights across the recorded locations. And with hotel stays of up to 31 nights. And that’s what we mean when we talk about impact. Dalata uses the resources it has to help those needing it most. For those families, it provides somewhere to sleep, eat and recover between hospital visits, while allowing a parent to remain close to their child.
The lesson is that a corporate partner can bring more to a charity partnership than money, and the most useful contribution will depend on the needs of the people the charity supports and the capabilities of the organisation involved. It’s about matching what a business does well with what a charity and its beneficiaries genuinely need.
It’s also important to be able to demonstrate what has changed as a result of a partnership, and whether it sustains that contribution beyond a one-off campaign. The money raised, the number of volunteers involved, or the hours contributed are useful, but understanding how that support helps people is equally important.
There is also a great opportunity to involve employees in understanding that impact. When colleagues understand the practical challenges families face when their child needs specialist care, for instance, they can develop a stronger connection to the cause, and a clearer sense of what impact their contribution makes.
Children’s charities play an invaluable role, and there is nothing wrong with a business choosing to support one. The question is whether a children-only policy should automatically exclude every organisation that also supports adults.
At Leukaemia Care, we want prospective partners to understand that supporting people of all ages does not dilute our impact on children. It is part of the reason we can support families across the different challenges that blood cancer brings.
The best corporate partnerships tend to be the ones in which a business understands a genuine need, brings something valuable to address it, and can demonstrate the difference that contribution makes.
Colin Dyer, chief executive of blood cancer charity Leukaemia Care