We're asked this more than almost anything else: how does a small foundation decide who to back? There's no scoring spreadsheet or committee vote we can point to, and no shortlist published each year. What we do have is a consistent way of thinking about the question, built up over every partnership we've entered — and it starts long before any funding changes hands.
Fit with our focus areas comes first
We deliberately work across three areas — homelessness, education and access, and community development — rather than trying to be useful to every good cause that crosses our path. That narrows things immediately. A candidate organisation has to sit clearly within one of those three areas, or we're not the right partner for it, however worthwhile its work might be. This isn't a reflection of what we think matters most in the world; it's a recognition that trying to do everything usually means doing nothing particularly well.
Our existing partnerships show what that looks like in practice. CHESS Homeless in Chelmsford and Homeless Street Angels in Leeds both sit squarely within homelessness — organisations working directly with people experiencing homelessness in their own communities. An educational technology programme in India sits within education and access, extending learning tools to students who wouldn't otherwise have them. None of these were chosen because they were the biggest or best-known names in their field; they were chosen because they matched an area we'd already committed to understanding properly.
Evidence on the ground, and leadership we can trust
Fit alone isn't enough. Before we commit to anything, we research a candidate charity properly — not just what it says about itself, but how it actually operates day to day. That means looking closely at its leadership: whether the people running it understand the problem they're addressing, whether they're realistic about what's working and what isn't, and whether they're the kind of partners we can have an honest conversation with over years, not months.
We're also looking for organisations already achieving something real on the ground, even at small scale, rather than a compelling plan with no track record behind it. A charity that can show what it has actually done — who it has reached, what has changed for them — gives us something concrete to build on and, later, to measure against.
"We look for organisations we can genuinely help, not just fund — that's where the real difference gets made."
— Rachel Buscall, CEO
Room for us to add more than money
Because we don't spread our resources across a large number of causes, we're able to ask a further question: is there room here for New Capital Link to contribute more than a cheque? That might mean professional expertise in financial planning, operational improvement or technology; it might mean donations of goods and equipment; it might mean our own people volunteering their time directly. Our work with CHESS Homeless, Homeless Street Angels and the educational technology programme in India has drawn on different combinations of all three, shaped by what each organisation actually needed rather than a fixed template applied to all of them.
If a candidate cause is already well resourced in every way except funding, that's a good sign for the sector — but it may mean there's less for us specifically to bring, and we're honest with ourselves about that.
Choosing few, going deep
Once a partnership begins, we develop clear metrics with the organisation so we can both see what impact actually looks like over time, rather than relying on impressions. That kind of ongoing attention only works if the number of partnerships stays small. It's a deliberate trade-off: we would rather commit properly to a handful of causes across our three areas than commit lightly to many, and we accept that this means saying no to good organisations more often than we say yes.
How a recommendation becomes a supported cause
Every partnership we have today started the same way — as a recommendation. We don't run public appeals or seek out causes through advertising; we rely on people who know an organisation's work directly telling us about it. That's what our Suggestions page is for. Anyone can put forward a charity working in homelessness, education and access, or community development, and every submission is reviewed with the same care we've just described: fit, evidence, leadership, and the question of what we could genuinely add. Most recommendations won't lead to a partnership straight away, if at all — but each one is how the process actually begins.