The largely favourable assessments of London’s mayoralty, marking the 25th anniversary of the restoration of London’s regional tier of government, have tended to overlook that the three Mayors in that time have presided over the capital’s increasing polarisation of wealth. According to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, London is now home to 227,000 millionaires, a 3.8 per cent increase since 2024. Over 60 percent of London’s wealth is owned by the richest 10 per cent of its households. The bottom 50 per cent own just four per cent. Yet, perversely, research by Charities Aid Foundation reveals that all 10 of the least generous areas in the UK are affluent London districts.
The capital’s increasing wealth divide is one of the greatest risks to its social integration and continued economic success, including the current Mayor’s vision of “good growth.” As part of the new Labour government’s Plan for Change, culture secretary Lisa Nandy has announced the preparation of a place-based philanthropy strategy. Her department has committed to “exploring how the government can create an environment to encourage philanthropists to support local communities across the country, reaching areas that need it most”.
The ideas of establishing local “philanthropy champions” and of “diaspora giving networks” were mooted in the Kruger Review and explored further in the more recent Law Family Commission on Civil Society. There are also lessons the Department for Culture, Media and Sport could learn from London’s recent efforts to harness greater amounts of civic philanthropy, and from one of the capital’s three Mayors in particular.
Boris Johnson’s mayoralty (2008-2016) was marked by a distinctive attempt to incorporate philanthropic mechanisms into the governance of London, influenced heavily by the policies of former New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg. Inspired by Bloomberg’s use of private wealth and corporate partnerships to achieve public outcomes, Johnson imported a trio of initiatives which attempted to embed a similar US-style culture of civic giving in the UK’s capital. These were the Mayor’s Fund for London, Team London and the Foundation for Future London. What has been their impact and legacy? What can be learned from them?
The Mayor’s Fund for London
Founded in 2008 as an independent social mobility charity, the Mayor’s Fund for London was designed to mobilise private resources in support of disadvantaged young Londoners across the city. Johnson served as the fund’s patron, but did not personally donate to it – a contrast to Mayor Bloomberg’s hands-on financial support for similar initiatives in New York.
Despite being legally independent, the fund’s identity remained closely tied to the Mayor’s office. This dual status created both reputational advantages and political vulnerabilities. The fund proved effective in leveraging resources from certain corporate donors, including Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Berkeley Foundation, for initiatives such as Kitchen Social, which tackle school holiday hunger.
However, its dependence on the perceived support of the Mayor has complicated its ability to operate independently, not least during mayoral transitions. It also caused confusion when the charity strayed into social policy areas which fell with the domain of the Greater London Authority (GLA).
Team London and Civic Participation
Team London, modelled on US Cities of Service (another Bloomberg-backed initiative), evolved out of the London Ambassadors volunteer programme designed for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. It subsequently became a vehicle for engaging Londoners and corporate partners in high-impact volunteering, brokering relationships between civil society organisations and businesses through platforms such as Skill-UP and Careers Clusters which have supported a range of education and employment initiatives.
It complemented the broader goals of the GLA’s Good Work agenda by promoting employer-supported volunteering and embedding social value in corporate activities. However, internal GLA structures lacked a cohesive strategy to capitalise fully on Team London’s potential, resulting in fragmented efforts across different departments.
The Foundation for Future London and Cultural Philanthropy
Established in 2015 during Johnson’s final year in office, the Foundation for Future London aimed to deliver a lasting cultural and economic legacy at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Its mission was to raise considerable sums from high net worth individuals and corporate donors to support East Bank, the park’s emerging educational and cultural district.
The foundation was initially tasked with raising £89 million in private capital, a target modelled on US philanthropic practices. However, the UK’s fiscal and cultural environment proved less conducive to it, and the Foundation was never adequately staffed or resourced to achieve such an ambitious goal. Its failure to meet expectations initially damaged relationships with East Bank partners and contributed to a perception of mismanagement, compelling the organisation to reinvent itself in order to survive.
It subsequently, in 2020, secured a landmark agreement to deliver the Westfield East Bank Creative Futures Fund, a £10 million grant to fund employment, skills, and cultural activities in East London. This has helped to reposition the foundation as a local grant maker and agent of place-based development, but tensions have remained, not least with the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), which retained financial and governance entanglements with the foundation, leading to confusion over the organisations’ respective roles and remits.
Reflections and Challenges
Boris Johnson’s philanthropic ventures showed his ideological leaning toward the use of private initiative for public good, mirroring American models of civic engagement. However, this approach encountered several challenges in London. The UK lacks the tax incentives which support large-scale philanthropy in the US, and public expectations of the state’s role in social provision are fundamentally different.
The ambitious goals of, in particular, the Foundation for Future London underestimated the complexities of inter-agency governance and the difficulties of mobilising large-scale giving without dedicated infrastructure and public buy-in. Similarly, the Mayor’s Fund’s ambiguous status highlighted some of the risks of blurring public and private responsibilities for social policy in the capital and the challenges of harnessing individual and corporate philanthropy in order to address civic or statutory priorities.
Conclusion
Johnson’s legacy in philanthropic governance is one of bold experimentation characterised by his desire to reorientate London’s civic institutions. In a nod to Prince Albert and the perceived golden age of Victorian civic philanthropy, he even wanted to call what is now East Bank “Olympicopolis” – a nod to South Kensington’s nickname, “Albertopolis“. Some of his initiatives have endured and adapted, others have struggled.
In 2016, the year Johnson left office, the London Fairness Commission also saw fit to invoke the name of a great Victorian philanthropist when it argued that it was “Time for a ‘Peabody’ Moment…time for London’s wealthiest residents and businesses to come together in an exemplary social philanthropic effort”. Nearly ten years on, and with 26 per cent of Londoners recorded as now living in poverty – around 2.3 million people, roughly twice the population of Birmingham – we are still waiting.
John Griffiths is founder and director of the Rocket Science consultancy, on whose website this article originally appeared. This is a slightly edited version of it. Follow John at LinkedIn.
OnLondon.co.uk provides unique coverage of the capital’s politics, development and culture with no paywall and no ads. The vast majority of its income comes from individual supporters, who pay £5 a month or £50 a year. They receive in return bespoke newsletters, bargain London event offers and much gratitude. Details HERE.