ICM Foundation

Our Philosophy

Understanding the importance of giving

As an active investor and asset manager with business interests that span the world, ICM understands the importance of giving back by investing in the community. Based on almost two decades of private philanthropic experience, ICM has identified sustainable, effective and focused education where the biggest impact can be made on individuals and in communities.

ICM supports game-changing innovative entities, which are human centric, scalable and have the potential to become self-sustaining. ICM Foundation invests in predominantly education focused enterprises taking a fresh approach to moving the needle in this sector, adapting expertise gleaned from our experience in the education sector along with lessons learnt in the business world to create access and opportunities for community organisations and social enterprises that we support. We are passionate about helping our grantees thrive by providing both financial and non-financial support through the deep, meaningful and long-term relationships we have established.

Over the last decade, ICM Foundation and their stakeholders have granted US$17.6 million to community and non-government organisations (NGO's), and ICM Foundation remains committed in its goal of being a mechanism for improving community wellbeing and assisting self-sufficient sustainability. The NGO’s and partners we support through our eco-system deliver projects that assist individuals and communities to care for themselves through entrepreneurial enterprises, including micro financing and micro franchising. In all instances the initiatives we support work closely with the individual in each system or community.

ICM Foundation supports selective education projects and models undertaken by social entrepreneurs such as Teach a Man to Fish, where we are a corporate sponsor of the Schools Enterprise Challenge. This is a global entrepreneurial, self-sufficient school model where pupils are inspired to develop profitable enterprises by implementing their own business plans, along with illustrating entrepreneurial opportunities to those involved. View this video to see an overview of the program and an update from the program operating in Uganda, and the School Enterprise Challenge 2020 Report from Teach a Man To Fish.

In addition, ICM Foundation supports Food Ladder, The Greenlight Movement, Harlequins Foundation, and the London Pulse Netball Team.

Food Ladder provides people the tools to stop hunger and malnourishment, and it will continue its rollout and expansion in Indigenous populated Australia, throughout India, and priority countries in the developing world. The Greenlight Movement supports over 80 NGO's in South Africa to help people progress out of poverty by empowering them to understand and map their own choices; and, the Harlequins Foundation provides solutions to address inequality, poor health and challenges that face the most vulnerable in society using education, skills development and entrepreneurship. View Harlequins' strategy document here for more information, along with their Social Value Forecast report.

ICM began their sponsorship of the London Pulse netball team for the 2024 season. Helping to develop and promote sports across the board is incredibly important to us at ICM, as we see the valuable life skills that sport provides to young people as part of their education journey.

As part of our journey, ICM is seeking to broaden its philanthropic efforts and to galvanise partnerships and engagement in this realm, especially from within the business sector. Finding strong partners should magnify these exciting projects and partner models.

The ICM Foundation supports selected individual projects with funding from ICM and through staff office fund raising initiatives. In 2019, with funding phased over a three year period, the recipient was an organisation called GROW which helps with access to quality early childhood development education in lot income communities in South Africa. GROW is supported by both the ICM Foundation and The Saville Foundation, and the combined 2021 Annual Report for GROW and The Clothing Bank is available here.

Over the years some of our initiatives have helped to support, such as: the Harlequins rugby team's Special Educational Needs and Disability Rugby Festival; The Cova Project, an Australian based entity that offers menstrual cups to African women, bridging the fifty day attendance gap between girls and boys due to menstruation; the Family Literacy Project which is committed to improving the early learning and literacy skills of pre-school children in rural areas of KwaZula-Natal in South Africa; the iThemba Lama Mpumuza Community Centre Project; and, the Asifunde Sonke (Let us learn together) Early Childhood Development Training Centre based in the Drakensberg in South Africa. This short video shows the impact that the ICM Foundation has made at Asifunde Sonke.