One of the biggest untapped opportunities to become more visible in an organisation is hiding in plain sight, explain Caroline Rees Williams and Helen Rees
Corporate philanthropy is often one of those things that quietly lands on an EA’s desk. It sits somewhere between HR, culture, operations, and leadership, which usually means nobody fully owns it. A fundraising request arrives in the inbox. A volunteering idea gets mentioned in a meeting. Someone suggests supporting a local charity at the Christmas party. Before long, business support professionals find themselves coordinating charitable initiatives alongside everything else they already do.
In our experience, that is exactly why Executive Assistants and business support professionals are so uniquely positioned to lead this work, and more importantly, why we should. As EAs, we are acutely aware of the constant conversation around becoming more “strategic.” We are encouraged to increase our visibility, influence decision-making, and contribute beyond traditional support responsibilities. Yet one of the biggest untapped opportunities to do exactly that is often hiding in plain sight: corporate philanthropy.
Not only does it create meaningful impact for charities and communities, but it also allows business support professionals to demonstrate leadership, project management, stakeholder engagement, and strategic thinking in incredibly visible ways. The professional development benefits are not only immediate in terms of your current role but could make a significant impact on your future career potential.
For both of us, corporate philanthropy has become one of the most rewarding parts of our careers.
What Is Corporate Philanthropy?
At its simplest, corporate philanthropy is when businesses use their money, people, skills, networks, or influence to create positive social impact.
That can include:
- Volunteering initiatives
- Fundraising and sponsored events
- Payroll giving
- Corporate foundations
- Charity partnerships
- Match-funding employee fundraising
- Pro bono support
- Donating products, services, or equipment
Importantly, it is about far more than writing a cheque. The most impactful corporate philanthropy creates genuine partnerships between businesses and charities. Businesses provide support and resources, while charities provide perspective, purpose, and human connection. When done well, both sides benefit enormously.
Charities gain funding, visibility, expertise, and sustainability. Businesses strengthen culture, improve employee engagement, attract talent, and build stronger reputations. Individuals themselves often gain confidence, fulfilment, and entirely new career opportunities. From our experiences, those individual benefits can be transformational.
Why EAs Are Perfectly Positioned to Lead It
Many of the skills required to lead successful charitable initiatives are the very skills business support professionals already use every day. EAs understand how organisations operate. We work cross-functionally, manage competing priorities, coordinate projects, build relationships, and influence stakeholders across all levels of a business. In many organisations, we are the connectors. That unique visibility gives us the ability to spot opportunities, rally people behind initiatives, and turn ideas into action.
Corporate philanthropy also creates a powerful opportunity for EAs to showcase capabilities that may otherwise go unnoticed. Leading charitable initiatives allows business support professionals to demonstrate:
- Leadership
- Strategic thinking
- Communication and influence
- Stakeholder management
- Event and project management
- Cross-functional collaboration
Importantly, it also puts EAs in rooms they may not otherwise have access to, with senior leadership teams, trustees, board members, charity leaders, and external stakeholders.
For those looking to grow their careers or become more strategic, corporate philanthropy can become an incredibly valuable platform. Designing and implementing charitable programmes in your organisation could see you reporting to management or boards in more strategic ways, honing your skills and understanding of charitable governance, or becoming the subject matter expert on project management frameworks for these initiatives.
Career Impact
One thing we have both seen repeatedly is that charitable initiatives often become career-defining opportunities for the people leading them.
For Caroline, that journey began in 2020 while working as VP Operations and EA to the CEO at a private equity real estate company. Alongside her day job, she set up and ran the company’s corporate foundation while also serving on the Board of Trustees. Like many EAs stepping into this space for the first time, she openly admits she had no idea what she was doing initially. It felt overwhelming. Time-consuming. Daunting. But everything changed once she started meeting the charities, grantees, and beneficiaries the foundation supported. What originally felt like “another responsibility” quickly became the most meaningful part of her role. Over six years, the foundation work created opportunities she never expected: speaking at industry events, winning awards, attending receptions at Downing Street and the House of Commons, and ultimately becoming recognised as a respected voice within the business support profession.
And yet, the most important moments were never the high-profile ones. One experience in particular has stayed with Caroline.
During the foundation’s partnership with UK homeless charity Hand on Heart, the team learned that the charity was transporting care packs (150–200 at a time) in the founders’ family car for outreach events. At one distribution event, another charity arrived in a fully equipped van that allowed them to operate efficiently and at scale. Seeing the difference that vehicle made, the foundation chairman immediately committed to funding Hand on Heart’s first van. Sharing that news with the founders was emotional for everyone involved, but the true impact came afterwards.
Two years later, that van has travelled more than 15,000 miles, supporting 17,600 guests across 36 UK locations. It has become a recognised part of the charity’s outreach work and significantly increased their ability to support vulnerable communities. Moments like that are incredibly difficult to describe unless you have experienced them yourself. There is something profoundly meaningful about knowing that your role at work helped make that possible.
For Helen, working for over 11 years as the CEO’s PA at Marwell Wildlife and then for three years as EA to the CEO and Board of Trustees at global health and wellbeing charity parkrun has provided countless examples of the impact that meaningful partnerships can create, and has also proven to be a defining skillset in her career as a Charity EA Network leader, committee member, and public speaker.
At Marwell, corporate volunteering programmes regularly brought teams from businesses into the zoological park to support conservation projects, habitat restoration, and animal enrichment initiatives. The practical support was invaluable. But the real impact often came from the connection people developed with the cause itself. Many left with a deeper understanding of conservation and a genuine desire to stay involved, whether through repeat volunteering, membership, or advocacy. The opportunity for Marwell’s staff to be part of that experience – helping shine a spotlight on vital conservation work and connect office workers with the mental, physical, and community health benefits of nature – was a genuine privilege.
At parkrun, Helen was involved directly in the collaboration on which large-scale social impact depends. Thousands of volunteers give their time every weekend to deliver free community events across the world, with around 450,000 individuals taking part. And while parkrun is free to participants, this huge undertaking is not free to put on. Funding comes from government grants, individual donations, and legacies, as well as corporate sponsorship, partnerships, and philanthropists. But it’s rarely a purely financial transaction. Those supporters want to be part of the parkrun wellbeing movement. They understand – and enjoy – the benefits of being involved. They volunteer, drive engagement, champion the mission, and actively support the movement.
Helen’s experience in charity and non-profit roles, bringing those people together through partner conferences, government receptions, and other initiatives, is a powerful reminder of the impact that can be achieved when people unite behind a shared purpose. The project management skillset required for an EA to deliver such initiatives (including budgeting, logistics management, stakeholder communication, CEO reputation, volunteer experience management, board reporting, and evaluation) were all vital to the success of these impacts.
You Do Not Need to Start Big
One of the biggest misconceptions around corporate philanthropy is that businesses need huge budgets or dedicated CSR teams to get involved. They do not.
Some of the most impactful initiatives start with relatively small actions:
- Organising a volunteering day
- Supporting a local charity event
- Launching a donation drive
- Creating a charity committee
- Introducing payroll giving
- Appointing a charity partner for a corporate event
The important thing is simply to start somewhere. From there, initiatives often grow organically into something much more embedded and strategic.
In our experience, corporate philanthropy works best when:
- Values of the business and charity are aligned
- Employees feel genuinely involved
- Partnerships are long-term
- Initiatives become part of company culture
- Collaboration exists openly on both sides
The stronger the employee connection to the purpose behind an initiative, the greater the impact tends to be.
Performance Reviews
Focus on how to translate the skills you acquire into career development language. Document this work properly, the same way you would any other project. Evaluate, peer review, check, and audit.
If you lead a charity initiative, capture:
- objectives
- stakeholders
- budget
- timeline
- risks
- outcomes
- lessons learned
- funds raised
- volunteer hours
- beneficiaries supported
- employee engagement
- reputational / partnership benefits
- impact
This gives you really strong evidence for a mid-year review, annual appraisal, or promotion conversation.
Instead of saying, “I helped with charity work,” you can say, “I led a cross-functional corporate philanthropy project involving senior stakeholders, external charity partners, budget management, risk assessment, employee engagement, and board-level reporting.” That feels much more Level 3–4 (on the Global Skills Matrix) because it positions the work as strategic contribution, not just organising charity activity.
Training
This factor is slightly paradoxical because so many of us take on this kind of work without any training. We know that lots of EAs / business support professionals are handed this work without training because it doesn’t obviously sit anywhere else. Networks like PACE (for Assistants supporting charity executives) offer seminars, webinars, and events around professional development topics (project management, working with fundraisers, charity governance, etc).
We have tried to focus on “here’s how to build your own learning pathway” rather than “here’s a course you can do,” but here are some other things to consider:
- Learn the basics of charity governance and trustee responsibilities (in the UK, by reading Charity Commission / gov.uk guidance).
- Attend CSR (corporate social responsibility) webinars, panels, and events.
- Ask your executive why they want to be involved in corporate philanthropy, and create measurable metrics from there.
- Ask your peers what their companies are doing to support charitable initiatives.
- Ask your colleagues for ideas; they will likely have causes close to their heart and fundraising ideas that they’re willing to support.
- Ask charity partners what they actually need, not just what the business wants to give.
- Consider charity consultants or trustee training if budget allows.
- Do a short review after each initiative: what worked, what didn’t, what would we change?
What We Wish Someone Had Told Us
- Good intentions matter, but they aren’t enough on their own; you need structure, governance, and proper oversight.
- It’s okay not to know everything at the beginning. Lots of EAs are given this kind of work without any formal training.
- You can’t do it alone. Whilst you can lead initiatives, for corporate philanthropy to work and have maximum impact, it’s vital to engage the wider team. Have regular team updates about progress, empower them to make decisions as a team (such as which charity to support / what volunteer event to organise), share regular updates from beneficiaries (ideally face-to-face interaction), and publicise the good work you’re doing to encourage others and build brand reputation, etc.
- In the UK, a lot of useful information already exists, especially on gov.uk and the Charity Commission website.
- Charity consultants exist. If you’re doing something “bigger” like a corporate foundation, they can help with things like constitutions, grant-making policies, charity strategy, trustee training, governance, etc.
- From a charity perspective, we’d strongly recommend that interested corporates get in touch directly with charities that align with your mission, values, and purpose or that you’d like to collaborate with. Don’t go CEO to CEO; they are dealing with approaches from a range of stakeholders all the time. For EAs, we highly recommend going straight to the charity’s EA. Have an initial conversation, and they’ll help you connect with the relevant teams within the charity. Charities are approached ‘cold’ all the time with offers that don’t quite land; take the time to build a relationship first and really understand the charity before you get into the details of the project.
A Call to Business Support Professionals
For those business support professionals reading this who may already have “the charity stuff” quietly sitting on their desk: lean into it. Volunteer for it. Champion it. Take ownership of it. Not only because it matters for the beneficiaries and communities being supported – although it absolutely does – but because it may also become one of the most rewarding and career-defining opportunities of your professional life.
Too often, EAs underestimate the influence they already have within their organisations. Corporate philanthropy is one of the clearest examples where business support professionals can step beyond traditional expectations and create meaningful organisational impact. It allows us to lead projects, influence culture, strengthen relationships, and contribute strategically, while also helping charities and communities who genuinely need support.
