(3 minute read)
Published: 9 December 2025
Written by: Alice Thornton, Head of Research and Impact
We are delighted to announce that John Ellerman Foundation has appointed two new investment consultants to advise us on investing our endowment in line with our charitable aim, following an open selection process conducted this summer.
Gallagher (formerly known as Redington) have been appointed as investment consultant for our portfolio of financial investments, as well as providing us with reporting on the performance of our total endowment. In future, we also expect the team at Gallagher to support us with building our social investment portfolio by sourcing opportunities to invest in impact funds and conducting due diligence on our behalf.
We have also appointed S and One Ltd, a specialist impact investment consultancy led by Shishir Malhotra, as our new social investment consultant. Shishir will work alongside Amir Rizwan, and together they will support us to develop our new social investment portfolio by sourcing and conducting due diligence on high-impact social investment opportunities, including funds and direct investments in charities and social enterprises.
Both consultants have been appointed following a highly competitive, open selection process conducted this summer. Our Request for Proposals document outlined how our thinking on investment has developed since 2020 so that we now take account of non-financial outcomes alongside financial returns. Earlier this year, we also committed to invest approximately 10% of our endowment (c.£15m) in social investments over the coming years.
This evolving and more ambitious approach to our investing meant that our investment advice needs have evolved too. We were looking to work with an investment consultant who is equally ambitious about responsible investment, and can actively support us to progress our charitable aim through the way our endowment is invested. For the first time, we were also seeking a consultant to support us with planning and building a portfolio of social investments.
We were surprised by the level of interest we attracted across a wide variety of different types of consultants. We received a total of 35 proposals; around half expressed interest in both roles (financial investment consultant and social investment consultant), around a quarter in becoming our financial investment consultant, and a quarter in becoming our social investment consultant.
We shortlisted six high quality proposals for interview. In addition to Gallagher and S and One Ltd, these were:
- Stanhope Consulting (financial investment consultant)
- PMCL Consulting (financial investment consultant)
- Better Society Capital (social investment consultant)
- Social Finance (social investment consultant).
Stanhope Consulting have been our investment consultant for over 10 years, and we remain impressed by their tailored, client-centric approach and charity sector specialism, as well as an excellent value for money service. We were struck by PMCL Consulting’s depth of knowledge and insight about our six fund managers, and their thoughtful analysis of how to improve our investment approach with responsible investment aims in mind. Better Society Capital offered an exceptionally strong breadth and depth of knowledge on the growing UK social investment market, as well as the opportunity to benefit from efficiencies offered by their well-established investment due diligence processes. Social Finance offered the ability to blend both financial expertise and detailed understanding of social impact, as well as the wider benefits of high quality research and policy influencing capabilities.
Overall, Gallagher stood out to us due to the clarity of their approach and quality of their expertise on responsible and social investing. Their team were able to communicate about investment topics clearly to a non-expert audience, and offer well-established institutional investment expertise alongside a highly flexible approach with our specific aims in mind. We were also struck by Gallagher’s responsible investment team’s wide-ranging knowledge of topics relating to sustainability, and the organisation’s growing expertise in impact investing.
S and One Ltd provided a highly thoughtful and considered approach, built on expertise that is strongly aligned with the ambitions we have for our new social investment portfolio. We were also excited by their ability to source high-impact social investment opportunities within the social sector that would not easily fall within the remit of larger investment advisory firms.
We hope that both consultants, working together as well as directly with our team, will support us to continue being as ambitious as we can in the way we invest and use our endowment to further our charitable aim.
If you are interested in learning more about the process of appointing our new investment consultants, please read our next blog post ‘Appointing our new investment consultants – sharing what we learnt’, or do get in touch with me directly.