Our story

Established in 2005

A family foundation with a long-term vision

The Stone Family Foundation was established in 2005 as a family-led philanthropic trust. From the beginning, our ambition has been to fund with purpose and a willingness to take risks to support innovative developments.

Early pilots and lessons learned
In its early years, the Foundation supported a wide range of causes, experimenting with different approaches to understand where philanthropy could achieve the most impact. A major breakthrough came in Cambodia, where we backed a successful innovative sanitation marketing programmes.

This project showed that market-based models, where services are financially sustainable and customer-focused, deliver far greater long-term impact than traditional charity-based infrastructure projects.

Evolving our focus
Building on this learning, we refined our strategy to focus on:

• Internationally → from 2010 on a portfolio of WASH programmes and more recently to focus on access to safe Water to the Home through piped water networks and household connections.
• In the UK → supporting young people through mental health, disadvantaged youth, eating disorders and domestic abuse charities.

While these portfolios are different in geography and theme, both share a common philosophy: long-term, risk-tolerant, trust-based philanthropy.

Where we are today
Today, the Foundation continues to grow its impact:

• Water to the Home: pioneering approaches across Africa, Asia and Central America testing solar-powered systems and innovative finance facilities.
• UK Grant Giving: providing multi-year, mostly unrestricted funding to charities with strong leadership and potential to scale.

We remain a small, family foundation — but with big ambitions. Guided by our trustees and partners, our focus is on funding innovation that can transform systems and improve lives for the long term.

Our case studies show how strategies work on the ground both in the UK and Internationally