Smiths Foundation awards £1.3m of charitable grants in 2026

Total funding reaches c.£3m to 30 charities in three years since inception

Smiths, a leading industrial engineering company, today announces that its charitable foundation has awarded its third round of funding, with £1.3m being granted to 13 charities around the world in 2026. Total funding the Foundation has granted since its inception three years ago has now reached nearly £3m spanning 16 countries worldwide.

This year’s charities were selected because they closely align with Smiths purpose and values, as well as the Foundation’s impact framework – supporting STEM education, environmental sustainability, and improving safety and connectedness.

An important principle of the Foundation is that Smiths people are empowered to nominate charities that are important to them. A committee, overseen by CAF, the charities aid foundation, then decides which nominations are successful. Priority is given to nominations that have greatest alignment to the Foundation’s impact framework. The goal is for financial grants and employee engagement to come together to make real and lasting impact on local communities.

An organisation previously supported by the Foundation in 2024 is Flint Global – a charity that partners with local leaders to co‑create long‑term, community‑led solutions that break cycles of poverty. The Foundation previously supported Flint to provide bio-gas systems across multiple Maasai communities in Kenya, as a means of sustainable energy for cooking, heating and lighting. The charity secured additional funding thanks to the project’s outstanding impact and the strong relationships it built across the business, especially with employees at Flex‑Tek.

Travis Trull, Founder & Executive Director of Flint Global, said: "Smiths has been an incredible partner in helping us equip communities with practical tools and innovative, engineering-driven solutions that address real-world challenges and permanently break cycles of poverty. Together, we’re seeing lasting change take root, where individuals are not only meeting today’s needs, but building sustainable futures for their families and communities."

Employee-led charities receiving grants from the Foundation include:

• Drive Forward Foundation – a UK charity creating equitable STEM career pathways for care-experienced young people, improving confidence, work-readiness and employer inclusion practices.
• REMAP 2010 – a UK charity providing advanced assistive devices, reducing geographic inequality and enabling independence and community participation for people with disabilities.
• Ripple Suicide Prevention – a UK charity deploying AI algorithms to detect suicide risk online, creating safer digital spaces and enabling timely interventions for vulnerable individuals.
• SolarAid – a sub-Saharan African charity establishing repair ecosystems for solar technology, promoting circular economy principles and ensuring sustainable energy access in last-mile communities.
• Stiftun Kinder Forschen – a German charity empowering girls with foundational computer science skills, building confidence and embedding computing as a permanent extracurricular subject in schools.
• Hope Ignites – a US charity providing STEM youth projects in Arizona.
• Czechitas – a Czechia charity focused on providing skills for the future and women leading the country’s digital transformation.
• In2ScienceUK – a UK charity placing students into engineering and STEM placements.
• Fundación Robótica para la education – a Mexican charity that expands STEM learning for indigenous and rural students, training teachers and promoting gender equity through hands-on robotics and coding programmes.
• Makkala Jagriti – a charity previously supported by the Foundation in 2024 that promote STEM careers among children from marginalised communities.

This year, Smiths is proud to continue its corporate partnership with the World Land Trust, supporting the conservation of 250 acres of critical, high value habitat within Kenya’s Dakatcha Woodland, a landscape of remarkable conservation value, and an area equivalent to Smiths operational footprint +10%. In choosing this geography, Smiths is supporting a global biodiversity hotspot recognised as one of the most threatened forest ecosystems world-wide. This support builds on the Foundation’s existing footprint in Kenya through its awards to Just a Drop and Flint Global charities.

Ben MacDonald, VP for Sustainability, ESG & Indirect Procurement, and Chair of the Foundation, said: “It’s inspiring to see the positive impact that the Foundation is making, through backing charities that make a real difference in people’s lives. This year, we’re also proud to support organisations focused on protecting and restoring biodiversity – an essential part of building resilient communities and a healthier planet.”

---ENDS---