For this month’s CSR Profile, we’re shining the spotlight on Macquarie Group, hearing from Farzana Islam, Executive in the Macquarie Group Foundation team.

Please provide a short outline of your current role and a brief description of any other relevant career experience
My role at Macquarie Group (“Macquarie”) is to support our staff in giving back to their local communities and the causes they are passionate about. Staff at Macquarie are encouraged and supported to do so through the Group’s Foundation, that offers matched funding up to $A50,000 per person each year for all donations and fundraising, staff are also entitled to $A250 direct funding to non-profits for the hours they volunteer in the community. A big part of my role involves working with our long-term grant partners to offer staff meaningful and impactful engagement opportunities to take part in. I also support a number of our employee network groups across our European offices including our Graduate Volunteer Network, ‘Fusion’; our ethnicity network, and ‘Pride’ in support of the LGBTQ+ community, to help ensure that we are giving back and making an impact wherever we are in the region.

My introduction to the world of CSR came through joining the ELBA Eagles’s programme back in 2015, as part of the summer cohort. Prior to this, I had been working as a paralegal and was looking for a change in career, inspired by wanting to find a way to make more change in society. My Eagles’s placement was as an intern at RBS, before being promoted to Community Programmes Assistant Manager, focusing on the bank’s flagship financial education programme for young people and grants programme, aimed at supporting organisations that help people in disadvantaged communities to develop and grow. Prior to my role at Macquarie, I also supported the Community Affairs team at Morgan Stanley during their annual Global Volunteer Month as well as their flagship pro-bono capacity building programme.

Why is CSR important to your organisation?
Philanthropy has always been a crucial part of Macquarie’s DNA. Over the years we have supported thousands of community organisations globally through financial support, volunteering and skills sharing, focusing on making the greatest impact we can make in the places in which we live and work. Our purpose as an organisation, to empower people to innovate and invest for a better future, plays a big part in our approach to philanthropy, not only through our strategic grant giving but also our staff-led approach to giving by supporting our staff with the causes they are most passionate about. All of this is underpinned by our long-held principles of Opportunity, Accountability, and Integrity. We believe that Macquarie has a responsibility to be accountable for our actions to all our stakeholders, to each other and those living and working in our local communities. Meaning that we need to take a flexible approach to our funding and responding to the needs of our community.

For example, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we focused on providing support to communities and the non-profit sector facing significant challenges, allocating $A20million to organisations providing immediate and medium term relief to affected communities.

Which topics, themes or initiatives are your organisation currently focused on?
At Macquarie, we take a very localised approach to giving, recognising that different regions face distinct challenges and priorities, and by tailoring our approach in each region we can create the greatest social impact. Here in EMEA, our regional focus is to support organisations that further social mobility for young people, specifically on education and employment. Making a meaningful and lasting impact within the communities in which we live and work, is the ethos of the Foundation’s work at Macquarie. Our portfolio of our grant partners allows us to take a long-term approach to addressing this issue and use our staff’s skills and expertise to have a broad impact. Recently, we launched a ‘Social Mobility Week’, giving a spotlight to our partner non-profits. Throughout the week we ran a series of internal events to raise awareness of this topic including a pledge programme, a fundraiser ‘Dress for Work’ in aid of the Social Mobility Foundation, and a panel event with the CEO of Reach Out and our regional Head of HR.

On a long-term basis I work with our non-profit partners to look for opportunities to match our staff into projects, helping to make lasting impact with the young people we work with, which includes those in primary school through to those in University looking to start their professional career. Partners include TutorMate, Islington Giving and Mentoring Works, Social Mobility Foundation and Leadership Through Sport and Business.

As mentioned, we also have a strong focus on place-based giving and for the past eight years Macquarie have been supporting the London borough of Islington where our European headquarters is based. We are the principal founder and funder of the BIG Alliance, a satellite project of ELBA.

Macquarie is also focusing on building out our Ambassador’s Network – a network of staff volunteers dedicated to providing pro-bono support to the five recipient organisations of our $A50 million 50th Anniversary Award last year.

What is the best part of your job?
Macquarie has a strong culture of giving and supporting staff to give back to the causes that they are passionate about. Due to our staff-led approach, it’s always exciting to see the different fundraising ideas that staff have which brings up different challenges each time and keeps the job interesting. Helping design, develop and implement activities is a lot of fun – this year I’ve helped to manage virtual fundraisers such as an Omelette Challenge, Race to Sydney (virtually) that helped our graduates raise over £20,000 for FoodCycle equating to 17,000 meals. Each time we onboard new members of staff, graduates, and interns, it’s great to see the surprised faces when we tell them about all the different ways that our Group’s Foundation can support their donations and fundraising efforts.