The Inflexion Foundation, marking its five-year milestone in 2023, is pleased to announce a broadening of its focus to include environment. This reflects Inflexion’s belief in the fundamental importance of sustainability as well as our commitment to being a responsible investor. 

The Inflexion Foundation’s first strategic partnership in this space is with the Royal Geographical Society (“RGS”), a charity which focuses on the environment through education, itself a large part of the Foundation’s efforts. The RGS and the Inflexion Foundation have agreed support of £60,000 per annum for the next three years.  

The RGS was founded in 1830 with the goal of sharing knowledge about the world and has become a leading advocate and influential voice for geography in the UK. RGS champions the vital contribution that geography brings to our understanding of the rapidly changing environmental and social challenges facing us, as well as how we should tackle them. RGS addresses this through education, research, fieldwork, and public engagement in long-term projects which support organisations in building and establishing lasting projects and relationships to meet RGS’s aims and objectives.

The Inflexion Foundation’s strategic partnership with the RGS will directly support two of its pilot projects: ‘Geography for All’ works to improve access to geography as a subject and therefore to encourage diversity within RGS’s discipline, building on RGS’s research on under-representation and experiences of who is and isn’t studying geography. ‘Earth Stories’ develops new approaches in communicating about sustainability by bringing together leading climate, biodiversity and sustainability specialists with culture and media industry decision-makers as well as leading creative talent to improve and enable public understanding of this important subject.

We are humbled by the impact the work the Inflexion Foundation has had in the last five years, and we are delighted to broaden its focus to the environment. This core issue touches everybody, with those in disadvantaged positions often even more affected by adverse environment-related matters. We are pleased to be partnering with the RGS so that we can support their critical work in this space.

John Hartz, Trustee of the Inflexion Foundation

We look forward to The Inflexion Foundation supporting two key areas of our activity; working with colleagues and organisations across the geographical community to improve the prospects for young people under-represented in the discipline through our Geography for All programme, and through the Earth Stories initiative, which is supporting engaging storytelling about the environment and sustainability, bringing together leading specialists with media industry decision-makers and creative talent to help engage and energise citizens.

Professor Joe Smith, Director of the Royal Geographical Society