Our Partnerships

Cornerstone VC, born out of black-led angel group Cornerstone Partners, has launched a £20m fund to invest in exceptional entrepreneurs in the UK from diverse backgrounds.

The fund will focus on tech-enabled companies at pre-seed and seed stage, typically investing initial cheques of between £250k and £1m with capital reserved for follow-on funding. It plans to invest in up to 40 companies with a significant proportion based outside of London.

Cornerstone VC bring more than just capital to the table, offering support to scale companies talent through HR support, strategy and funding support, and an expert network of over 50 function specialists.

The Hg Foundation is a founding investor of the new fund.

MINT-Impulse an der Schule, run by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), encourages girls to study mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology (MINT) by providing inspirational enrichment activities, boosting confidence and breaking down in-grained gender stereotypes. The project reaches 600 girls per year aged 14-16 at select schools in rural Bavaria which struggle to take part in extracurricular programmes because of a lack of resources and geographic isolation.

Female instructors from TUM travel to the schools to work face-to-face on research projects with the students for one school day. Students receive preparation beforehand to make the most of their time with the instructors and the programme is completed by a series of online follow-up sessions and opportunities to join a wider range of enrichment activities run by the university and its partners.

Merit America supports unemployed adults, and those earning low wages, into higher salary roles in the technology sector. The programme provides flexible pathways for those without college degrees, which combine training for in-demand careers with coaching and peer support, both in person and online. To recruit the participants who can benefit most from the programme, Merit partners with a range of organisations serving low-income communities.

At the other end of the chain, Merit connects with firms such as Google, Amazon and IBM to place its participants into well-paid employment opportunities in the tech sector.

This collaboration aims to bridge the gap between the many employers who struggle to recruit entry level talent and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who are not in any form of training or work. The programme comprises specific technical, behavioural, mindset and professional skills training, as well as mentoring during and after the programme. It will reach up to 3,500 unemployed learners in France through expanding Generation’s existing employability programmes and developing new employment tracks in tech-related roles.

The programme targets job roles which are expanding; have entry-level requirements that the target demographic can realistically achieve; and which provide good prospects for career progression. The Hg Foundation’s funding will also support the building out of Generation’s third-party impact evaluation. This will help to create a return on investment (RoI) fact base for employers, further strengthening the case for partnership with Generation and the recruitment of its students.

Research consistently shows that the UK tech workforce does not reflect the wider population, with those from lower socio-economic backgrounds and state schools significantly underrepresented.

The upReach Tech500 is a new programme, established in partnership with The Hg Foundation, to help talented undergraduates from less advantaged backgrounds secure graduate roles in the technology sector. It will reach 500 Associates across three years, in addition to giving hundreds more low-income students training in digital skills relevant to the modern workplace.

The Hg Foundation is working in partnership with Imperial College London, a global top ten university, to advance and scale Imperial’s existing mA*ths outreach programme to incorporate A Level Further Maths.

Further maths is a crucial stepping stone for students wanting to pursue many highly selective university courses, which are gateways to high-quality graduate jobs. But support for the subject is unevenly spread through the English school system, with shortages of suitably qualified teachers, especially in the poorest areas.

Further mA*ths is a pioneering and scalable approach to boosting achievement in A level Further Maths for state school students aged 17/18, developed by Imperial College London.

SEO Tech Developer is an intensive immersion programme, centred around a six-week virtual summer residency, which includes 300+ hours of industry-critical technical and soft-skills training. The programme focuses on experiential learning, team and projectbased work, along with sustained exposure to tech industry professionals and educators through curriculum delivery, seminars and mentorship. Participants also have exclusive access to tech internships at SEO’s partner organisations. It is targeted at students who identify as Black, LatinX or Native American, and who are enrolled at an accredited US college or university studying Computer Science, Computer Engineering or related STEM subjects.

The Hg Foundation has partnered with JINC, the largest social mobility-focused charity in The Netherlands, for a two-year technology-focused programme targeted at students in vocational and pre-vocational schools.

Founded in 2003, JINC works collectively with schools and employers to improve students’ social skills and provide career guidance, boosting prospects for young people from socioeconomic disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Young individuals that grow up in an environment with poverty are often missing role models and guidance when it comes to their education and future work. This hinders their ability to make good choices for their future. In impoverished neighbourhoods in the Netherlands, we see higher levels of under-advisement, higher school dropout rates, and unemployment levels that are two to three times higher than the national average. This translates into a disconnection from the labour market that JINC and The Hg Foundation can help improve.

Based in New York City and founded in 1998, TEAK is a free ten-year rigorous academic program that helps high-achieving students achieve their potential through intensive after school and summer classes. TEAK prepares middle school students to get into the nation’s most selective high schools and colleges and onto competitive careers.

The Hg Foundation’s financial contribution and support helps with TEAK’s continued goal of expansion in student capacity and services to the program each year. The support also allows TEAK to strengthen and increase its program offerings, expanding coding courses, extracurricular robotics programming, whilst also supporting more internships and professional development opportunities in STEM.

The Hg Foundation has partnered with XTX Markets and Purposeful Ventures to launch a new £7m ‘Maths Excellence Fund’. The Fund will support schools in England to improve attainment and progression in maths from 11-16 and 16-18 years of age, increasing the number of students who are on track to succeed in A-level maths and beyond, with a focus on those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

XTX Markets and The Hg Foundation will work closely with Ark Ventures to ensure that the Fund focuses on students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and that the resulting programmes are independently evaluated and can be scaled in future.

The Hg Foundation has partnered with Microsoft and BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT to help bring the Microsoft TEALS Program to the UK. TEALS aims to provide high school students with equitable access to Computer Science education and create a pathway to economic opportunity

The TEALS Program has been running in the United States since 2009 and has helped over 100,000 students receive computer science learning pathways. It is also available to pupils in Canada, Mexico, Israel, Colombia, Kenya and India.

The programme has a great track record in the US and in other countries, and the pilot in England will focus on schools serving disadvantaged communities - where we know there are particular challenges in recruiting and retaining specialist teachers.

Apps For Good and the Hg Foundation have formed a three-year partnership to launch the Apps for Social Action programme. This will be an innovative app-development course, mapped to the computing curriculums across the UK. It’s delivered by teachers over seven sessions, with the opportunity to interact with industry volunteers.

The programme will reach up to 24,000 state school students aged 11-14 in 600 schools across the UK - the largest reach of any of the Foundation’s partnerships to date. In addition, part of The Hg Foundation’s grant will support an evaluation of the programme, enabling further development and improvements for greater impact in the future.

Let’s Get Ready (LGR) is a leading US college Access and Success programme dedicated to supporting under-represented students in high school and college.

The c.$1m three-year partnership aims to develop a new and groundbreaking STEM Pathway programme, to add to LGR’s existing offerings. The programme will focus on guiding students through their college transition to successful careers in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This includes the creation of LGR's first-ever career and alumni platform, as well as a strategically important impact evaluation of LGR's overall provision.

Research shows that individuals from low-income backgrounds, rural communities and those who are Black/African American and Hispanic/Latinx, have a higher college dropout rate due to the financial pressures and difficulties they experience when settling into college. Let’s Get Ready has 25 years’ experience in improving college retention. 68% of students who take part in its Access and Success programmes graduate from college within six years, more than double the rate for peer students from low-income homes.

Teaching with ChatGPT is a free online resource to empower UK teachers and other educators to use ChatGPT effectively to enhance their day-to-day work.

In research to develop the guide it was found that, of teachers who had already used ChatGPT and similar AI tools, the vast majority reported that it had saved them time, improved lessons and reduced their time to prepare for their classes. Despite this experience, as of September 2023, 50% of teachers said that they had not yet used generative AI.

The goal of the guide is to leverage this new technology in ways that will enable the easier and faster generation of high-quality teaching resources, and also to contribute to teacher retention and recruitment by reducing teacher workload.

The Hg Foundation has partnered with The Access Foundation to support Birkbeck, University of London to boost digital skills development.

Birkbeck is the educational home to one of the most diverse communities of learners; 40% are from households with an income below £25,000, 78% are juggling studies with work and caring responsibilities, 48% of undergraduates are from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, and the average age of students is 35 years old.

The partnership will be implemented through The Access to Digital Skills and Careers Programme (ADSCP), designed to create pathways to digital and technology careers for Birkbeck students, particularly for underrepresented groups.