News

Pilotlight has the privilege of working with a diverse and inspiring community of female leaders. To celebrate International Women’s Day we asked Stacey Carr, a Pilotlighter via our Ignite Initiative, to share her leadership journey with us and why she believes investing in your leadership development is so important for women.

In this particular edition, the focus was on making a tangible difference in the lives of LGBTQIA+ communities. Also coinciding with LGBTQIA+ History Month, the event brought together around 50 Pilotlighters from Deloitte to work alongside three impactful Partner Charities: The Love Tank, Just Like Us, and Living Free UK. 

Diversity and inclusion are key components of any successful business. Not only does a diverse workforce foster a culture of innovation and creativity, but it also allows a company to tap into a wider pool of talent and perspectives.

Over the last year, led by our staff Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, we have run a series of learning events, where colleagues come together to learn from the work and lived experience of our partner charities. 

We’re delighted to share that we’ve achieved a Silver Status Award under the Inclusive Employers Standard.

In my current role at Pilotlight, I have the pleasure to work with impact-driven leaders every day, tirelessly doing their bit to tackle society’s biggest challenges. I am proud that 75% of my project portfolio is organisations led by women.

When I think of women in leadership roles, I tend to think of Jacina Ardern (Prime Minister of New Zealand) or Michelle Obama (Former First Lady) and the lessons they’ve modelled to the world; kindness, tenacity, assertiveness.

The shift to new patterns of work coming out of the pandemic is helping to spur a new generation of progressive employment practices. In time, I believe, these will come to define the workplace of the future.

Pilotlight is delighted to announce that, for the second consecutive year, we have 10 driven and ambitious Pilotlighters joining our community via

Whether this is an insight or simply a new cliché in the making, I don’t know but so many areas of personal or organisational development today are described as a ‘journey’ and this feels apt for us. 

Today marks World Hearing Day. Organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) annually.

As I write this, I am probably in the best health I’ve been in for two years. I have an immune system disorder and fibromyalgia. I’ve spent years schlepping on trains, planes and automobiles to attend meetings and visit offices, getting exhausted and exposing myself to infections as I travel.

When entering a boardroom, my biggest worry was Norm. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Norm. Norm can genuinely be a nice person.

Pilotlight is delighted to announce the 21 driven and ambitious Pilotlighters joining the charity via our Ignite Initiative.

As a charity founded to support charities in their efforts to help more people, we share the common goal of tackling social disadvantage in all its

Today we release the 'Learning and Listening for Mutual Action: surfacing and building the evidence base to support Black African, Black Caribbean, Asian and other Minoritised Ethnic led voluntary sector organisations' report that asks the vital question: what are the support needs of organisations led by, for, and with BAME communities?

Improving productivity growth is the decades old dilemma for UK business. Throughout my whole career, which I’ll be honest dates back to typewriters on desks, it seems that we’ve been trying to crack the code on how to increase work outputs.

Reasons for absenteeism can range from mental health concerns to workplace stress and dissatisfaction. When Illness forces employees to take time off, disrupting workflows, and impacting productivity, these can be costly problems for businesses.

After a period of testing and development, Pilotlight Impact Day was born. Rather than focus on open questions of strategy, funding and governance for charities, the time was structured into small teams focusing on precise challenges, carefully prepared in advance, that were critical to the life of the charity.

Helping charities as a volunteer is a great way for people to give to the community. This is particularly the case for skilled volunteering – where you are using your workplace or professional skills to make a difference. Seven out of ten charities are looking for support in the form of professional skills, but only four out of ten find it. Charities need skilled support.

In today’s fast-paced business environment, having a skilled workforce isn’t enough to guarantee success. Companies invest heavily in training and development programmes to enhance the technical skills, but these hard skills alone are not enough to guarantee success.

As a social enterprise focused on supporting charities, Pilotlight is sometimes perceived as an outlier in the corporate learning and development sector. This year we’ve challenged ourselves to better understand the impact of our programmes on employees and the return on investment for their employers.

Learning and Talent teams are more focused than ever on employee engagement and retention. So how can business better engage its people and provide compelling learning opportunities that address shifting strategic priorities?

My first leadership experience was when I was quite young. Soon after leaving university, I found myself leading a small grassroots project in South Africa providing training to raise awareness of HIV and AIDS. I knew very little about running a project, and equally little about leadership. I had the job title of a leader and people to be led but really, I didn’t know what to do.

New research from Pilotlight highlights the strong demand from the UK workforce for their employers to do more to support skills-based volunteering in the community. The research, published today in a report called 'Give your culture a workout', includes new attitudinal research on the public support for employers to do more in this area and outlines the tangible benefits this would bring for the employers themselves.

It is hard to start a charity, but it is also hard to kill one. This is a resilience, characteristic of charities, that we have a purpose that moves people to act, and we have a culture that allows for different forms of participation. In this post, I want to look at three tips for financial resilience for charities.

When we worked with Kathy Verges in 2010, she was CEO at Crossroads Care Havering, which had a turnover of around £600k. Kathy retired as Chief Officer in January 2022. After a series of mergers Kathy led the charity on to re-brand to create TuVida, which had national reach and a turnover of £14m. She reflects on her work with Pilotlight.

There is much to be learnt from the way our children approach the new school year. As Freddie stepped through the classroom door for his taster session, I admired his want to connect with peers, his openness to new experiences and his thirst for learning.

Since the start of September, 50 senior leaders from Barclays have joined forces with 10 charities from across the UK to address some of the key challenges they are facing as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

Our latest initiative, Conversation for Change, distils the essence of our strategic development programmes into a single, 90-minute virtual meeting with up to eight senior business leaders.

We all have the ability to behave with values, just as we are all (or nearly all) born with the ability to sing.