Our Mission
‘To enable small, ambitious charities working to alleviate disadvantage
to help a greater number of people, more effectively’
If you are a successful business professional, click here to find out how you can contribute.
Charity? Click here to find out about our application process.
The Need
Pilotlight is set up to address the need of small charities who have expertise to address the needs of their beneficiaries but do not have, and could not afford to buy, the time and skills to develop their own infrastructure.
In 2001 Pilotlight surveyed small charities and found that only 4% of charities said that they received effective professional help. Pilotlight then surveyed leading business people and found various barriers, such as being time poor, prevented them from giving this professional help. Pilotlight then trialled several models of professional skills giving and arrived at one that overcame the barriers it had found to effective skills giving.
History
Pilotlight was founded in 1996 by Jane Tewson, a co-founder of Comic Relief. Since 2001 Pilotlight has been led by Fiona Halton, herself a former director of Comic Relief and co-founder of the volunteering project TimeBank, an earlier Pilotlight initiative. In its short history Pilotlight has created and supported a number of charity initiatives and projects which are now autonomous.
In 2003, Pilotlight created ‘Pilotlighting’ and now focuses soley on bringing together the skills of business with the social visions of charities to create strong, sustainable organisations.