Our role:
In January 2025, charity The Share Foundation, appointed Origin Comms as its PR agency to help raise the profile of The Share Foundation in the UK, highlighting its free search facility for Child Trust Funds for young people aged 16 or over, as well as its role in providing starter capital accounts (Junior ISAs and Child Trust Funds) and life skills programmes and financial awareness resources for young people in care across the United Kingdom on behalf of the Department for Education. The life skills programmes include Stepladder Plus (financial education) and Stepping Forward (introduction to the performing arts), both of which offer incentivised learning (‘earn as you learn’).
The Share Foundation believes strongly that all young people have great potential, not only to enjoy adult life to the full but also to achieve their hopes and dreams. The Share Foundation is determined to help them do just that through the provision of financial awareness and resources, and by encouraging a positive attitude for the future.
Despite running nationally significant programmes, The Share Foundation faced three communications challenges:
- Low public awareness of the empowerment it is providing for young people in care throughout the UK
- Limited media attention on financial education as a social mobility issue
- A crowded charity and policy landscape, requiring clear differentiation and authority
The Share Foundation had specific requirements for its PR, including:
- To influence government policymakers and stakeholders.
- Increase media visibility through an agency that has strong media relations across national, broadcast, consumer and relevant trade media.
- Promote all of The Share Foundation’s resources (starter capital accounts (JISAs and CTFs), ‘find CTF’, Stepladder Plus and Stepping Forward) and its messages to provide valuable insights and advice for young people and their families, young people in care, local authorities and fostering organisations and their carers.
- Develop a better understanding of inter-generational rebalancing.
- Flexibility to work on different formats including thought-leadership articles, press releases, commentary, broadcast and press interviews, podcasts and more.
Our strategy:
To increase awareness of the challenges facing vulnerable young people to government, their families and carers, and position the organisation as a leading voice in supporting this demographic, we implemented a proactive PR strategy centred on statistics-led storytelling, news-jacking and thought leadership.
This approach enabled The Share Foundation to contribute meaningfully to national conversations around the number of Child Trust Funds unclaimed, youth unemployment, financial literacy and the lack of opportunities available for young people – particularly those in care.
To reinforce The Share Foundation’s position as an expert voice, the strategy prioritised thought leadership content. Senior representatives from The Share Foundation contributed opinion articles and commentary that explored topics such as the importance of financial education for young people in care, intergenerational rebalancing and the long-term impact of early financial assets (CTFs).
Working closely with The Share Foundation, Origin has also used major national reports, such as the ONS NEET report, as news hooks to position the charity as a thought-leader within current debates, joining conversations in real time.
We also used data as a powerful storytelling tool. By analysing figures from The Share Foundation, we highlighted the scale of unclaimed Child Trust Funds across the UK and broke the data down regionally to show where the issue was most pronounced. This approach helped turn a national issue into a locally relevant story, generating national, regional and broadcast coverage.
Origin is seen as an extension of The Share Foundation team, and we continue to build a reputation for The Share Foundation through credible thought leadership, broadcast and national media interviews and commentary on key issues.
Impact:
PR activity has generated over 200 pieces of coverage across media in the UK.
Some of the top hits include BBC Breakfast, LBC News, Times Radio, BBC Radio Five Live, ITV News, BBC News, The Sunday Times, The Independent, The Mirror, The Telegraph, Sunday Mail, The Big Issue, Children and Young People Now, and many more. Over 60% of coverage has appeared in aspirational or tier one publications.
While this is impressive enough, we have also:
- Supported the wider team with the Stepping Forward official launch event at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. A member of Origin team attended and worked with professionals Zoe Lister & Emeka Sesay to secure social media posts. Media coverage secured included great radio features with LBC News, BBC Radio Three Counties, Heart Hertfordshire & Greatest Hits Radio.
- Secured interviews with regional media to highlight the number of unclaimed CTFs in specific regions in the UK with publications such as Daily Record, Sunday Mail and The Herald in Scotland as well as The Yorkshire Evening Post, BBC North West and South Wales Argus.
- Pitched case studies to the media and secured interviews to discuss their experience of locating & claiming CTFs through The Share Foundation. Coverage secured with Daily Mail, Scottish Daily Mail and Yahoo News.
Quote from Gavin Oldham OBE, Chair of Trustees, The Share Foundation:
“The PR campaign has delivered a real and measurable impact for The Share Foundation. Media coverage has driven a 100% increase in enquiries about Child Trust Funds, helping us reach far more young people who may have otherwise missed out on money that belongs to them. The work has also attracted recognition from senior figures in government – including a letter from David Cameron congratulating us on the impact of our work. The campaign has been instrumental in bringing national attention to issues that affects millions of young people.”