Edward Garrett

Spear’s Review

Charities Aid Foundation (CAF)’s head of private clients Edward Garrett pairs his extensive experience in the City with a passion for improving social equality.

The former paralegal and client services director traded a job in the Square Mile to pursue an interest in ‘delivering social impact’, and his team at CAF works with clients to deliver a ‘strategic, evidence-based approach’ to philanthropy.

‘As the custodians of over £1 billion for private donors, the private client team support, guide and facilitate the ambitions of UHNW donors, including some of the UK’s highest-profile philanthropists,’ he explains.

The firm works collaboratively with clients, taking the time to understand their values and enabling them to achieve their specific aims.

Adviser Profile

In 2018, Edward Garrett left a job in the City for an impact investment start-up. Now, as Head of Private Clients at the Charities Aid Foundation, he blends experience gained in the City with values based around effective altruism to help clients use their money to overcome social, economic and environmental imbalances. ‘The challenge is to identify common values and translate between the interests of parties at different ends of the spectrum,’ he says.

Garrett aids major donors, from entrepreneurs to wealthy families and financial services workers, in developing a mindset of long-term, evidence-based, strategic giving with a focus on measurable impact at scale. ‘By ensuring their giving is efficient, effective and hassle-free, I aim to encourage donors to think clearly and creatively about the values and issues they seek to address through their philanthropic engagement,’ he says.

Garrett’s clients often have an array of charitable goals they want to achieve, with many of them opting to support causes that are close to their hearts. These might be health-related causes that have impacted them or their families, or they may choose to support cultural institutions that they enjoy. Others have a clear objective, aiming to reduce homelessness in a particular area or to provide opportunities to a particular group. Whatever an individual’s motives, CAF helps them to design and deliver a programme of grants, loans or other social finance structures that addresses them and makes them count, ‘For our high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, our advice puts their philanthropic goals to work’.