History of The AIM Foundation
At the time of the sale of Trebor Limited to Cadbury in 1989, Angela and Ian Marks decided to gift some of their share of the proceeds to the I R Marks Charitable Trust. The name of the charitable trust was changed to the AIM Foundation in 1993, which stands for the Angela and Ian Marks Foundation and indicates that it has an overall ‘aim’ of transforming lives.
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In 2006 Angela and Ian Marks’ children Pippa Bailey, Caroline Marks, Joanna Pritchard-Barnett and Nic Marks became Trustees.
In 2016/7 Caroline Marks took over as Chair and Angela & Ian stepped back from the Foundation. Nic stepped down as a trustee in 2022, the same year that two independent trustees joined the Board.
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Ian Marks passed away in 2018 but Angela remains as AIM’s Founder Trustee.
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In July 2023 the Nutritional Wellbeing Foundation (NWF) was established as a separate CIO outside of AIM and in the November of that year AIM gifted its shares in Cytoplan to the NWF and NWF took on AIM’s nutrition grant commitments.
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Historical Grants & Support
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During Ian Marks’ life he was visionary in seeing opportunities to create highly-leveraged pragmatic solutions to help alleviate the acute needs he identified. Not only was he able to direct significant funding towards a few selected charities, but he also offered his business experience and networking to help their causes.
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Essex Community Foundation – In the 1990s, Ian and Angela Marks were instrumental in establishing and developing the Essex Community Foundation’s Endowment Fund that helps a multitude of small local volunteer-led community charities and social enterprises develop thriving local communities. Over the past 21 years, ECF have distributed over £31 million in local grants.
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Jubilee 2000 Debt Campaign – In the late 1990s Ian Marks, along with fellow members of The Network for Social Change, appointed political lobbyist, Anne Pettifor, to lead a global campaign that led ultimately, to the cancellation of more than $100 billion of debt owed by 35 of the poorest countries in the world.
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Sustrans Charity – Ian Marks’ encouragement and managerial support helped Sustrans with their application for £40,000 of funding from the Millennium Fund to develop a whole National Cycle routes. This amount was then matched by local authorities, resulting in an overall investment of £100 million in the National Cycle Network. Now there are over 10,000 miles of cycle routes.
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Angela supported the Chelmsford Counselling Centre with both her time and counselling skills, as well as small annual grants. A one-off capital grant was made by AIM when they were raising funds for a new centre.
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From 1990-2010 many issues were funded through the Network for Social Change, a network of philanthropic individuals who identify, research and seek donations for a wide range of causes. It was through this Network that the work of the think-tank, New Economics Foundation (NEF), was first selected for funding. Since then, NEF has received large donations annually and grants have been awarded towards the work of the Centre for Wellbeing, founded by Nic Marks and the Happy Planet Index.
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