Social Impact

Taking social responsibility seriously

We care about making a difference, both for clients and the wider community.

Our commitment to being socially responsible helps to make Frontier an employer that all staff are proud to work for.

We aim to make a positive impact on society by:

providing our consultancy services to charities on a pro bono basis
looking for ways to minimise the impact we have on the environment
supporting the communities where we live and work and contribute to charities that make a difference to people’s lives
creating and maintain a working environment that supports and values people
making sure that that the way we work is consistent with high ethical standards

Pro bono work

The voluntary and charity sectors provide essential support for those most in need and often speak on behalf of their clients, raising policy issues and awareness. Through our pro bono work, we use our expertise to make a strong, positive contribution to charities. We work with them on a wide range of issues and add new partners every year.

Frontier encourages all our team to get involved in this work, from senior directors to new analysts. We help charities by using economic analysis to evaluate the social impact of their services and articulate the benefits of their activities.

Recent projects include

Creating a valuation toolkit for The Wildlife Trusts to help place an economic value on their conservation activities and support their biodiversity advocacy.
Using real-time, novel labour market data on job advertisements in the UK and analysing the types of jobs where economics skills are required by employers to help Discover Economics improve diversity in the profession.
Analysing the need for policymakers to better incorporate intergenerational fairness in setting climate policy for Sustainability First.
producing an economic impact assessment of acid attacks and the wider societal cost for Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI)
teaming up with a Cologne based secondary school as part of the German education initiative KURS, which focuses on economics education as part of social science teaching in Germany
developing a monitoring and evaluation framework for Whizz-Kidz, a charity that helps enable young wheelchair users to live a life without limits
volunteering for Cologne based “Jobcafe for Refugees”, supporting refugees to integrate into the German labour market

Contact hello@frontier-economics.com if you would like to get in touch about pro bono assistance.

Environmental responsibility

We are committed to reducing the impact that our business has on the environment. We have been a ‘carbon zero’ company since 2010. With a growing pool of environmental economists in our team, we show a strong commitment to reducing waste and avoiding emissions.

The same behavioural economics techniques that we advise clients to use, can also give our employees small “nudges” to encourage them to reduce their environmental impact. We know that small changes, such as using smart lighting, heating and printing technology, go a long way to reducing the resources that Frontier uses.

Supporting our communities

We think that it is important to support a wide range of good causes where we live and work.

Frontier supports those employees who contribute to charities and other good causes. We have built strong relationships with several local charities and educational establishments. These charities and community groups benefit from the time and money donated by Frontier. However our staff also benefit from the opportunity to gain new skills and experiences by working in challenging sectors.

Our recent initiatives include:

Volunteering

All staff at Frontier are given one volunteering day a year to dedicate to causes that they feel passionate about.

Local partnerships

Recent examples include:

Debate Mate: we host students from local, educationally deprived schools for a series of fun workshops with our people, designed to increase their speaking confidence and overcome a barrier to social mobility.

Future Frontiers: our people mentor secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds, helping to uncover the their career possibilities and how to get there.

The Access Project: we work with bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds, providing volunteer tuition, to help them gain access to top universities.

City Gateway: teaching English at “literacy lunches” for disadvantaged young women.

Caritas Job Café: helping refugees in Cologne with their applications for jobs and apprenticeships

Charitable giving

Donations: our employees nominate charities that would benefit from donations by Frontier.

Matching donations: Frontier encourages its employees also take part in their own fundraising activities outside of work and matches donations up to £250.

Fundraising: we organise fun events to raise money for a range of causes.

Ethical standards

Acting ethically is important to Frontier. So we make sure that the way we work is consistent with high ethical standards consistent with our values.

We have signed up to the UN Global Compact (UNGC). Our projects comply with the commitments made in the compact.
Our staff are encouraged to raise any ethical concerns about the projects that they work on.
We always consider the ethical dimension of any project before we start work to ensure it does not conflict with our values.
We require its suppliers to work with us to promote high ethical standards (See our Modern Slavery Act statement).

You can download our latest UNGC letter of commitment here , summarising what our company does to promote the 10 principles associated with that commitment.