Ms. Francesca Perrin is the founder and director of The Indigo Trust, part of The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts (SFCT, which is the operating office of 18 grant-making trusts established by three generations of the Sainsbury family. The trusts’ donations to charitable causes throughout several decades represent one of the leading examples of sustained philanthropy in Britain.
The Indigo Trust funds projects and organizations in 15 countries across sub-Saharan Africa that use mobile and web technologies to enable citizens to make more informed choices and hold authorities accountable. The Indigo Trust envisions a world of responsive and accountable institutions and active, informed citizens that together create positive change in their societies.
Perrin was formerly an advisor in the prime minister’s strategy unit in the UK government for both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. She is a board member of The Philanthropy Workshop and co-founder and chair of 360 Giving, a campaign which supports grant-makers to publish their grants’ data openly, to understand their data and to use the data to create online tools that make grant-making more effective.
She is an alumna of the University of Cambridge, holding both a bachelor’s degree in politics and sociology and a master’s degree in criminology.