Independent research into financial lives

Financial lives are too complex to guess.

Founded in 2026, the Stream Foundation exists to educate the public about the financial lives of everyday workers in the UK and US.

Submit a research proposal

Applications close 31 July 2026 · decisions in October 2026.

Two bartenders straining cocktails behind a bar — Everyday workers in the UK and US — the people our research is for.

Two waste and recycling workers in hi-vis at a depot — Everyday workers in the UK and US — the people our research is for.

What we do

We fund the evidence everyone else has been guessing at.

Employers, banks, regulators and policymakers make decisions that shape people’s financial lives every day — yet they lean on averages, assumptions and models built for a “standard” worker with steady, above-average pay. That worker is the minority. For the majority, the products and policies built around that assumption simply don’t fit. The Stream Foundation funds independent research that replaces the guesswork with the real, granular picture of how everyday people manage money — and makes it freely available, because good decisions need real evidence, not inherited assumptions.

Fund the research

We commission rigorous, independent studies into how everyday people really experience money.

Share it freely

We make the findings free for anyone to use, so good research gets built on rather than repeated.

For the majority

We focus on the realities of everyday workers — the people the system treats as the exception, when they’re the rule.

How we work

Independent by design.

Where does our funding come from?

The Foundation is solely funded by donations from Stream Group Holdings, through a 1% pledge.

And who decides what we fund?

Our trustees. Stream provides the funding; the trustees decide what we research. As a registered charity that separation isn’t optional, it’s the law. Our trustees are legally required to act in the Foundation’s interests, not our funder’s.

For researchers

Researching the financial lives of everyday workers? We want to fund your work.

We’re now open for grant applications, until 31 July 2026, with funding decisions made in October 2026. Tell us what you’d measure, and why it matters.

Who can apply

Applicants must be affiliated with an accredited university (UK or US), or with a registered charity or non-profit (UK or US). We can’t accept applications from independent individuals, or from for-profit or commercial organisations.

What we look for

When deciding which topics to research and who to work with, the Board weighs up:

where the research is likely to do the most good and best serve our charitable aims
what resources and source material are available
how much work has already been done in that area
how the research will be carried out
the skills and experience of the researchers involved
the likely educational value of the findings
how the results will be published and shared

Submit a research proposal

Applications close 31 July 2026 · decisions in October 2026.

The trustees

The people behind the Foundation.

Our trustees govern the Foundation and decide what it funds. Here’s who they are — and why this work matters to them.

Emily Trant

Foundation Director

As Foundation Director, Emily oversees the full operations of the Stream Foundation. Her time is split between the Foundation and her role as Chief Impact Officer at Stream, where she leads the company’s work to tackle financial exclusion and build a more inclusive app that improves workers’ financial wellbeing. At Stream she runs the company’s programme of academic research in collaboration with leading think tanks and global universities, and hosts the Invisible Worker podcast. Before joining Stream, Emily co-founded Touco Lab, a social impact fintech that built financial services for people with cognitive impairments using open banking.

Portman Wills

Chair of the Board of Trustees

Portman is the Co-Founder of Stream. Over the past 25 years he’s worked at the intersection of technology and impact: designing the first MVNO for consumers with poor credit at Liberty Wireless (2001); creating dignified employment for landmine survivors in Cambodia at DDD (2004); and monitoring early outbreaks of communicable disease in Peru and India at Voxiva (2006). He’s also had luck with a few startups along the way — SocialCash (acquired by LifeStreet Media, 2009), Join the Company (GSN, 2011) and Sports Illustrated Play (NBC, 2017). At home, he and his wife are currently learning to live with the constant eye-rolls of their four teenage children.

Gemma Gooch

Deputy Chair of the Board of Trustees

Gemma joined Rathbones in early 2025 to lead business development for charities. She was previously Co-Head of Global Social Impact at BlackRock and Co-President of the BlackRock Foundation, where she led grant-making on financial inclusion and sustainability, having earlier run BlackRock’s dedicated Charities and Endowments team. Before BlackRock she was a Partner at NewSmith Asset Management, and began her career at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers in 2001. Gemma holds an MA in Geography from St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. Alongside the Stream Foundation she has been a trustee of The Girls’ Network, a School Community Governor and a volunteer Funding Panellist with The Fore, and she mentors with The King’s Trust.

Timothy Parsons

Trustee

Tim is Chief Financial Officer at Stream, where he has overseen financial strategy and operations since 2019 as the company has scaled to serve millions of workers across the UK and US. He brings deep expertise in treasury, risk management and debt financing. As a trustee, Tim is driven by a simple conviction: that access to fair financial tools shouldn’t be a privilege, but a right for every worker.

John Handley

Trustee

John is an experienced Chief People Officer and business coach with a 30-year track record across multiple sectors in the UK and internationally. He specialises in cultural integration, managing change and getting results through high-performing teams. A graduate of the Meyler Campbell Coaching Programme, he is a trusted confidant to senior executives and, through his coaching practice Latitude with John, supports leaders invested in their own growth. John is also Chair of British Home, a Royal Charter charity dedicated to transforming the lives of people living with neuro-disability.

Nicholas Rogers

Trustee

Nick is Chief Product and Technology Officer at Stream, leading the teams that build financial wellbeing tools for millions of workers across the UK and US. He holds a First-Class BA and MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, with a dissertation on artificial intelligence. Before Stream he led a large engineering team at BT Openreach, delivering the planning platform behind the UK’s full-fibre rollout to 30 million homes, and has since co-founded a technology business spanning finance, telecoms, defence and healthcare. As a trustee, Nick is committed to keeping technology a force for good.