STANLIB’s CSI impact
STANLIB CSI initiatives
STANLIB’s Corporate Social Investment (CSI) activities rest on three main pillars: socio-economic development and consumer education, both of which target young people; and employee volunteerism.
STANLIB’s CSI impact
Mind My Money
A survey by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that only 42% of South African adults are financially literate. The remainder do not understand terms like savings, interest rates, etc.
STANLIB Mind My Money is a financial literacy programme that focuses on empowering youth with financial skills. It is tailored towards youth in TVET colleges and universities, particularly in institutions with limited consumer financial education support. University partners since 2022 are: University of Pretoria, University of Witwatersrand, University of Johannesburg, University of Western Cape, University of Stellenbosch, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Rhodes University, North West University, University of the Free State.
In 2024, we extended the programme to two more universities, the University of Fort Hare and Nelson Mandela University.
To date, STANLIB has trained over 30 400 students. Our Monitoring and Evaluation results show a change in behaviour in students who attended the session. This includes understanding of financial terms and healthy financial habits like keeping a budget.
What were the focus areas for 2025?
We continued to drive active citizenship through our employee volunteerism initiatives.
Read aloud
The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study 2021 (PIRLS) showed 81% of South African learners in Grade 4 could not read for meaning. In 2007 the South African government introduced “Drop All and Read”, a national campaign to encourage reading at schools, in families and in communities.
Since 2022, the CSI team has been running a Read Aloud programme to encourage our employees to read to students at 4 different schools. To date, our employees have engaged with over 1 400 students, helping to improve their literacy levels. Employees can read virtually and face to face.In 2026, 277 Daily Maverick kids’ books were donated by the CSI and the Institutional Distribution teams to Langalibalele Primary School as part of World Read Aloud Day.
Sanitary towel drive in Women’s Month
Since 2017, STANLIB has been donating a year’s supply of sanitary towels to girls across South Africa to end “period poverty”. To date, we have donated sanitary towels to over 5 500 girls nationally.
In 2025, STANLIB partnered with clients where clients helped write cards with encouraging messages that were added in the packs. The packs included roll on, deodorant, soap, lotion, chocolate, lip balm, face cloth, toothbrush, toothpaste and sanitary towels for girls. In total 210 girls received dignity packs and 152 of them received sanitary towels as well. 177 boys received toiletries. In addition to the dignity packs, STANLIB has hygiene talks with professional nurses at the selected school.
Mandela Month - July
More than half a million households in South Africa with children of five years and under experienced hunger in 2021. This has serious consequences, as malnutrition slows down children’s physical and cognitive development.
To help combat this problem, STANLIB partnered with Rise Against Hunger to pack nutritious meals that are distributed to Early Childhood Development centres across South Africa. To date, STANLIB has packed over 300 000 meals feeding more than 1 200 children five meals a week for a year.
Winter shoe drive
Since 2019, we have been part of the winter shoe drive where employees pledge from R150 towards purchasing of the shoes which are donated to disadvantaged schools.
In 2025, STANLIB employees pledged R36 110 towards the purchasing of school shoes and this was the highest amount ever pledged. This enabled the CSI team to add tracksuits for one of the disadvantaged schools in KZN.
To date, STANLIB has donated over 10 300 pairs of shoes.
Share the Care
"Share the Care", was a new initiative where we gave teams R10 000 to spend on goods or services for charities close to their hearts. Different departments have donated school shoes, reading books for read aloud, painted a home, and donated a laptop to an NGO, etc, using Share The Care.
Employee matching scheme
In this initiative, STANLIB matches, on a rand-for-rand basis, the monetary donations that permanent and contract employees make to non-profit organisations and charities. This is limited to between R1 000 and R5 000 per employee, per charity, per year.
Recipients must be registered South African non-profit organisations and charities with a valid registration number. They must provide sufficient proof that they are correctly registered.
Bursaries
The STANLIB-ABSIP bursary programme, which was started in 2022, funds students with financial need and excellent performance. The programme prioritises students from previously disadvantage background pursuing investment-related qualifications, with the aim of increasing representation within the investment sector and creating greater opportunities for young black professionals to enter, participate in, and contribute meaningfully to the industry.
Primestars
Step Up To A Green Start teaches young people about climate change and encourages them to identify entrepreneurial opportunities in the green sector.
One of the elements of the programme is a competition in which students work with their teachers to find the best idea to solve a climate problem.
Step Up To A Start Up 2025 impact:
Green Youth Indaba:
African Youth for sustainable impact”. At the conference, young entrepreneurs were recognized for their contributions to environmental causes. It also provided them with opportunities to engage with industry experts.
2025 impact:
STANLIB’s ESG strategy focuses on caring about the planet, caring about each other and caring where they invest. Our CSI efforts align with that vision through the partnership with Primestars.
DIGIFY GPs
From 2022-2024, STANLIB funded a programme called Digify GPs which taught young people from the Northern Cape 21st century digital skills to help make them self-sustaining. This was the impact: