Ostro Fayre Share Foundation

Many faiths promote charitable giving as a key imperative of religious life. The Jewish faith is one example of this, where believers are encouraged to donate 10% of their profits to charitable causes, based on the Biblical principle of tithes.

Serial entrepreneur Maurice Ostro OBE KFO follows this imperative and sets aside 10% of the companies that he has founded for charity both in terms of their shares and their dividends. He and his wife Katy prefer to give anonymously and in most of their private company involvements their gifts did not need to be disclosed.

However, in 1999 Maurice set up a new company named Air Fayre as a PLC with the intention of setting aside 10% of shares for charity. As he was also planning some future public listing, anonymity would not be possible, and he set up a registered charitable foundation and called it Fayre Share. With Air Fayre’s success (an airline catering business with a collaborative business model) its shares increased in value and when it was sold in 2004, the Ostro Fayre Share Foundation had more funds to allocate to its chosen charitable initiatives.

Since then, the Ostro Fayre Share Foundation has started to increase its capacity to enable a more targeted and involved engagement with its priority causes, namely:

1. Philanthropy
2. Entrepreneurship
3. Interfaith

The Ostro Fayre Share Foundation is not currently expanding the list of organisations it is funding. However, the Foundation is open to offers of partnership in its key priority areas to maximize its impact in those areas.