We are currently open for applications under our Justice First Fellowship programme. You can find out more about this programme below.

Our open grants programmes, Stronger Sector and Fairer Systems, ran throughout our 2020-2025 strategic period. We are currently working on our new strategic framework, and are no longer accepting applications under either Fairer Systems or Stronger Sector.

For our Spring 2025 funding round, we are only considering extensions or renewals of existing grants. All eligible grant partners have been contacted, but please contact us if you have queries around this.

We’re not accepting new grant applications until summer 2025, when we’ll be launching new grant programmes under our new 2025-30 strategy.

Justice First Fellowship grants

Through the Justice First Fellowship, we fund social welfare legal organisations to employ a trainee solicitor for a two year fully funded training period. Host organisation applications are open now and close on 7 March 2025. Visit the Justice First Fellowship website to find out more and apply.

Stronger Sector (now closed to new applications)

We believe that a strong civil society is essential to achieve our vision of a just and fair society. This grants programme offers flexible funding for organisations using the law, legal tools and strategies to promote social justice. It aims to strengthen the capacity of individuals and organisations to deliver their important work effectively and sustainably.

This may be through offering legal advice or training but it may also be through charitable campaigning to protect, promote or develop the law to meet the needs of communities. We are especially interested in how the law can be used to build power in communities that have been historically oppressed.

The focus of the programme is on the ‘law of everyday life’. This includes, for example, people’s rights in housing, employment, community care, debt, family law, immigration and welfare benefits. We will also consider work taking place at the intersection of civil and criminal law, but we do not fund work exclusively on criminal or environmental law.

Past grants under Stronger Sector have focused on both sector-wide initiatives and core funding for individual organisations which closely align with our criteria. 

Fairer Systems (now closed to new applications)

This grants programme supports work to influence how laws are made and implemented. It aims to promote transparency, accountability and the protection of fundamental rights. This means that we fund organisations that hold government institutions and policy-makers to account to exercise power in the interests of communities and uphold fundamental rights and freedoms, including economic and social rights.

In recent years, the UK has been undergoing rapid legislative changes with significant impact on rights and the constitutional framework. We work closely with civil society actors who work towards improving human rights protections and access to justice. We do this across the UK with organisations aiming to influence national, devolved and local governments.

We particularly value community-led and lived experience-led approaches. Past grants under Fairer Systems have focused on a wide range of policy activities including longer term work on: the UK’s constitutional settlement in the four nations of the UK, human rights developments, and community-led organising around specific rights or on access to justice more broadly.