The Trust supports charities across four priority areas: migrants and refugees, criminal legal system and penal reform, access to justice and the human rights framework. Organisations can apply for core or project funding within these categories.
Applicants must demonstrate effective work that makes a tangible difference, listen to the people they support and engage individuals with direct experience of the issues they address.
Charities can apply for funding to deliver services such as legal advice, policy influencing, rehabilitation support and advocacy work. The Trust typically supports single-focus organisations working exclusively in these priority areas.
The fund is competitive, with only around a third of eligible applicants receiving funding. Applications are considered on a quarterly basis.
To be eligible, projects should address at least one of the following categories:
Migrants and refugees
In this priority area, funding is available to support:
- Organisations that support communities who migrate to the UK, and people who are refugees or seeking asylum.
- Work addressing destitution through provision of accommodation support, trafficking and exploitation, support for people held in immigration detention, and for groups facing discrimination for protected characteristics including racialised groups.
- Delivering services, policy advocacy and influencing, campaigning, narrative change work, and community organising, or some combination of these approaches.
The funders are particularly interested in the use of the law as a tool for social change, to address injustices at individual and systemic levels.
The criminal legal system and penal reform
In this priority area, funding is available to support:
- Services that improve outcomes for individuals (and their families) who are at risk of contact with or within the justice system (at any stage, from prevention to police to courts and prison).
- organisations working with those on the sharpest end of sentencing (including joint enterprise and IPP); and those subject to state injustice (such as miscarriages of justice, or deaths in custody).
- Delivering services, policy advocacy and influencing, campaigning, narrative change work, and community organising, or some combination of these approaches.
The funders are interested in the use of the law as a tool for social change, to address injustices at individual and systemic levels.
Access to justice
In this priority area, funding is available for charities which do any or all of the following:
- Provide specialist legal advice and representation.
- That are experts in a particular area of law and those that provide specialist advice to the most marginalised groups.
- That conduct work (including campaigning, policy, narrative change, and strategic legal action) which focuses on defending and improving the system in which people can obtain justice, and work that seeks to strengthen the rule of law.
The human rights framework
In this priority area, funding is available for charities which do any or all of the following:
- Deliver activities to protect the human rights framework and the principles of human rights and the rule of law, including campaigning, advocacy, and narrative change work.
- Note: this does not include single issue or single right campaigning work, or human rights work focused on particular groups, unless these are captured by the Trust's other funding streams.
Some examples of work that might be supported under this priority, include organisations that:
- Focus on advocacy and campaigning around human rights legislation and application in the UK.
- Undertake legal representation and litigation for victims of human rights abuses.
- Support individuals, communities and statutory bodies to understand their human rights.
For all priority areas, the Trust usually supports single focus organisations working solely in priority areas. For these organisations, core funding (unrestricted grants) or project funding (restricted grants) are both available. On occasion it also accepts restricted grant applications from charities working more broadly, where the project is particularly focused, forms a significant strand, and the charity can show it is best placed to deliver the work.
The next deadlines for applications are:
- 30 January 2026 for decisions in April 2026.
- 24 April 2026 for decisions in July 2026.
- 31 July 2026 for decisions in October 2026.