The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) is seeking applications for the Rights and Justice Grant Program.

The Trust is interested in supporting long-term work to achieve these changes, both incremental reform to effect policy and legislative change, and more transformational approaches to change the public debate. They articulate the policy in three strands but recognise and are interested in funding the overlapping nature of each of these.

Funding Priorities

• Protection and promotion of human rights and their enforcement in the UK: JRCT welcomes applications for:
  • policy advocacy and campaigning to protect and promote the overarching framework of human rights for the most vulnerable
  • holding government and public bodies to account for their implementation of human rights commitments
  • work to build public support for human rights, particularly amongst more sceptical audiences and in communities disconnected from political power and influence
  • new voices in the human rights sphere and work to create connections between human rights and social justice issues.
• Promoting rights and justice for minorities who face the most severe forms of racism: JRCT welcomes applications from civil society organisations that tackle injustices faced by racial and religious minorities, in particular, by Muslim communities, Roma, Gypsies and Travellers, as well as broader anti-racist work. This includes:
  • monitoring and advocacy for legislation and policies to promote rights for these communities
  • activities to promote political empowerment, in particular, amongst and led by women within these communities
  • efforts to build solidarity amongst advocacy organisations and between advocacy organisations and wider civil society
  • work to challenge ideologies, attitudes and movements that encourage racism and xenophobia.
• Promotion of rights and justice for refugees and other migrants by identifying and tackling structures and systems that may deny them their rights: JRCT welcomes applications to strengthen the ability of refugees and migrants to assert and defend their rights through:
  • support for alliance building and grassroots organisation, including engagement with non-traditional allies
  • advocacy and campaigning to prevent the abuse of rights
  • promoting access to justice through civil society organisations which spread knowledge of rights and judicial procedures and embed advances in the enforcement of rights.
• Responding to the dual harms of Covid-19 and systemic racism: At this time of crisis, JRCT is keen to support work that responds to the dual harms of the Covid-19 pandemic and systemic racism. Specifically, they wish to encourage work that scrutinises the responses and policies of powerful institutions and actors, and which envisions and builds support for transformative social change based on justice, peace and sustainability, including work which:
  • Collates evidence of lived experience of structural inequalities arising from the impact of or responses to Covid-19 for black and minority ethnic communities, refugee and other migrants;
  • Holds the government to account for systemic inequalities, injustices or abuses of power arising from its responses to Covid-19;
  • Builds the foundations for collective action, including resources for networks of activists to be effective, and the development and showcasing of long-term systemic alternatives.

Eligibility Criteria

• JRCT is interested in funding work which:
  • is about removing problems through radical solutions, and not simply about making problems easier to live with
  • has a clear sense of objectives, and of how to achieve them
  • is innovative and imaginative
  • and where the grant has a good chance of making a difference.
• Within its areas of interest, the Trust makes grants to a range of organisations and to individuals.
• If you are based outside the UK and you are registered as a charitable organistion in your local jurisdiction, you may apply for general support if all of your work fits within the published programmes, and the following criteria are also met:
  • your organisation is governed by an unpaid board
  • your organisation is not for profit
  • your organisation's formal purposes fall within the list of charitable purposes recognised within English law.

For more information, visit JRCT.