New funding to support expert legal ‘hub’ organisations

Today we are pleased to launch a new round of funding for small expert legal ‘hub’ organisations to help them scale up their activities to deliver positive social change for communities.

We define hubs as civil society organisations that meet all three of these characteristics:

• have specific and demonstrable legal expertise relevant to their social change goals;
• offer expert legal information, advice and / or representation to civil society organisations;
• and collaborate to:
  • support others to recognise when, where and how legal action can be an effective tool of social change; and/or
  • use legal action to achieve social change.

This funding can be used to support hub activities which use legal action in all its forms – whether that is to empower individuals and groups, persuade public and private bodies, challenge government, or a mix of all three.

We would particularly like to encourage applications from areas that have received less funding from the Foundation in the past, e.g. those organisations:

• with a focus on housing, education and/or social care;
• working in Wales or the English regions outside of Greater London; and
• which focus on less used areas of law, for example labour law or under-utilised areas of equality laws such as race equality provisions.

Grants of up to £150,000 are available over three years.

Grants are flexible but must be used for your hub activities.

Are we eligible?

To be eligible, applicants must have an income of under £750,000. Organisations that have previously received a grant from the Foundation for hub activities are not eligible to apply to this fund. Please see the Application Guidelines for full eligibility requirements.

How to apply

Application Guidelines are available here.

This fund has a two-stage application process.

The first stage is a maximum 500-word of Expression of Interest. The deadline for this Expression of Interest is Tuesday 30 April 2024.

You can submit your expression of interest here.

If you are successful at this stage, you will be asked to submit a detailed written application. Please see our Application Guidelines for further details. The deadline for the second stage is Wednesday 3 July 2024.