Strengthening Civil Society programme: new funding to support expert legal ‘hub’ organisations – now closed

Please note this application round is now closed.

Today we are pleased to launch a new round of funding for expert legal ‘hub organisations’. The funding is designed to help hub organisations to scale their activities to enable them to work with more civil society organisations to challenge discrimination and disadvantage and create long-term social change.

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 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:
  • projects that focus on labour law or housing law; and
  • under-utilised areas of equality and human rights law such as race equality provisions.

Please see the Application Guidelines for full eligibility requirements.

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

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

How to apply

This fund has a three-stage application process. The first stage is a 300-word of Expression of Interest. The deadline for this Expression of Interest is Wednesday 28 July.

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. The final stage will be a semi-formal interview with our team and funding partners. Please see our Application Guidelines for further details.

The following resources might also be useful, particularly if you have not applied to this Programme before:

• a recent evaluation of the Strengthening Civil Society programme 2015-2020.
• a paper on the successful use of strategic litigation by the voluntary sector;
• an exploration of civil society organisations deploying a range of legal tools and tactics to achieve social change;
• a framework for better use of the law by civil society organisations.

The Strengthening Civil Society programme is a collaboration with the Legal Education Foundation and Esmée Fairbairn Foundation.