Tackling corporate harm adopted as new focus of the Strengthening Civil Society programme

The Foundation is pleased to announce that the Strengthening Civil Society programme will have a new main focus from March 2026.

This new focus will  support the use of the law by UK civil society to tackle corporate harm, specifically when corporations create or contribute to discrimination and disadvantage.

Jannat Hossain, Programmes Manager and lead for the Strengthening Civil Society programme, says:

Corporate power and the harm it can cause – whether through business as usual or wrongdoing or misconduct – is significant in the UK for the general public, but more so for groups that already experience disadvantage and discrimination such as imprisoned people,  migrants or people in care.

 

The corporate accountability sector is vibrant yet small and under-resourced. However, there is huge potential for using legal approaches, whether it is competition law, labour law, environmental law, administrative justice, procurement or laws governing modern slavery.

 

As a small funder and with a long track record of funding legal and human rights work, we hope our modest resources will play a small part in helping civil society better hold corporate power to account.

As part of a strategy  review in 2025, four possible new themes were explored; the research papers can be found here. The paper on Corporate Accountability was written by Nick Perks, who has also written a blog about why this is an important area for civil society action in the UK.

The programme will continue its focus on addressing racial injustice in the criminal legal system until 2030, following a commitment at the end of 2025 to invest a further £1.5 million in this area over the next five years.

Initial funding plans for the new focus will be announced in June 2026.