Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust: Rights and Justice

Overview

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 your organisation is a registered, excepted or exempt charity based within any of the four jurisdictions of the UK and all of your work fits within their published programmes, they encourage you to consider applying for unrestricted or core support, although you may apply for programme or project funding if you prefer.

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 our 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 all other organisations or individual applicants, you may apply for a specific project or defined programme of work that would provide public benefit and further our aims as set out in our published policies.

Scheme Overview

They believe that human rights play a vital role in protecting the most vulnerable and in turn benefit the whole of society. We need to grow public support and empathy for the rights of racial and religious minorities, to hold governments to account and to strengthen the hand of those advocating with and for these communities.
 

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 their 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
  • The Trust 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

They do not fund work on individual Convention rights, nor work to address discrimination or under-representation under the Equalities Act, except in the case of race, religion and belief. 

• Promoting rights and justice for minorities who face the most severe forms of racism
  • The Trust 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
  • The Trust 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

They encourage all applicants, particularly grassroots groups and those with lived experience of the issues they’re working on to factor in wellbeing, safety and sustainability costs in funding requests.