Frequently asked questions about our funding

In recent years, we’ve funded more advice and frontline services than usual to respond to the urgent needs created by the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

At the same time, our available funds have reduced. Partly because we gave away more during the pandemic, and partly due to wider economic factors. With fewer resources, we’re focusing our efforts on tackling the root causes of poverty and inequality.

Our vision remains a fairer London, where everyone has the chance to thrive.

Poverty in London is complex and deeply rooted in issues like low pay, the housing crisis, and social injustice. These are long-term challenges that will take time to change. But if we don’t focus on this work, things won’t improve.

That’s why all our future funding will need to contribute to long-term change. We won’t be able to fund work that only provides direct services or advice to individuals. However, we can support work that connects advice or casework to wider change. For example, projects that use frontline experience to influence laws, policies, or practices that affect Londoners.

All our funding will focus on contributing to long term change. We’ll continue to fund advice and service delivery work that connects to long term or wider change. For example, strategic legal action.

Trust for London has a permanent endowment. A permanent endowment is money given to a charity, that the charity must keep rather than spend. Charities are required by the law to invest or maintain those funds so that they create a financial return, which can then be spent on the charity’s mission.

This means that when we decide our budget each year, charity law requires our trustees to balance the needs of current generations with future generations. We aren’t allowed to spend disproportionate amounts today, leaving less for future needs.

You can read more about how  we make this decision in our director of finance Heather Taylor’s blog.

We provide project and unrestricted funding to organisations tackling poverty and inequality in London. Unrestricted funding is only available to registered charities who’s work very closely aligns with our aims.

We fund work that supports our seven priority areas. Each priority has its own set of goals and criteria that outlines the work we will fund, but generally we will fund a wide range of work, including advice, campaigning, research and policy influencing.

Read through our priority area webpages for more detail on what we will fund in each:

• Tackling the housing crisis
• Ending the poverty premium
• Improving social security
• Decent work
• Ending migrant destitution
• Racial justice
• Disability justice

Read the guidelines and webpages in full. Your application will need to fit closely with one of our funding priority areas. You can read more about our funding priorities by visiting our main funding page. There are four funding priorities under our economic justice aim and three under our social justice aim.

Applications are much more likely to be successful where the applicants have had a conversation with us first. You can find a link to book a call on each of our funding priority area pages:

• Tackling the housing crisis
• Ending the poverty premium
• Improving social security
• Decent work
• Ending migrant destitution
• Racial justice
• Disability justice

When we talk about our aims, we mean our overall aims. These are economic and social justice, and everything we fund works towards one of these aims.

Under each of these two aims sit seven more specific priority areas. These priority areas have been identified as being some of the most urgent root causes of inequality in London. These priorities provide more detail about the specific issues we want to fund work around. Every funding application must meet one of our priority areas. Our priority areas are:

• Tackling the housing crisis
• Ending the poverty premium
• Improving social security
• Decent work
• Ending migrant destitution
• Racial justice
• Disability justice

Each priority area has a set of impact goals. These are the specific goals we want to achieve in that priority area, and we will use these goals to assess your funding application. For example, if you apply for funding under our tackling the housing crisis priority, we will consider how closely your application meets our impact goals under that area.

Your application only needs to meet one impact goal, under one priority area.

Your application should fit under one of our priority areas, which are: tackling the housing crisis, ending the poverty premium, improving social security, decent work, racial justice, disability justice and ending migrant destitution.

Many projects will cross over across more than one area. Choose the priority area whose goals fit most closely with your work.

We’re open to funding to build on existing work and also new projects, such as a new campaigning idea or a new approach to policy change.

Yes, we are happy to collaborate with other funders. If you’ve already secured partial funding from another source, you should discuss it with us, as we are willing to work alongside other funders to support your project.

Our 2030 strategy has been developed collaboratively with input from different groups. We spoke to individuals with lived experience, frontline service organisations, campaigners, activists, think tanks, policymakers and other funders to help us identify the right areas to focus on, and make sure we’re adding value rather than duplicating efforts.

This will look different in different organisations. What’s really important to us is that individuals with lived experience are involved throughout an organisation – not just in frontline staff, but in leadership as well as the governance. It’s also important that this involvement is meaningful, and not tokenistic.

No, we don't have a time limit. We will look at each situation individually. There might be some pieces of work that we fund over a long period of time, and others that we will only be able to fund for one round of funding (eg 1-3 years).

We want to make sure that no organisation is solely dependent on funding from us. We always encourage organisations to look for other funding sources.

We will look at your application and consider how it fits with our priorities, the impact goals under the priority you are applying under, and what we are already funding in that area.

Make sure you read carefully through our funding guidelines and webpages,  and speak to the relevant grants manager.

No. Having previous funding from us doesn’t help or harm your chances. We’re open to funding both organisations we have funded before, and organisations that are new to us – the key is how closely your work fits with our priorities, and what we already fund in that area.

We don’t have a preference for project funding over unrestricted funding. The decision is based on the organisation's needs and alignment with our criteria.

However, we expect most of our funding to be project based. This is because we only provide unrestricted funding to registered charities whose overall aims align very closely to our own priorities.

No, applications are not scored higher for addressing multiple goals. The focus is on the quality and type of work, not the number of goals covered. However, successful applications will work towards at least one of our goals.

No, there is no maximum income limit for the organisations we fund. We fund organisations with a range of sizes, from small grassroots community-based organisations to medium and large organisations, as long as their work aligns with our strategy and goals.

Yes, we do fund newly created organisations that meet our eligibility criteria.

Yes, we consider applications from a number of types of organisations including Trusts, CICs and CLGs. For a full list of the types of organisations we will consider funding, read our funding guidelines.

However, we only provide unrestricted funding to charities working solely to tackle poverty in London.

Generally, we only provide one grant to an organisation at a time.

However, exceptions might be made if there are strategic reasons, such as leading a project while being a named partner in another, or if an organisation we provide a multi-year grant to identifies an exceptional, short-term, high-impact opportunity.

Significant free reserves are typically nine months or more of unrestricted reserves. However, this is not absolute. We encourage discussions about your specific circumstances, such as planned expenditures or reserves tied up in assets like buildings.

Unfortunately, we receive far more applications than we are able to fund. We know that it’s disappointing when your application’s successful.

We're only able to accept one application per organisation each year. If your previous application was unsuccessful, please wait at least 12 months before applying to us again.

In the application form, only include the costs you are applying for from us. If you’re invited to the second application stage, you can inform us about secured funds from other sources contributing to the overall budget.

Yes, we would advise you to include some core costs or overheads. We understand that projects don’t exist in a vacuum, and we want to make sure you are putting the full costs in your application.

Since we launched our strategy in Summer 2024, the conversation around migration in this country has changed significantly. We’ve seen growing reports of Islamophobia and racism, politicians echoing divisive rhetoric that fuels fear and mistrust and charities supporting migrants coming under attack.

Migration has always been at the heart of our story as a country and nowhere is that clearer than in London. We remain steadfast in our commitment continue to stand with migrant Londoners and raise our voice alongside theirs, and to fund work that supports migrant Londoners.

With all this in mind, we’ve taken the decision to pause applications to our Ending migrant destitution priority while we consider how our resources can best be used at this time. We expect to share an update on this soon.

Organisations supporting migrant Londoners can still apply under our other priority areas if your work is a fit.