Race and poverty in the UK are clearly linked. Black Londoners are nearly twice as likely to be in poverty as white Londoners.
The racial justice fund supports projects working to economically empower Black and minority groups, and is jointly funded by Trust for London and City Bridge Foundation.
Please note that while the racial justice fund is open for applications, interested applicants should speak to our racial justice to lead to find out more about what we want to fund. Read more about this here.
Impact goals
Our focus is on tackling racial injustice by reducing poverty in London’s Black and minoritised communities. To do this, we need to:
- Increase household income in Black and minoritised communities. When we talk about income, we mean the amount of money households earn.
- Increase the amount of household and community wealth in Black and minoritised communities. When we talk about wealth, we mean the value of assets that households and communities hold.
Collectively, we call this economic empowerment. We don't think you can have racial justice without economic empowerment.
What we want to fund
Looking ahead, our approach to funding is even more intentional. In the first two funding rounds, we focused on funding strategies aimed at improving household income. So far we've funded work that:
- Improves access to finance
- Enhances pay and working conditions
- Increases household and community wealth, like urban regeneration and homeownership
Next we want to focus on ideas and opportunities that complement this existing work. We're particularly interested in work related to:
- The ethnicity pensions gap or the establishment of black and minority-led credit unions
- Entrepreneurship and how we leverage business ownership to reduce the racial wealth gap, including how we increase the rate at which Black people start businesses
If the fund sounds like right fit for your work, speak to us.
What we're funding
Examples of work we're currently funding in this area.
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Metronomes Steel Orchestra
Carrying out community-based research and designing new organisational models to reclaim Carnival's economic value for the Black community.
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Stour Trust
Securing long-term, affordable assets for Black and minoritised communities.
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Tree Shepherd
Empowering Black-owned businesses, particularly those led by women, to be involved with local regeneration projects.
View all of our grants in this area
30 March 2023