Migrants Organise at the Solidarity Knows No Borders Summit. Picture: Sophie le Roux
We seek to strengthen work on the rights of racial and religious minorities, migrants and refugees, to hold governments to account and to support those advocating with and for these communities.
We support long-term work to achieve these aims, including policy and legislative change as well as more transformational approaches. We recognise that our three funding strands are interconnected and often overlapping.
We welcome applications for work that protects and promotes human rights in the UK, particularly for people and communities facing inequality and marginalisation.
We do fund work addressing racism, and work relating to reigion and belief.
We do not fund work focused on individual cases under specific Convention rights, or work focused on discrimination or under-representation under the Equality Act.
We welcome applications from organisations working to tackle racial and religious injustice affecting marginalised communities, including Muslim communities, Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities, and other groups experiencing racism and exclusion.
We particularly welcome approaches that are community-led, participatory and grounded in the lived experience of the communities affected.
We particularly welcome applications from organisations led by and for refugees and migrants to assert and defend their rights.
We welcome applications for work that advances trans+ rights and justice, supporting trans+ communities to access rights, build power, and address inequalities, alongside our existing priority areas for this next funding round.
This focus reflects conversations with groups at the forefront of trans+ rights, and our commitment to learning how best to support this work.
Examples of work we may support include:
Our second open round for this year will focus on organisations/groups working to challenge the harms of immigration detention and deportation in the UK. We recognise immigration detention as statecraft within the immigration detention estate, hostile environment policies coalescing with corporate profit exacerbate state violence and precarity disproportionately impacting the most marginalised communities.
This call seeks to support work that not only mitigates harm but challenges the systems that produce it. We recognise the ecology of organisations working in the immigration detention and deportation space. Of these, we are expecting to fund two to five new groups with grants between £20,000-80,000 for 1-3 years.
We are particularly interested in receiving applications from grassroots organisations and networks working with grassroots projects that:
● Grapple with immigration detention and deportation systems, including immigration raids, immigration removal centres and enforcement practices
● Address the intersection between detention and prisons
● Tackle the impacts of immigration raids and enforcement regimes
● Support alternatives to detention and incarceration
● Build pathways from immediate harm reduction to long-term structural change
Examples of this might include (but is not limited to) charitable work such as:
● Community building and organising
● Advocacy and campaigning
● Infrastructure development
● Popular awareness-raising, education and community-based training
● Strategic litigation, legal, and advocacy work
● Network-building initiatives connecting grassroots groups
● Projects addressing the disabling and mental health impacts
● Campaigns challenging harmful policies and shifting public narratives
Priority will be given to organisations/groups that may struggle to find funding elsewhere and are dealing with increased enforcement and detention activity in their local areas. We are unable to fund service provision alongside the following exclusions. However, we recognise that meaningful change requires both immediate support and long-term transformation, and we welcome proposals that engage across this spectrum.
Applications from returning grantees will continue to be assessed based on their current area of work rather than this focus area. If you are a returning grantee whose grant ends in 2026 please contact your current grant lead at JRCT who can advise about the best grant round to apply to in 2026.
The Rights and Justice Programme remains open to applications to both new applicants and returning grantees across all our stated priority areas in 2026.
Our next grant round will close in September 2026.
Applications from returning grantees will be assessed based on their current area of work. If you are a returning grantee whose grant ends in 2026, please contact your current grant lead at JRCT.
New applicants need to complete the expression of interest form below by Monday 13 July (10am). A PDF copy of the full form can also be viewed here. Please note that submissions can only be accepted through the online form. This will help us to understand your work and assess whether it aligns with our funding priorities. We will then review all submissions and let you know whether you are being invited to submit a full application by Monday 3 August. Please note that new applicants will not be able to apply in September unless they have completed this stage.
The Rights & Justice team is holding a webinar for potential applicants prior to the expression of interest deadline. In this session the team will share information about the programme's funding priorities, what we do and don't fund, when and how to apply (including information about the new EOI stage), and tips for submitting a strong application. There will also be a chance to ask questions of the team.
Register for the session below:
Tuesday 23 June, 12-1pm (UK time) - register here.
If you are a returning grantee whose grant ends in 2026, you do not need to attend the webinar. Please contact your current grant lead at JRCT instead.
JRCT is committed to resourcing care, healing, safety, wellbeing, resilience and sustainability practices at the individual, organisational and field levels that help transform the historic and ongoing trauma, harm, grief and loss from systemic oppression.
We 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.
Specifically, we wish to encourage work that centre collective care, safety, and resilience of communities most harmed by systemic oppression as part of organising strategies to build collective power towards transformative change. As a funder, we wish to honour and resource the practices communities and organisations may already be using or want to use to nurture care, safety, and sustainability rather than impose our own definition.
Examples of this include but are not limited to:
• Cultural, holistic, somatic, and wellbeing practices relevant to the community integrated into organising strategies• Trainings for staff and organisers on how to become trauma-informed and healing centred organisations/groups• Embedding and centring accessibility in organising strategies including political education trainings on disability justice• Reflective and learning spaces• Working with transformative justice and conflict resolution mediators to address conflict and embed accountability mechanisms• Development of collective care strategies to address burnout, PTSD, trauma and exhaustion experienced by activists• Trainings on security and safety practices, including attention to digital and physical safety and security strategies• Sustainable infrastructure building to develop healthy organisational culture and policies that centre care, safety, wellbeing and resilience.
The Trust focuses on work at both a national and European level, although work at a European level is limited and must have direct relevance to communities living in the UK.
Whilst our focus is to support national advocacy and campaigning, the Trust is open to applications which aim to effect structural change at local and regional levels of policy-making, provided the applicant can demonstrate the wider significance of the work.
Across the policy, the Trust places an emphasis on supporting those who have direct experience of racism and oppression.
• Work concerned with relationships between communities rather than tackling structural injustices• Service provision or training projects.
Please read the Trust’s eligibility page.
For further information please see when to apply.
"Education, not segregation."
Challenging policy and practice in immigration detention