The fund will open on:

14 November 2025 (noon)

Maximum value:

£ 450,000

Application deadline:

07/01/2026

Objectives of Fund

This fund aims to support organisations across London providing social welfare advice, social action, and systems change, to ensure that Londoners can access their rights and in find solutions to problems in the areas of housing, welfare benefits, debt, employment, and immigration.

This fund will support work that:

• Is hopeful, reimagining what justice can look like, working towards a fairer London.
• Has ambitions to shift power, policy and practice needed to change the systems that drive inequality.
• Bridges urgent need and long-term transformation by supporting frontline work and laying the foundations for systems change.
• Centres community leadership, especially those directly affected, to shape change.
• Builds and coordinates collective power among communities as well as legal, civil, public, and business sectors.

Value Notes

A total of £6.5 million is available across two funding streams:

• Three-year Development Grants of £75,000.
• Five-year Transformation Grants of £200,000, £300,000, or £450,000.

The Foundation expects to award around 20 to 25 grants in the first round of funding.

Who Can Apply

Funding is for ‘led by and for’ organisations who:

• Provide good-quality, free social welfare advice to Londoners.
• Use their frontline experience to drive social action and systems change (or have the ambition to do so.

Groups meet the following criteria:

• Work in one or more of the 32 London Boroughs and/or the City of London.
• Hold a recognised advice quality assurance mark or demonstrate they have started the process towards accreditation.
• Pay at least a London Living Wage to all London-based staff.
• Provide at least one year’s worth of audited or independently examined accounts.
• Maintain an up-to-date safeguarding policy.
• Have at least three directors or trustees on their board.
• Deliver social welfare advice with casework.
• Not be an information service or service where the primary offer is one-stop signposting. 

Restrictions

The following are not eligible for funding:

• Schools.
• Individuals.
• Statutory bodies.
• Retrospective costs.
• For-profit activities. 

Eligible Expenditure

Grants can be used flexibly over the grant period to support core costs, long-term strategic objectives, and to develop a group’s social action work to bring about systems change.

Eligible costs can include:

• Core costs, such as staff salaries, wellbeing, overheads, and infrastructure.
• Programme activity, including direct advice provision and using insights from advice work to catalyse social action and systems change.
• Organisational development, such as time to reflect, learn, and adapt.
• Collaboration and movement-building, including connecting with other organisations, sharing insights, and building collective power.
• Community organising, advocacy and campaigning, drawing on frontline experience to influence policy and practice.
• Data and storytelling, to capture impact and amplify the voices of those affected.Location

How To Apply

Round One of this fund will open on 14 November 2025 (noon) with a deadline on 7 January 2026 (noon).

There is a two-stage application process:

• Groups should first submit an online application form.
• Shortlisted groups will then be contacted to discuss their idea further or arrange a visit with the Foundation’s funding team.

Guidance notes are available from the City Bridge Foundation website.