Local influencing grants

In this strand, we will fund activities that seek to influence local authorities, metro mayors or regional bodies on issues of migration and funding, as well as and in addition to activities that include local community organising and campaigning, e.g. work with the local authority to secure commitment to long-term funding of immigration advice; influencing a Mayor to embed immigration advice within strategies to reduce homelessness and poverty; building local solidarity and power of people with lived experience to feed into wider movements for national change.

We will fund:

  • Increased influencing capacity including through staffing costs, consultancy, volunteer expenses and direct costs.
  • Proposals from organisations led and/or informed by people with lived experience of the immigration system.
  • Approaches that build solidarity, work together to understand systemic issues and come together to raise the voices of those with lived experience.
  • Development and testing of new approaches to influencing with particular focus on community and movement lawyering models that build power and develop leadership of those with lived experience of the immigration system.
  • Local co-ordination across different approaches to influence and/or with advice providers. We would like to support new structures as well as strengthening existing co-ordination.
  • Where activities meet the Justice Together goals flexible core-type funding will be considered.
  • We can only fund work that is charitable, but applicants do not need to be registered charities.

We are interested in seeing applications that include both specialist advice and local influencing. We believe they go hand in hand. We recognise that not all applications will look the same: some will be exclusively specialist advice focused, some will include advice and local influencing, and some just local influencing. We want to hear from all the different ways this work comes together. With regard to choosing an application to submit: where the work proposed leans more towards advice, please fill out the advice application but include in your answers the activities you will be doing with regard to influencing, and vice versa.

Read our frequently asked questions for more information.

What we will not fund

  • Work that operates in isolation from other stakeholders within the area. 
  • Work that does not contribute to Justice Together’s change goals.
  • Work whose main focus is influencing around access to or provision of housing, healthcare, destitution, the right to work or challenges to the existence of detention or conditions in detention. We will consider applications that focus on influencing around access to legal advice in detention.
  • Specific pieces of litigation work.
  • Work that is not legally charitable including work that falls outside the Charity Commission guidance on campaigning.  

Before applying, please read:

If you are interested in making an application:

  1. book a place and join one of our virtual Q&A sessions
  2. contact us to arrange an initial phone call
  3. complete an online application form.

For information on our open round of applications please visit our funding updates page.