National influencing grants

We welcomed applications for national influencing partners who focus on change across the UK and/or in the devolved nations. We wanted partners to work alongside advice partners in the initiative to draw on their case data to spot trends and respond to threats and opportunities.

We we funded:

• Increased influencing capacity including through staffing costs, consultancy, volunteer expenses and direct costs.
• 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.
• 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.
• Training or skill development in campaigning, policy influencing, research or other relevant areas that connects grassroots organisations and individuals who are organising, with the Justice Together change goals.
• We can only fund work that is charitable, but applicants do not need to be registered charities.

We were 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 online application to submit: where the work proposed leans more towards advice, we encouraged applicants to fill out the advice application but include in their answers the activities they 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.