The Solidarity Fund supports organisations in England that address the root causes of inequality, including poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination. The programme aims to strengthen existing work and enable long-term, systemic change rather than short-term interventions.

Funding Details

  • Amount: £1 million to £5 million total funding per organisation
  • Duration: 5 to 10 years to spend the allocation
  • Expected recipients: Approximately 10 organisations in the first year
  • Geographic scope: England only
  • Application timeline: Ongoing applications accepted

Organisations must be led by and accountable to people with lived experience of the issues they aim to address.

Core Focus Areas

The programme funds work that:

  1. Addresses root causes of poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination through systemic change rather than immediate symptom relief
  2. Builds solidarity by bringing people together across different issues and communities to tackle underlying causes of inequality
  3. Empowers communities by developing skills, confidence, and organisational capacity for sustained advocacy and change
  4. Creates and shares learning from those experiencing inequality to amplify their voices and enable informed action

Preferred Approaches

  • Systems change initiatives that transform how organisations and sectors operate
  • Community organising and power-building activities
  • Knowledge creation and sharing rooted in lived experience
  • Cross-community collaboration and solidarity building
  • Work that extends or redirects existing organisational expertise

Application Considerations

  • Organisations need not be long-established but must demonstrate capacity for significant impact
  • Funding is unlikely to support work completely unrelated to current organisational activities
  • Applications should demonstrate how the work builds upon existing knowledge, relationships, and community learning