The Friends Provident Charitable Foundation's Developing a Fair Economy Grants Programme aims to support projects that seek to tackle the causes of economic disparity, such as inequality, poverty, or climate breakdown, and create an economy that works for everyone. Funding is available for projects that seek to address the structural problems of the current economic system.

The programme has two funding strands:

1. Local Economies – smaller projects that focus on testing and reviewing small scale initiatives that support local economies through diversity, flexibility and building capacity in communities, and
2. Systems Change – projects that involve a radical assessment of how ‘disruptive innovation’ might change the financial system, exploring and informing changes to the regulatory, policy or other systemic level that would develop financial system innovations.

Projects that focus on the following themes will be prioritised:

o A Fair Transition: projects that seek to address the impact of rapid economic shifts and distribute the risks/benefits more equitably, such as the transition to a zero-carbon economy and the development of artificial intelligence, and
o Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: projects that will help to identify and address structural inequalities and discrimination relating to characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, class, and the interplay of these factors in people’s lives.

Grants of up to £200,000 are available with no matched funding requirement.

During the year ended 30th September 2021, the Foundation awarded 25 grants ranging from £2,500 (to Forum for the Future) to £300,000 (to the FairShare Educational Foundation).

Further information, guidance and an application form is available on the Friends Provident Charitable Foundation website.

The Foundation operates a rolling application process, with four review points across the year.

The remaining application deadlines for 2023 are:

1. Monday 10th July at 5pm, and
2. Monday 9th October at 5pm.