Focus Area 1: Financial integrity

The UK is one of the world’s largest international financial centres. It enables vast amounts of capital to flow, creating wealth and prosperity. It also enables significant illicit financial flows, including the proceeds of crime and corruption, that enable great harm at home and abroad.

We support work that strengthens integrity in the UK’s international financial systems, so the global financial system works better for people and planet. We believe this reduces opportunities for international corruption, crime and tax abuse, and strengthens democratic government in the long term public interest.

We support work in areas such as ending the use of anonymous corporate vehicles, enhancing transparency and investigations, strengthening enforcement, and enhancing ethical practice by the professions.

Our role

We work with civil society leaders to build the long term capacities, organisations and alliances required for success. We fund organisations and coordinating work, recognising that success depends on joined up collective efforts.

Our grants are usually for up to £35,000 per year for up to three years. We also make smaller grants for research and testing new ideas. We support the work of the UK Anti Corruption Coalition and also welcome approaches from new initiatives. We are keen to strengthen alliances with wider movements in the economic, social and climate fields.

We maintain a light touch strategic dialogue with key stakeholders, and convene different groups to develop & advance collective goals.  We actively work to bring new donors and funding into this field. We are extremely grateful for the Open Society Foundations’ crucial support and partnership.

In 2023, we convened a multi-stakeholder conference on the next steps in tackling economic crime, and our fifth annual retreat for civil society organiastions working in this field. These events led to this emerging set of priorities, which will inform our grant-making.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss any aspect of this work.

We expect successful applicants in this focus area to:

  • demonstrate effective leadership, clear focus and strategy,
  • identify how their work fits with existing efforts by civil society and other stakeholders (including the initiatives mentioned above),
  • have an annual income of less than £5m,
  • use our funding, where possible, to build long term sustainability for their organisation,
  • be applying to us for work that is hard to fund from other sources.

“Nelson Mandela”, London, UK. Photo by George de Bruxelles on Unsplash