The Tudor Trust will award £10m in its first round of grant funding following a major transformation of the organisation’s strategy.

The funder’s new strategy will see it focus on providing larger, longer-term grants to organisations and leaders tackling social injustice through a racial injustice lens, in a bid to drive meaningful systemic change.

The Tudor Trust closed to applications in April 2022 in what was initially expected to be a one-year hiatus, but the closure was extended as the funder worked towards becoming an anti-racist organisation.

The grantmaker has since restructured its staff team and replaced its entire board as part of its “commitment to build a new grantmaking strategy that is more intentionally focused on racial and social justice”.

The Tudor Trust’s new strategy, Change We Seek, focuses on providing larger, but fewer, longer-term grants to organisations working towards advancing racial justice and driving systemic change.

Raji Hunjan, chief executive of the Tudor Trust, told Third Sector: “We are putting racial justice front and centre of all our work. Our theory of change is that racial justice is a lens through which you can tackle all forms of injustice.”

The grantmaker will focus on funding organisations that tackle the root causes of systemic inequity and racial justice, in a bid to shift its philanthropy “from holding power over communities to working with them”, it said.

Hunjan said: “We’ve been listening to the sector for a long time, and one of the things we’ve heard really loud and clear is that funding has not gone to racialised and global majority organisations and leaders.

“Those leaders have the answers about how to address inequity through the lens of racism, but they’re also the innovators that are looking at issues around climate justice, economic justice and safety for everyone.”

Hunjan said one of the grantmaker’s biggest lessons during its strategy work was that, contrary to the funder’s assumption, charities said they were not in need of 10-year funding, but instead wanted 10-year relationships.

“That was the first example of where we had to test our own assumption and shift,” she said.

In the first round of grant funding, the Tudor Trust will award a total of £10m to 18 groups across the UK, selected by invitation only.

This includes 11 “learning partners” – organisations that align with the funder’s strategy and are open to collaborating with the grantmaker on a shared learning journey.

These partners include the Black Feminist Fund, the Runnymede Trust, the Ubele Initiative, Birthrights and Civic Square.

These partners will receive a total of £9.3m in flexible and unrestricted funding, distributed over periods of up to six years. The grants will vary in size, but the majority are between £750,000 and £1m, said Hunjan.

The funder is also providing one-time, unrestricted grants of £100,000 to seven “exploration partners” – smaller organisations that align with the Tudor Trust’s strategy but are still developing their strategic ambitions.

These include: Decolonising Economics, Material Cultures, People Dem Collective and Ubuntu Women Shelter.

Hunjan said these grants would allow these exploration partners to “have that moment to breathe and really understand what it means to develop their ideas and grow their thinking and understanding”.

The grantmaker said its next round of funding would be based on what it learned from its grantee partners and would also be by invitation.

Organisations that already receive funding from the Tudor Trust will continue to be funded until the end of their existing agreements.

Hunjan said this announcement “marks a defining moment for the Tudor Trust”, adding: “Our transformation is about shifting power and building deeper relationships with our grant partners.

“To truly live their ambitions, the organisations we are partnering with have been funded in a way that moves us away from a scarcity mindset and instead focuses on what it takes to unlock their full potential and enable them to thrive.”