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Member Spotlight: Joseph Levy Foundation

As part of the London Funders community, we deeply value collective learning, authentic relationships, and challenging the structural inequalities that drive social injustice, particularly for those under 35. This spotlight is a chance to share more about our mission, approach, and the questions we’re grappling with - together with peers committed to equitable grant giving.

What are some of the key areas you fund?

At the Joseph Levy Foundation, supporting disadvantaged young people is our focus. We want a future where every young person has fair access to the opportunities and resources they need to flourish. We will achieve this by funding and supporting organisations and individuals that have ambitious ideas to help disadvantaged young people. Defining what we mean when we refer to young people is important. Every person is unique, and this extends to how quickly someone transitions into adulthood. Unnecessarily stringent age brackets can strip support from a young person when they need it most. To ensure we can support all young people to transition well into adulthood, we are committed to a vision where disadvantaged people under 35 have fair access to everything they need to flourish.

Those we have funded recently have been committed to the following:

  • Tackling systemic inequality, with an emphasis on deep-rooted and widespread disparities that are built into the structures, policies, and practices of society.
  • Reimagining health, by addressing the social and environmental drivers of ill-health and responses to this.
  • Investing in community power, by backing leaders and movements led by people with lived experience.

We do this through unrestricted grant making, partnerships, and patient impact investment. We are London-based, have a UK reach, we act with a deep commitment to young people, who are most in need right now. 

What’s something exciting that you’re currently working on?

We’re in the early stages of developing a young advisory board and learning days - a new initiative designed to support young people driving change from within the communities and ensure we centre young people within the decision-making process. This means more than funding programmes, more than one off events. We’re looking at holistic, flexible support that includes well-being, leadership development, peer learning, and access to influence.

We’re also expanding our systems learning partnerships, collaborating with organisations to explore how long-term funding and curiosity-driven evaluation can help dismantle the barriers and tackle some of today’s most pressing challenges. We don’t fund services, activities and programmes - we want to help shift the conditions that make services necessary in the first place. We want to see, drive and support long term impactful change and support organisations at there core to shift the dial in the right direction for them, and the young people they support.

What’s one insight that you’d like to share with other London Funders members?

Let’s start designing systems with the people, the systems should support. We’ve learned that funding rooted in lived experience, is more effective and responds to todays challenges. Yet too often, people who hold deep knowledge of injustice are not given the resources or power to lead the solutions.

We’re asking: how can we make our funding practices truly relational, equitable and impactful? And how might we continue to lead with accountability and compliance, plus include genuine trust and co-creation?

What do you value most about being a part of London Funders?

London Funders creates a vital space where we can explore uncomfortable truths and act collectively. It’s one of the few environments where funders are encouraged to think beyond short-term outputs, and engage with long-term structural questions - from how we define “impact” to who is shaping our strategies.

We particularly value opportunities for place-based collaboration, shared learning, and cross-sector collaboration.

Looking ahead: what should we prioritise as a network of funders?

Power and accountability. The future of funding needs to centre community voice, shared leadership, and redistribution—not just of money, but also decision-making authority.

We believe London Funders can play a catalytic role in shifting philanthropy toward equity-led, anti-racist practice. That includes championing things like trustee remuneration, trauma-informed funding, and rethinking evaluation in ways that serve communities, not funders.

What’s an area you’d like to discuss with other members?

We’re eager to have deeper conversations about:

  • How funders can embrace risk and support long-term systems change
  • Embedding racial and disability justice into strategy, governance, and funding practice
  • What truly equitable impact investing looks like for small and mid-size foundations
  • Building sustainable, well-supported leadership pipelines rooted in lived experience
  • The role of funders in resourcing movements—not just organisations

We’re particularly interested in learning from peers who are experimenting with participatory grant making, and community wealth-building.

 

Connect with us about:

  • Funding for lived experience-led systems change
  • Embedding equity in monitoring, learning, and impact
  • Trustee recruitment, remuneration, and governance reform
  • Building trust-based partnerships across sectors

If you're reimagining philanthropy alongside us, we’d love to connect.

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