Vision, mission and principles
We believe that many of the systems that fuel injustice in our world can either be remade or unmade. Discover more about our strategy on this page.
Our mission
We are an independent social change organisation, working to support and speed up the transition to a more equitable and just future, free from poverty, where people and planet can flourish.
Our vision for the future
Rapid technological change and a worsening ecological crisis are making the future more uncertain. Meanwhile, rising inequality, exclusion and hardship are driving unnecessary suffering and political instability. In this precarious context we are wary of reaching for fixed blueprints of what a fairer world might look like. Instead, our strategy sets a direction of travel, guided by shared values and the changes we want to see in society, as well as aspects of the status quo we hope will gradually diminish.
Our ambition is that social and economic systems can give people greater control over the most important parts of their lives, with a more equal distribution of material and social resources for everyone to enjoy dignity, opportunity and hope and enable their fullest contribution to society. Achieving this will require systems built on solidarity, liberation, and people’s interdependence on each other and the natural environment.
We think the main obstacles to change are forms of capitalism which concentrate the ownership and control of scarce assets in fewer hands and the defenders of such inequality. Confronting these effectively is essential.
Our 3 focus areas
Shifting the terms of the debate
Our insight, policy and advocacy programmes focus on destabilising dominant systems by shining a light on the ways that they - and the assumptions that underpin them - are increasingly failing people and planet. We propose credible policy ideas that challenge views on what’s possible, bridge to new norms and catalyse effective coalitions to make them a reality. The common theme across this work is household economic security; its constituent parts (including the worst forms of poverty and hardship), its dynamics and drivers, and its relationships with the wider economy.
Our broad argument is simple. The dependencies between a strong economy and vibrant society move in both directions; it is true that a serious agenda for social change requires economic reform; but the strength of an economy is also dependent on the quality of its social settlement.
We believe that successfully shifting the terms of debate on social and economic policy will require a greater appetite from us to be challenging, and more imaginative and radical in the solutions we propose.
Supporting and shielding the new
We believe that practical examples of real-world alternatives can drive real change. Whether that be new models for delivering public goods or different operating systems (such as forms of contracts, investment vehicles and governance frameworks) that resist the economic status quo in favour of a more democratic approach to the ownership and management of assets, wealth and ideas.
We are therefore making sizeable commitments to resourcing an emerging ecology of organisations working in this vein, through a combination of unrestricted funding, help accessing other important sources of financial, intellectual and relational support, the provision of tools to capture and share insights, and other field building initiatives.
Simultaneously we are committed to creating less hostile environmental conditions for this work, by building new institutional capacities and capabilities, creating new resource flows and fostering the mindset shifts needed to mainstream the ideas embodied by the field.
Building infrastructure for transition
As a relatively wealthy, independently endowed foundation, we have a responsibility to enable many others who broadly share our aims to advance their efforts. Our Insight Infrastructure programme is designed to simplify and democratise access to high-quality data on poverty - transforming knowledge into meaningful action against injustice and inequality.
We are also resourcing efforts to grow the capacities and capabilities needed for deep system change. Our movements work aims to strengthen grassroots organising in the UK, especially where it is led from positions of marginality. And we nurture work that is supporting system change through tackling issues that are below the surface: backing work that unlocks shifts in mindsets, in cultural narratives and in the ‘hidden wiring’ that keeps the status quo in place.
Our geographic focus
We are active across all 4 nations of the UK. The different power structures in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland require us to take a distinct approach to our work in each place. Harnessing our efforts across the UK, and anchored within our mission, we build insight and solutions for the struggles faced by people in these places, using local skills, connections and networks to drive progress towards our mission.
We also play a particularly active role in our historic home city of York, and the surrounding region. This starts with our stewardship of the Homestead site, including the Homestead Park, and through our role as the parent organisation of the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust (JRHT), a provider of affordable housing and care services in York and the wider region.
We are committed to increasing our contribution to the development of York and the wider region in the context of the polycrisis. This was the region that played a key role in the industrialisation of the UK; we want to play our part in creating the conditions for it to take on that role again as we navigate a second equally deep transition – towards a more equitable economy which puts people and planet at its centre. To do that we are working alongside communities and anchor institutions across the region to support transformative change in line with our wider strategy.
Our guiding principles
Horizons
We help bring about urgent policy and practice changes now, while fostering the deeper structural changes needed to shape an economic and social model in which people and planet can flourish.
Power
We use our position to engage with and apply pressure to those who hold official power today, through the quality of our arguments and ideas and by building powerful coalitions and movements for change, centring the voices of those who benefit least from the status quo.
Equity
We bring the lenses of equity and liberation to our work, seeking to transform the unjust systems that perpetuate structural disadvantage. We are committed to playing a vocal role in reshaping philanthropy and investment practices in this context.
Risk
We embrace more speculative work, learning as we go, and knowing there is no ‘what works’ path for more transformational change. We recognise shouldering risk is a responsibility of a wealthy, independent foundation able to think long-term and focus on radical change.
Infrastructure
We adopt an ‘infrastructure mindset’, always asking ourselves how, as a wealthy independent organisation, we can use our position in a generous and long-term way to develop ‘value for many’ infrastructure.
Plurality
We campaign with a strong consistent voice, grounded in a wide range of views and voices from different political traditions and backgrounds – including traditional and new economic thinking.
An evolving organisation
We trace our origins back over 120 years, to the founding memorandum written by Joseph Rowntree, with its call for us to focus on the systems that drive poverty. Since then, JRF has evolved over time, and like most organisations we have been shaped by systems around us, meaning that some of our practices help to sustain inequality. As we lean more into systemic change we are also committed to learning, unlearning and closing the gap between our aims and how we work.
Through our relationships with those who are building alternative futures and confronting systems of power, we are gaining a better understanding of what is needed for radical change and what we will need to do to be part of it.
This includes achieving our goal to become a truly anti-racist organisation and changing how we decide who and what to resource. It challenges the knowledge, insight and forms of impact we currently value, and the assumptions we bring to defining and managing risk.
Our trustees have also agreed to a new approach to our endowment, with an intention to put all our wealth in service to our mission over time – through a combination of increased spending and mission-aligned investment; and, in time, moving some of the endowment into emerging new transformative investment.
None of this is easy. We often operate within systems that don’t align with our values, requiring us to either challenge existing systems or develop alternatives, such as through our work supporting the field of transformational investment, so that we can truly become mission aligned investors. Both depend on our people feeling safe and supported enough to take risks.
These efforts to bring about change internally will inevitably take time to work through but we're committed to being open about the challenges they generate and our approach to them.