Trust for London

Trust for London is a London community foundation established in 1891 as the City Parochial Foundation, created by the City of London Parochial Charities Act 1883 to consolidate the endowments of more than a hundred City parishes — charitable gifts and bequests accumulated across four centuries — into a single fund for the benefit of London's poor. Registered as charity number 205629, it has distributed grants in London for over 130 years. In 2010, the Foundation and a separately-endowed entity also called Trust for London (established in 1986 with a £10 million government endowment when the Greater London Council was abolished) were amalgamated into the present single organisation. It is governed by a 17-member Central Governing Body with trustees nominated by London councils, the Greater London Authority, the Church Commissioners, and the Corporation of the City of London; Manny Hothi, who had previously served as the Trust's Director of Policy, became Chief Executive in July 2021.

With an investment endowment of roughly £324–379 million and annual charitable expenditure that consistently exceeds income — £19.9 million against £9.98 million in 2024, the difference drawn from endowment returns — Trust for London is among the largest London-only grantmakers. Its grantmaking is restricted to Greater London and deliberately prioritises work that government will not or is unlikely to fund, operating across two broad aims: economic justice (decent work, social security, ending the poverty premium, housing) and social justice (ending migrant destitution, racial justice, disability justice). The Trust supports up to 300 organisations at any one time.

Technological advancements: AI and low-paid workers

The corpus entry is anchored in the Trust's Decent Work programme, specifically its "Technological advancements" sub-strand. The strand's stated goal is that "the introduction of technology and artificial intelligence in workplaces is informed by the experiences of low-paid workers." Four categories of work are funded under this strand:

• Campaigns and policy: advocacy to ensure fast-moving AI regulation is shaped by the voices of low-paid and precarious workers
• Design and development: work that brings workers' lived experiences into the design, development, and testing of workplace technology, including algorithmic management systems that affect pay and conditions
• Research: studies by worker-led groups, academics, think-tanks, or civil society organisations documenting the impact of AI and technology on low-paid workers in London
• Innovation testing: piloting new technological approaches that could improve pay or conditions for workers

The Institute for the Future of Work (IFOW) is a named grantee under this strand, receiving £150,000 over three years (2025–2028) to act as a "bridge between frontline groups and the legislative and regulatory ecosystem" on AI and workplace technology — amplifying low-paid worker voices in national policy, producing practical guidance on existing protections, collaborating with companies on participatory impact assessments, and developing corporate accountability frameworks around worker voice. In its 2026 outlook on AI and poverty, CEO Manny Hothi stated that "workers must have a say over how AI will impact their jobs" and called for government to "work with civil society, businesses and regulators" on AI governance rather than pursuing growth unchecked. Trust for London also participates in the charity-sector AI task force convened by CAST and Zoe Amar Digital — a 20+ organisation coalition shaping government AI policy to benefit communities — and identifies technology and AI as a key focus within its 2030 funding strategy.

Position in the corpus funder slice

Trust for London fills the UK community foundation / AI-and-labour funder slot in the corpus. It sits alongside Sigrid Rausing Trust and Wellcome Trust as UK-headquartered foundations in the corpus, but occupies a distinct niche: where those funds are a private family foundation (Sigrid Rausing) or a biomedical research funder (Wellcome), Trust for London is a historic endowed community foundation whose AI-specific grantmaking is directed toward worker organising and grassroots advocacy for workers at the bottom of the London labour market. Its worker-voice-in-AI-regulation strand directly activates the corpus's "labour organizing where it clearly intersects with AI" scope and the "people outside AI being engaged in work to make AI better as they see it" working principle.