Quick-fire questions with a Major Trust: The Allen Lane Foundation

With the latest (18th) edition of The Guide to Major Trusts now available for pre-order, we sat down with The Allen Lane Foundation, a major grant-maker featured in this new edition to learn a bit more about what being a major trust is like (a grant-maker that has the capacity to award £300,000 or more to organisations)! 

The Allen Lane Foundation was established in 1966 by Sir Allen Lane, who founded Penguin Books. It funds charitable organisations and projects all across the UK except for those that only benefit residents of Greater London. The foundation focuses on supporting causes that are deemed ‘unpopular’ by awarding grants of around £750,000 per annum to organisations working with/for beneficiaries such as people seeking asylum and people who have been incarcerated.  

What advice would you give to anyone making a funding application? 

It is useful if organisations thoroughly read through the grant-makers’ information, often available on the grant-makers’ website, to ensure that they fit the criteria, and apply for something that is appropriate and eligible.  If they’re unsure or they have questions, I would advise emailing the grant-maker for clarity. 

What advice would you give to grant-makers to make the application process as easy as possible for applicant organisations? 

It is useful for trusts and foundations to have a website that has clear and concise eligibility guidelines so that anyone looking at it can easily understand what the grant-makers aim to fund, and how to go about applying to them.  

We aim to make the process straightforward for those seeking funding. For example, at The Allen Lane Foundation, we set out our criteria for the applicant organisations; have separate pages that give information about each of our seven funding programmes; include a list of things we don’t fund that applicants can check through; and there are also a wide range of case studies of grants made previously so that applicants can see the sorts of things we have funded before.  We also use an eligibility quiz that leads onto our online form, if organisations fit our funding criteria. 

Social media can also offer a suitable alternative for displaying information related to available grants and the application process.  

Why did The Allen Lane Foundation decide not to fund charitable activities that only benefit people based in Greater London? 

The foundation funds nationally, across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. We have not funded in London for many years, mainly due to larger funds being available in the capital, and other funders focusing their grant-making there. 

Why did the board of trustees decide to focus on offering funding to causes considered as ‘unpopular’? 

The trustees aim to ensure impact through its funding, so we focus on small organisations, which often work with marginalised communities and beneficiaries. We like to support important work that might not attract funding elsewhere. We want our funding to:  

• Make a lasting difference to people’s lives rather than simply alleviating the symptoms or current problems 
• Reduce isolation, stigma and discrimination, and 
• Encourage or enable groups that experience marginalisation and/or discrimination to share in the life of the whole community 

Should more grant-makers offer funding to help cover charities’ core costs? 

Yes, core funding, or unrestricted funding, is hugely important to charities. The Allen Lane Foundation aims to provide support that helps charities to thrive, and core or unrestricted funding enables charities to best direct the finances they have available to them. They are the experts in what they do so we try to offer flexible and meaningful grants to help support charities in their work. 

What do you believe the implications of AI may be for the charity sector? 

This is a quickly-moving area which will have a huge impact on general society. There are likely to be many implications in terms of how charities operate, how they apply for funding, and how beneficiaries are supported. AI is also likely to affect how grant-makers operate too, including operating practice, assessments, evaluations, reporting and learning requirements. 

Special thanks to Gill Aconley, Grants Manager at The Allen Lane Foundation for chatting to us. You can learn more about The Allen Lane Foundation and its funding programmes online, and for detailed funding information on 1,000 individually selected major trusts, preorder The Guide to Major Trusts 2025/26 now!     

If you enjoyed this article and want more insights into being involved in grant-making, we have more interviews with grant-makers (new and old) here and here.