Today I wanted to introduce readers to the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation (EFF), an NGO which I frequently comes up when I am researching Woke Waste – and every other thing undermining Britain.
To be clear, the EFF receives nothing from taxpayers, but that doesn’t make it any less of a problem compared to organisations that do. In fact, I wanted to use EFF as an example of how privately-funded NGOs can be just as corrosive to the West as state-funded ones. Often NGOs cross-promote and fund each other, ultimately functioning as an ecosystem of far Left ghastliness.
But back to the EFF…
Founded in 1961, the EFF is one of the UK’s largest independent funders.
According to its website, in 2024 it provided “£48.8 million in funding towards a wide range of work in support of our aims: to improve Our Natural World, secure A Fairer Future and nurture Creative, Confident Communities”.
So what does this look like in practice?
Well, some of the EFF’s “Fairer Future” funding has gone to what it calls “gender justice”, “migrant justice” and “racial justice”.
Click on “gender justice” and you get an idea of the sort of projects funded and the sums involved:
For instance, in December last year the EFF awarded £300,000 to Gendered Intelligence, an organisation that imagines “a world where diverse gender identities and expressions and visible and valued and where trans, non-binary and gender questioning people live healthy, safe and fulfilled lives”.
Click “migrant justice” on the EFF website and you’ll be shown 69 grants – which are mostly about making it easier for the world to move to the UK.
Take the fact that in September, the EFF awarded £180,000 to “Migrants Organise Ltd”, which currently runs “a series of free, online trainings to resist the Hostile Environment in public services”.
It strongly believes that “Solidarity Knows No Borders”:
The EFF also funds the “Migrant Democracy Project”, which claims to be “building power amongst migrants in the UK to shape a society rooted in justice, reflecting our needs and interests”.
It believes that “every resident, no matter where they are from, should have equal access to democratic participation in the UK”.
You can expect other “migrant justice” grants – awarded millions by the EFF – to be along the same lines, and that’s before we get to examples of “racial justice”. In 2023 the EFF awarded £1.5 million to the Baobab Foundation, which is “Resourcing racial justice through Black & Global Majority Communities”:
Here are some of the other “racial justice” grants:
Incidentally, all of the EFF’s grants (since 2008) can be found on the 360Giving website (if you want to be both horrified and depressed).
Unfortunately this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NGOs meddling in our democracy – in ways most taxpayers would be shocked by.
They have essentially become a channel through which the far Left can quietly exert power.
Charlotte Gill regularly publishes about the use of taxpayers’ money to fund Left-wing causes and Left-wing researchers in Woke Waste, her Substack. You can subscribe here.
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