The Barrow Cadbury Trust is the respectable face of the funding map — Quaker heritage, Cadbury chocolate money, a board stacked with family names. It is also, by its own published records, a long-standing funder of the migration-advocacy network.
The numbers
- Charity Commission 1115476; company 05836950
- Investment assets: £91.9m (2025)
- FY2025: income £2.031m, expenditure £4.924m — spending down the endowment
- £110,000 of public money via one government grant in FY2025
Where it goes
From BCT’s own 360Giving file (1,135 grants, 2012-2024):
- Refugee Action £390,000 · Detention Action £355,000 · British Refugee Council £297,180 · Women for Refugee Women £252,000
- IPPR £310,000 (including £50,000 for “New Era Economics”)
- New Economics Foundation £265,600 · Tax Justice UK £150,000 · High Pay Centre £124,200
- Civic Power Fund £100,000 (migration)
- Hope Not Hate: £13,000 in FY2024 per HNH’s accounts — notably absent from BCT’s own published grant file
Governance worth noting
Twelve trustees, heavy on family: Erica R Cadbury chairs, Nicola J Cadbury sits alongside, Anna Southall OBE has served since 1974. Jack Serle — the investigative journalist turned HSJ editor — has been a trustee since 2014.
Fairness note: BCT also funds the centre-right Centre for Social Justice (£95,000). The pattern is not exclusivity — it is scale and direction. A £91.9m endowment feeding the same network year after year, with a slice of government money on top.
Sources
- Charity Commission 1115476 financial history
- BCT 360Giving file
- HNH Charitable Trust FY2024 accounts