The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation is one of Britain’s largest grant-makers. By its own charity filings it is spending money in a way that should stop most people: £60.7 million out, £8.9 million in, in the same year.
It is not a charity living within its means. It is a permanent endowment drawing down its own capital — financing the movement infrastructure with money accumulated over decades.
The numbers
From the Charity Commission register:
- FY2025: income £8.898m, expenditure £60.691m
- FY2024: income £9.48m, expenditure £56.42m
- Income almost entirely from investments (£8.38m) — zero donations
Where the money goes
From the foundation’s own published grants data:
- Civic Power Fund — £2,880,000 (five grants, including £1.5m and £1.0m)
- Operation Black Vote — £709,837 (including £400,000 in December 2025)
- The Advocacy Academy — £1,170,000 (youth activism training)
- Center for Countering Digital Hate — £413,333
- Full Fact — £965,000
- Green Alliance — £2,157,895
- Citizen’s UK — £852,641 · Runnymede Trust — £626,000
- OpenDemocracy — £90,423 · Unlock Democracy — £96,438
A pattern emerges: large sums into electoral-mobilisation and community-organising infrastructure — the groups that get people to the polls, train activists, and shape the public square.
The board
The trustees include Dame Clare Moriarty — former Permanent Secretary at Defra and DExEU, now chief executive of Citizens Advice. The revolving door between the civil service machine and the grant-making machine, in the flesh.
The point
£60m a year being spent from a capital pot to fund campaigning infrastructure, while the foundation earns a fraction of what it gives away. This is not philanthropy as most people understand it. It is a large, permanent, self-perpetuating machine quietly financing the organised Left.
And it is all on the public record — if you know where to look.