The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust is a Quaker trust founded in 1904 to support people who address the causes of conflict and injustice through grants applied for by applicants. In 2018, the Charitable Trust awarded 100 grants for a total of GBP 7.2 million in organizations dealing with Peace and Security, Power and Accountability, Rights and Justice, Sustainable Future and other causes.
To fund its grant-making activities in the long-term, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust invests its endowment with external managers whose strategy matches the aim of the organization. As such, the Trust only invests in enterprises aligned to the organization's mission and encourages business to be ethical, socially responsible and to protect the environment. Consequently, the Trust has implemented an exclusion criteria on companies whose primary business is the extraction of fossil fuels, armament, gambling, tobacco and new generation nuclear power stations. The exclusion also applies to bonds from governments with high military expenditure or oppressive regimes. Additionally, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust expects from all of its external managers to strive to achieve a good gender balance within the teams that are managing the funds in which they are invested.