Foundation that targets cause of social ills

Poverty trap: Notion of underclass living off the state is misguided, claims research highlighting pressures of a low income

It is more than 90 years since the Joseph Rowntree Foundation was set up, funded by shares in the Rowntree chocolate company, with the aim of seeking out "the underlying causes of weakness or evil".

In Victorian times, as now, the name Joseph Rowntree was synonymous with social concern. In his teenage years the great Quaker philanthropist had witnessed the Irish potato famine; by his 30s he had published a number of papers on poverty.

When he set up the foundation in 1904 with pounds 42,000 in shares, Rowntree hoped to find causes and solutions to social problems rather than relying on providing "soup kitchens" and other charitable acts which eased the symptoms of poverty but did nothing to cure it.

Today the foundation is the largest private funder of social research in the country, handing out between pounds 6m and pounds 7m every year. The main areas of interests remain social policy - in particular the distribution of income and wealth, the changing face of the family unit, and housing.

The foundation is not a Quaker institution although Quaker ideals pervade it. And it is keen to dispel any idea that it works from an ivory tower; the foundation manages a "model" village of 1,000 homes on the outskirts of York.