It awards scholarships and fellowships, supports the Hibbert Lectures, and maintained (from 1894) a chair of ecclesiastical history at Manchester College.
In the original scheme the trust was called 'the Anti-trinitarian Fund', and its object was, by a provision of divinity scholarships, to encourage learning and culture among unorthodox Christians.
It has always been known that the trust was founded with a fortune made from slavery; Robert Hibbert owned plantations in Jamaica, worked by enslaved African people.
When the British government abolished chattel slavery throughout most of the Empire in 1833, it awarded compensation money to the slave owners.
In the 2020s, the trustees approached the Centre for Reparation Research at the University of the West Indies, seeking advice on a way forward.