Funding Grassroots Organising
Last month, the Civic Power Fund and Joseph Rowntree Foundation came together with Martha Awojobi and JMB Consulting to host a conference on Funding for Grassroots Community Organising.
Why did we do this?
Oppressed communities should have the power to win justice.
Radically improving the quality and quantity of funding for grassroots community organising is vital to achieving this.
We aimed to bring together Community Organisers and Funders to have a hopeful and joyful conversation about the magic of organising.
But we also wanted to have an honest and frank discussion about the funding practices that are blunting this magic.
What did the day look like?
On the day, around 40 community organisers and changemakers came together with 12 funders in central Manchester. We asked attendees to enter the space as individuals: cognizant of their institutional power, but coming together in solidarity and curious to learn.
We’re so grateful that this is how people showed up.
Our heartfelt thanks to the organisers that gave up their time and shared their perspectives. And to the funders who listened without judgement and made a commitment to act.
What did we learn?
The stakes couldn’t be higher.
We are living through a moment of profound crisis. For the first time in 25 years, global poverty rates have increased. Across the world, societies are fracturing and democracy is in trouble.
These are global trends, but they are ricocheting through our communities at home. Hate crime is on the rise. The far-right is mobilising. And a cost of living crisis on top of a decade of austerity is pushing millions more towards deprivation.
Grassroots organisers are fighting harder than ever to resist these trends. But we don’t have their back.
Community Organising is an urgent and necessary response.
Community organising is one of the few proven routes to social change when there is a salient issue regarding an imbalance of power.
As Marzena Zuwoska reminded us, It builds the power of communities oppressed because of who they are or where they are from.
‘There are no saviours; just the power to act, set the agenda, and redistribute resources’
Community organising brings people who share a problem together to win change that matters to them.
It builds countervailing power: that which influences decision-makers and holds formal power to account. It binds communities together in relationship. It transforms individual democratic agency and it builds the foundations for a more just and solidaristic society.
Given this, as we heard from Jon Cracknell, it is shocking that just 2.3% of social justice funding goes towards community organising.
Funding that builds people power requires a significant strategic shift.
The end goal of community organising is to build power, rather than to serve predetermined objectives. This is a significant shift for most funders — and it requires a fundamental rethink of time, risk, and impact.
Time, because as Amanda Walters told us, this is long-term, messy, non-linear work.
Risk, because as we heard from Fatou Jindou, this means ceding control to communities. Doing this in our current compliance and governance landscape feels scary. But the big picture risks of not transforming society are far scarier.
‘Do you know there is a risk in not acting?’
Impact, because success is not captured through policy outcomes and measurable metrics alone.
Although it is possible to get forensic about people-power. This is a practice that organisers have honed across generations.
This means confronting funder practices which, often rooted in White Supremacy Culture, are undermining organising impact.
Short-term, competitive, and scarce funding cycles are fueling organiser burnout. This is gruelling work, especially when organising around personal oppression and trauma. We should be resourcing it accordingly.
Funders need to invest in organising for the long-haul AND GET LOCAL — providing space for organisers and communities to dream and build their vision of transformative change.
‘Resource us to mourn, dream and heal. To release our anger, hope and joy. To go through the stages and find our power.’
As we heard from Chrisann Jarrett, this means trusting communities to set their own priorities and approaches — in the knowledge that it’ll build the transformative people power necessary for systems change.
Funder focus on lived experience risks becoming extractive. We heard throughout the conference that people are being asked to share their stories, meanwhile lived experience leadership still isn’t being funded. The same large, centralised organisations are trusted while grassroots groups are starved of resources.
‘Why do we constantly have to tell our stories while you quietly observe’
As we heard from Khadija Diskin, much of this is rooted in White Supremacy Culture in funding. We need to collectively unlearn practices that are causing deep harm and place our trust in the communities organising against their own oppression.
What do we do next?
We heard countless ideas at the conference, which we can’t do justice to here. But some of the key opportunities for action are captured below.
- Provide more and better (i.e. long-term, flexible, core-costs, grassroots, trust-based) funding for grassroots community organising.
- Pool resources for maximum impact and minimal burdens on grassroots organisers. This is a chance to learn together, to reach grassroots work, and to provide vital backend support to organisers so they can dream about and build alternative futures.
- Unlearn white supremacy culture and learn about and act on anti-oppression practices.
- Rethink approaches to monitoring and evaluation, learning from organising about how to measure impact and success.
- Prioritise mental health and burnout. Understand that organising is a skilled practice, but that it can be exhausting and triggering. Resource and support it accordingly.
- Create more places to come together and listen, learn and take action.
- Take pride in trusting communities. Make the case to redistribute power and resources to the frontlines as a vital route to achieving your objectives.
- Make funding processes easier, more flexible, and much more transparent.
