One year at the Civic Power Fund

Today marks my one year anniversary at the Civic Power Fund.

This time last year, I stepped off a plane from New York and walked straight into my first full day with the Fund.

I vividly remember my first meeting, which was with Sophia Parker at JRF and Will Somerville at Unbound Philanthropy. Exhausted, jet-lagged, and surrounded by luggage, I had no idea what I was doing or what to expect. (Side note: thank you to Sophia and Will for being so warm and welcoming.)

I was beyond excited, but also wracked with uncertainty. I had never led an organisation before or worked in philanthropy. I had walked away from the city and the community that had nourished me during the pandemic. And I was living with my husband again after almost a year apart. It was a lot to take in.

Fast forward a year and things couldn’t feel more different.

Back in January 2022, I arrived armed with a commitment to community organising and a conviction that we urgently needed to build more people power, but not much else.

Sitting in the same chair in 2023, I have not only redoubled this commitment and conviction, I’m now certain I’m in the right place to bring them both to life — and I am very proud of what our small team has achieved towards them.

Some highlights include:

• We built a living, breathing organisation with a bank account, proper systems and processes, and a stable income. None of this was a given this time last year!
• We created a clear and compelling strategy rooted in the values of justice, solidarity and self-determination. We continue to live these values as a team and as an organisation.
• We recruited three *brilliant* new trustees with deep organising, racial justice, and movement building expertise. We also recruited Zain, our *exceptional* new Community Action Fund Manager.
• We awarded our first grants to pioneering community organising infrastructure organisations — bringing five new groups into our cohort and helping them grow. We also built deep links in the north of Greater Manchester and north east Wales — working with partners to map out a five year vision for building civic power in place.
• We partnered with Campaign Bootcamp to launch a new Community Action Fund. We have placed £200,000 behind grassroots community organising and campaigning and introduced a participatory decision-making process rooted in the expertise of existing community organisers. Reading through the hundreds of applications we received over the winter holiday was the perfect tonic to any back to work blues!
• We raised over £1 million towards community organising over the next three years. We’re proud of this, but it is a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed to meet the promise and potential of grassroots organising. We are aiming to triple this in 2023.
• We consistently made the case for community organising and challenged the lack of funding for this vital practice.
• We launched three reports:Growing the Grassroots, showing that people power is our most important yet most absent change strategy; Funding Justice 1, showing that only 2.3% of social justice funding in the UK goes towards community organising; and Power Up, an in-depth exploration of community organising in big charities.
• We also partnered with the Association of Charitable Foundations, The Conduit, Ratio Talks, the Democracy Network, and Alliance Magazine to share these findings.
• We built a community of hundreds of passionate, committed and willing individuals who generously shared their time, energy and wisdom. This community has welcomed our small team into their networks, helping us meet goals well beyond our size. We are eternally grateful.

As we’ve grown, I’ve observed the Civic Power Fund take on a life of its own.

I inherited a groundbreaking idea, lovingly nourished by the previous Director Josh, our Director of Organising Mohammed, and our Chair Kirsty. We had big ambitions, but a compact footprint.

Over the past year, this has gradually changed. With each new hire, relationship, publication, or grant the Civic Power Fund has become something much more than any of us.

As with any start-up, realising you don’t have full ownership or control has been somewhat terrifying. But this realisation is also what fills me with both the greatest sense of pride and humility.

I am hugely ambitious about our future, but again, as with any start up, we may not make it. And in a way, that doesn’t matter, because our ideals, ambitions and shared goals aren’t owned by us, they are owned by the organisers doing the hard graft; the funders changing their practices; and the organisations breaking down barriers and standing in solidarity with communities seeking justice.

This is not to understate the urgency of our mission.

We want to help build a society where every person has the power to shape the quality of their life, community and future.

While power remains concentrated in the hands of a few, this vision is unreachable. As a result, our mission is to build civic power through community organising.

We can’t deliver on this mission without dramatically shifting resources.

Currently, only 2.3% of social justice grantmaking is spent on community organising. We need to raise millions more for organising over the next few decades to rebalance power and win lasting change.

But this mission is bigger than us.

As with all successful community organising, we can’t achieve this alone. So building relationships and standing in solidarity will always take precedence.

What next for the Civic Power Fund

We have lots of exciting things on the horizon for 2023

• Apply for our Community Action Fund which closes on 26th February
• Or if you’re a funder looking to shift and build power, match-fund this pioneering opportunity so we can support even more amazing grassroots action
• Join our event with #BAMEOnline next Thursday 18th January to learn more about both opportunities — and to dig deep into the entrenched power imbalances within philanthropy and how we change this
• Look out for our organising in big charities workshop with the Sheila Mckechnie Foundation and our project with JRF mapping grassroots organising and the radical funding shifts required
• Tell brilliant organisers in Greater Manchester about the new role we’ll be recruiting for at the end of the month
• If you are a grantee partner, get free advice and support from our new Governance and Campaign Hub — helping small organisations navigate big governance challenges
• Learn about the power of organising by following the work of our brilliant infrastructure grantee partners Act Build Change, Polish Migrants Organise for Change, Love & Power, Common Knowledge, Centre for Progressive Change, Nijjor Manush, Wards Corner, and Nurses United
• Get excited about Funding Justice 2 — an in depth look at trends in social justice grantmaking in 2020 and 2021
• Get in touch if you’re interested in shifting your resources to grassroots community organising!

Civic Power Fund