Social Justice Funding Needs To Change: Reflections from the Civic Power Fund’s Community Action Panel

Being a community organiser is hard. The work can be tiring, slow, and sometimes disheartening — never because of the communities we work with, though. No, the hardship comes from the lack of understanding of the work that we do and the power it holds, especially from people that sit in “traditional” positions of power. Funders, in other words.

We live in a world that lacks funders who understand; they don’t see the importance of a community that is strengthened through the work of organising. When you get to see the beauty of your work every day — the small wins, the big wins, and everything in between — it can be hard to know that your work isn’t valued by those that can give you the funds to keep the work going. As shown by the CPF’s own study, “just 3% of [social justice funding grants] are going towards community organising or local power building (Martha Mackenzie).” It’s disheartening, and it’s hard.

This is why I applied to sit on the Civic Power Fund Community Action Panel. As a community organiser (at Grapevine), someone who is on the ground working at a local level with communities to create long-lasting systematic change, I wanted to add my voice to the discussion. I was soon sitting in a room with seven other individuals from across the country all from different backgrounds and with different lived experiences of grassroot community organising. Not only did we take the time to get to know one another — to understand our strengths and areas of expertise — we also talked through the pitfalls and no-goes of the community organising funding world. We took time to understand our collective vision: a funding system for social justice that is accessible, equal, and fair, and we hand-crafted the criteria for the Community Action Fund, together.

The Community Action Panel’s Working Agreement — rules that the team wanted to follow whilst sharing a space — on it reads “speak from the I” and “be ready to learn, be present.”

Our Criteria

It wasn’t easy. Community organising is nuanced; it is just as important to understand the motivations of the people involved as it is the overall goal. We spent the entire day crafting our criteria and working out how we would best read through the applications. We wanted fairness, equality, and accessibility to create the thread that ran through our decision making process. Our brains hurt, and there were moments of tension and, in all honesty, the experience opened my eyes as to why the funding world is shaped as it is — creating a process that truly works for grassroots organisations is hard. It takes time, patience, accountability, and trust. Trust for both those helping you decide where the money will go, but also trust for those that are applying for the money.

We decided on four main criteria that would guide us through the work:

1. How rooted and accountable to the community is the group?

• What kind of listening has taken place? Are the issues coming from the community themselves? Whose voices are being heard?

2. How central is building power to the group’s approach to addressing the injustice faced by their community?

• Are leaders being built in the community? What moments for sharing of experiences and knowledge are there?

3. How committed is the group to long-term change on the issues affecting their community?

• What is their impact, and how do they imagine it growing?

4. To what extent is the applicant group or organisation building bridges and resisting the politics of division?

• We want a world that is stronger for the work being done, and strength comes from working together.

We got to work.

Two members of the panel sit in conversation, smiling-wide!

Decision-Making

We were encouraged to bring our lived experience into the room and to use it as a strength. The whole process screamed community organising; from the rounds questions (a tool to open up the room at the beginning of sessions to allow people to break the barrier of silence and get their voices heard) to the intentional sections for reflection, it was very clear to me that the Civic Power Fund understand the power of organising. So much so, they wanted it to be embedded into the process from the very beginning.

We split into pairs, reading grants separately, and then came together to discuss. Each grant had at least three pairs of eyes on it, and our scores were averaged out.

We had our top 30. But we needed it to be a top 18.

We came prepped, we had our favourites, and we began the conversation. As a team, we discussed impact, breadth, and spread. We worked through bias and took time to dive into our whys. We respected people’s monetary ask and did not question their reasoning—this is where trust comes in. We thought about impact, and how the Civic Power Fund could work to strengthen and support the work that they would fund.

It was tough. As I read through the 33 grants that I was in charge of, my heart ached. I wanted to fund all of them: imagine a world in which social justice funding wasn’t a one-off. A society that puts the power of the people first. Or a place where funders had organising experience and used it to support and strengthen the communities that they fund.

It seems too good to be true, but The Civic Power Fund is changing what it means to be a funder and we should all be taking notes.

The Community Action Panel and the Civic Power Fund team stand together and are smiling at the camera.

My Key Take-Aways:

1. Funding is hard. My respect for funders, or at least those that take the time to listen, learn, and engage with those on the ground, increased dramatically during this process. The Civic Power Fund brought together individuals that have experience of the work and our conversations were deep and wide. It was only through our shared experiences and knowledge that we were able to challenge each other on our choices and come to a full understanding of why we chose the groups that we did. I have no idea how funders have these conversations without the lived-experience of organising… maybe this is the issue.
2. It’s hard to not get invested (& maybe you need to be in order to do the best job you can). The end of this process brought me to tears. Funding is powerful work. Knowing that we had funded the equivalent of eighteen and a half years of community organising hit me hard. When you understand the impact of the work that you do — when you see first hand the leaders built in communities who go on to shape the world in which they live — it’s so incredibly powerful to know that you helped build more organisers across the nation. I felt really grateful to have had the opportunity to understand that feeling. Do all funders feel this way? If not, should they?
3. We need to trust organisers. The Community Action Panel were able to not only empathise with the applicants, but were also able to truly understand the effort, time, and resources that are needed to organise a community. Our conversations were not about whether the organising would work, once we saw the pillars of organising (as shown in the criteria above) we trusted that the work would be powerful. No, our conversations were about impact — what does our world need and who are the ones leading the way to create that change? We trusted those doing the work. You can’t expect to see wins in a month. Organising is slow, and, fundamentally, it needs to be that way. You can’t build long-lasting sustainable change on a structure that was built in a month. We need more people that understand the nature of the work, and we need these people to be shaping the world in which funders live. We need conversations that challenge funders to push against the norms and work to build a funding system that supports and strengthens grassroot community organising.
4. Power comes from lived experience. Lived experience gives power to organising — those with the experience of the struggle should be the ones to help create the solutions and shape the future in which they live. It was one of our criteria for a reason. The same should apply for funding. Our funders should have an understanding of what they are funding — community organising. Let’s not be hypocritical here.
5. You shouldn’t shy away from mistakes. This was my first venture into the world of funding. Although it was an awesome process, we still made mistakes. Martha has encapsulated the learning from the team in a blog.

Community Organising is the best.

Here’s to 18 more grassroot community organising projects with the funds to move forward. I can’t wait to see how they shape the world for the better. Check out the AMAZING 18 groups that we funded.

A quick thank you to the Civic Power Fund and my fellow Community Action Panel Members. I feel so thankful to know you. (p.s. thanks for the birthday cake. I can’t think of a better way to spend my 25th birthday than funding 18 grassroot community organising projects across the country. Awesome!)

The Community Action Panel and the Civic Power Fund Team (11 people) striking a pose after their decision making day.