Navigating the Pain in Participatory Grantmaking
By Hafid Ali & Natasha Friend
Content Warning: This article contains mention of death
Who we are
Hafid –
I was born and raised in Camden and started Camden United Football Club with my best friend and cousin, Abdulaziz Munye. We set out to make a positive change in our borough by using the sport that we love. We wanted to help unite the community, following the unfortunate murders of our friends. However, Abdulaziz passed away a month ago and his loss has affected our whole community significantly…
Before Abdulaziz’s passing, we were introduced to Camden Giving to apply for funding for Camden United FC. I had never heard of them before and didn’t have a clue about the funding sector either, but it was our introduction to participatory grantmaking. I think I took it for granted and expected everywhere else to be the same. It wasn’t until I left Camden Giving that I truly felt how others worked, even outside of the funding sector. Our involvement ended up changing my life. Natasha Friend, Camden Giving’s director, encouraged me to apply to a vacant administrator position they had, and I worked my way up to becoming the head of grants programmes. I used my experience of setting up and running a grassroots organisation to try dismantling a funding system that wasn’t systematically made for people that looked like me.
Natasha –
I’ve been the director of Camden Giving for a little over five years. Camden Giving is a London-based participatory grantmaker, but our work extends beyond our grantmaking processes and into everything we do to overcome inequality in Camden. I’m a white woman who has not experienced many of the inequalities that we’re attempting to dismantle at Camden Giving. I wouldn’t describe Camden Giving as “my fight” because I don’t directly benefit from our work, nor do I directly feel impacted by the issues that exist in Camden. At the end of the day, this is my job. I can switch it off for the weekend in a way that I don’t think Hafid and some of my other colleagues can. Any pain in this work is certainly felt less acutely for me. But I love Camden and this work that brings both joy and pain.
A few months ago, I wrote about the joy of being a participatory grantmaker. Then, I was asked to write this blog three weeks after the death of someone who played an important role in Camden and in our work towards justice. Abdulaziz was the co-founder of one of our grantees, but he was also a friend to Camden Giving and our community of decision-makers. His death was felt widely across Camden and in every aspect of Camden Giving’s work. That pain is an important part of the work we do in the immediate period. The pain our communities feel should always be central to everything we do, but its presence shouldn’t make the work impossible.
Participatory grantmaking is a difficult process. It often contains pain. Here is how we’re trying to learn new ways to navigate pain in our participatory process.
Pain from working amidst the wealth that exists
Natasha –
We walk past offices that give free food all day, every day — which are right next door to an area where people depend on foodbanks to eat. We can see the money is available to people in these offices, so our work feels like we are physically trying to move money from those buildings to communities. There are systemic reasons that money doesn’t move between business and communities in Camden. It’s the right of local people to benefit from the wealth that is quite literally over the road from them, but our internalised hierarchies mean that people too often feel grateful for the tiny benefits they receive. That manifests itself in different ways, but most commonly in women often under-paying or not paying themselves at all with the funding applications they make to us at Camden. It’s also shown in the huge gratitude expressed by local young people for simple things like being “allowed” into a corporate building that’s located in their community. Rights being seen as a treat is painful to watch — and even more painful when we may be enabling that to happen.
I’m writing this sat in a corporate office, where food is free to everyone here. Whilst I work today, I’m raising money so that we can award more grants to food banks. I think it would be less painful to do this work if there genuinely wasn’t enough money to go around in Camden, but there is plenty.
Sometimes we laugh about this tension to make it easier, but sometimes we scream about it to make it easier too. But we need to be aware that not everyone working here needs to feel optimism all the time. We can lean on each other’s collective optimism.
We can’t jump to the end goal
Natasha –
I don’t really believe we’ll achieve Camden Giving’s mission of ending inequality in our lifetimes, but I do believe it’s possible eventually. We’re laying the foundations for future change. What’s painful is that our community panellists know this and at times are frustrated by the size of our grant. Around 0.3% of Camden’s grants are given through our participatory grantmaking. Sometimes the scale of our work is tiny. We try to ease this pain by helping our community panels to see their 0.3% as a strategic investment into a different type of community. Going forward, we will see that percentage grow by influencing other funders to take a community-led approach in their work.
Wearing multiple hats for the sake of the community can lead to burnout
Hafid –
I feel like I am trying to fix a broken system whilst also being a part of that same broken system. At first, it was exciting to feel like I could dismantle a whole system — especially during the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests. I felt so powerfully that we could make the meaningful change we wanted to see happen.
The reality is that after a while it becomes draining. It became a heavy load for me. It’s sad accepting that I will only be able to push the change meaningfully bit by bit. I had to accept that I probably won’t see all the changes that I want to see. Mentally, it did help knowing that what I was doing would make it easier for future generations to take on and carry that torch.
Members of the community thought that I had the answers for everything, but I was trying to figure the answers out myself. Answers to questions like “Why are Black-led organisations less likely to be funded?” or “Why does the funding system create competition rather than encourage collaboration?” were difficult. I was trying to figure this out while introducing solutions to fix those problems.
I made the difficult decision around a year ago to leave Camden Giving because I was struggling to find the energy to help residents through the work that we were doing, whilst balancing improving the safety of Camden’s young people through Camden United FC. Wearing multiple hats and trying to make a change on a local scale can be draining…
My first experience with the philanthropic sector was participatory, so I think I took a community-centred approach for granted by expecting everywhere else to be the same. It wasn’t until I left Camden Giving that I truly understood how others worked, even outside of the funding sector.
I currently work for Camden Council as a community partner, working closely with the voluntary sector. I’m privileged to work for a forward-thinking local authority that believes in working with residents. It is less painful and means that I can reserve my energy for them.
Panels being unable to fund work they want to
Hafid –
When I worked at Camden Giving, we always had to do some firefighting when we received funding applications. The community members understood the need for all of the applications that came in because they or members of their community had experienced the issue that was trying to be addressed first-hand. Sometimes we saw panelists feel guilty that they couldn’t fund everything that needed support. The panels had to make some really difficult decisions, choosing one organisation over another, but did not want to dishearten them because they knew that the work they did was also very important.
I always joked to myself that I was happy to not be in their shoes because I didn’t need to choose between organisations. Now as I sit on panels where I have to make those decisions, I try to hold onto that experience, the feelings those community panelists had, and that sense that no matter what you do, it will never be enough.
On the other hand, I also know the pain of being an unsuccessful grantee of a participatory funder. Since I worked for Camden Giving, I understand that community panels can’t fund everything. I understand they have to face the communities after the tough decisions they make. It feels extra special getting funded by Camden Giving, knowing that your local community values your work, but it’s difficult when you’re not funded. You know that there is other work that is equally as needed, if not more important. A competitive funding process is always painful!
Allowing pain and participatory grantmaking to work together
Natasha –
Pain is part of our work. Attempting to protect our communities from it is at best foolish, and at worse, patronising and rooted in a Victorian style of saviour philanthropy. What I hope to do is balance pain and joy by making the pain manageable. The worst physical pain I’ve experienced is childbirth, but I hold it in my mind as a joyous pain. I hope we can reach a point in participatory grantmaking where feeling joyful pain means we are closer to reaching equality.
Hafid –
I have a good friend named Yasmin, who started off as a panellist on Camden Giving’s Future Changemakers Fund. Camden Giving set up the fund following the murder of two young men in Camden, one of whom was a mutual friend of ours. I didn’t know that Camden Giving did this until I started working for them. Camden United FC is now a grantee of that fund, which is a bittersweet feeling, as that is the core of why we exist.
Yasmin now works for Camden Giving as Community Ideas Project lead and works directly with residents enabling them to access funding. She mentioned something I had not realised before: “If you’re given crumbs, it feels like you’re given a whole cake.” It made me think of my own life of work, where going into a corporate office that’s steps away from my doorstep felt like a massive achievement to me even though I lived here before any of it even existed. It should be normal to access these fancy buildings. The companies inside should be integrated within the local community they operate in to genuinely make meaningful change. On the flipside, crumbs can make you hungrier for the whole cake. I genuinely believe any member of the community that has been involved with Camden Giving is now hungrier and determined to do more. It feels as though once you join in the Camden Giving participatory system, you’re stuck with them and their mission stays with you forever.
Abdulaziz’s passing away has been a big wake up call to me and helped me refocus and remember why I entered this sector in the first place. He was very passionate about Camden and improving the lives of young people and their mental health through football. What he set up has impacted the lives of over 200 people through Camden United alone — and even more outside of it! The outpour of love that he has received is a beautiful reminder for us all about how we want to be remembered when our time comes. We will keep his legacy going through the work that we do with Camden United.
Hafid Ali (he/him) is the co-founder of Camden United and is a Camden Council community partner at London Borough of Camden.
Natasha Friend (she/her) is the director of Camden Giving and is a member of the Participatory Grantmakers Community Of Practice Working Group.
