A pilot in participatory social investment
Over the last 12 months, Shift has been delivering one of the UK’s first examples of participatory social investment — Vested. The Vested pilot has been supported by a Learning Consortium of 12 charitable and place-based funders who are exploring participatory approaches to social investment. Shift is closing in May 2024 and, as a project team, we are hopeful that what has been demonstrated through this pilot will support others who are continuing this important work.
The Vested Learning Consortium members have penned this introduction to the pilot learning report and open-sourced resources, as well as a series of recommendations to the sector for how to best take this work forwards.
“We have been on a learning journey alongside the Vested project and are pleased to introduce ideas for how we can invite those we seldom hear from into the heart of funding decision making.
The work shared in this report is in recognition that our current funding system could do much more to serve communities, and deliver better outcomes for those currently excluded or marginalised by society. As a consortium of funders, transparency and accountability around where our money goes is vital to making sure that funding decisions made are representative of communities the money is going into.
To deliver on these aims, we believe there is a strong case for participation — which means people with social proximity to communities or specific challenges being part of decision making around where money goes. This can help increase the credibility, accountability, impact and reach we have as organisations — bringing us closer to those we are here to serve.
As a consortium, we have learned from the Vested pilot and Trust for London team as well as others thinking about participation in social investment, including Barking and Dagenham Giving, Lankelly Chase and Curiosity Society. We’ve shared experiences of participatory funding approaches and explored the benefits and barriers to doing this work.
We believe the benefits go far beyond changing who is making the funding decisions. Some of the benefits we have surfaced so far include:
For people taking part: having power to make a difference, individual and professional development opportunities and stepping into their community leadership roles in ways beyond what we could have imagined.
For funding recipients: wider and more open access to funding and support, and for some, a better experience of engaging with funders and applying for funding.
For social investors: better social investment decisions, better alignment with community need and aspirations, funding having wider reach within communities, increased legitimacy and alignment with social mission.
We know this work isn’t easy — participation can be more expensive than other funding models available in the sector and it requires more time and new skills to do well. It is also a complex process with multiple stakeholders involved — community members, organisations seeking funding, funders, existing decision makers…There’s no simple “model” or “framework” that exists to do this work well, but just because it’s not easy, doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Vested and some of the other initiatives we looked at show what’s possible, even within the confines of limited resources and tight timeframes.
To take this work forward, we need to work collaboratively as a sector, making more spaces to support each other in this work and by continuing to build the case through testing different models and approaches — big and small. Our recommendations are to:
1. Establish a community of practice for participatory social investment
2. Grow the conversation at a sector level and beyond
3. Create a bank/s of shared sector resources
4. Conduct a landscape review to help surface connections between complementary movements and participatory actors
5. Establish a compelling and collective narrative that brings together both stories of impact and the emerging evidence base for participatory social investment
6. Invest in supporting participatory alumni support networks
7. Invest in the continued testing and iteration of both current and new models of participatory investment
We hope you can delve into the learnings shared by Shift in the report and reflect on what role you might want to play in bringing greater participatory funding into social investment. We also hope that by having some practical recommendations, tools, resources and questions to consider, that you can start putting some of these ideas into practice.”
-The Vested Learning Consortium, May 2024
We at Shift would like to share a huge thank you to our Learning Consortium members for co-authoring this blog as an introduction to the report, alongside the significant contribution they made throughout the Vested pilot. Please note that the wider learning report is authored by Shift — any insights and opinions shared within the report are its own and may differ from those held by Learning Consortium members.
