How to build relational infrastructure through grants programmes
At Catalyst we believe strongly in the power of relationships to enable us to learn, grow and initiate collaborations. By creating opportunities for new connections to be made and existing relationships to be solidified, we build more robust, responsive and resilient communities. This interconnected system of connections offers sustainable professional development as well as support for people to improve their practice and drive impact within their organisations.
Throughout the delivery of the Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Response programmes, we have designed opportunities that contribute to forging an interconnected system of relationships for our grantees. We utilised learning from previous programmes, and evolved our approach with each subsequent funding programme.
We are thankful for new organisations joining the network, contributing to the growth of the relational infrastructure. One such organisation was grant making organisation Power to Change, who offered us the opportunity to share learning with their Powering-Up! Team — who also applied a strong relational infrastructure building approach to their grant programme. Their Link-Workers hold a similar role to Catalyst’s Connectors, who facilitate access to expert support as well as enable peers to share learning and explore challenges together.
The building blocks
Making real connections that contribute to a relational infrastructure is achieved through a diverse, engaged network, and across a multitude of events that contribute to building trust, mutual understanding, and recognising everyone’s contribution to the network, whatever role they play.
A carefully thought through patchwork of ongoing, dedicated relational support, learning sessions, meetups, working groups and peer learning events supported people to engage on different levels, ranging from specific themed conversations (e.g. around digital inclusion) to self organising conversations around topics like impact measurement and safeguarding. This has enabled people to share what was puzzling them, find common ground with peers and offer their expertise to support others with their work, as well as invite input into their projects.
Below I will describe some of the roles and events that supported grantees and digital partners (suppliers) to connect across and beyond our grant programmes. Through these, amazing connections have been — and continue to be — made between people and organisations, demonstrating the value of ‘beyond-organisation’ professional learning and dynamic sharing communities — like the one WellChild made in one of our Peer Learning sessions.
The Connector
A key building block to the relational infrastructure has been the role of the Connector within our grant programmes. Recruited with the relevant experience to be able to relate to the challenges civic organisations face, Connectors are the main point of contact for grantees throughout their entire journey.
Through their thorough understanding of the support, resources and information available with the Catalyst network and beyond, Connectors were able to refer grantees to further support and facilitate introductions to organisations who could provide input, guidance and expertise.
Starting from a point of (almost) equals, provided a more balanced power dynamic between funder and grantees through the roles of Connectors. This enabled more open, constructive and solution focussed conversations between grantees, suppliers and the funder (CAST, supported by Catalyst) to happen, with the understanding that nothing is fixed and things evolve, even within a (short) 10 week project.
Peer learning
All our programmes incorporate a strong peer learning approach. This is achieved either through dedicated peer learning sessions or by working in diverse cohorts of up to 10 organisations (Discovery Learning, Definition and Sector Challenge programmes).
Within most of our programmes, peer learning sessions enable grantees to connect and support each other alongside the development work with their digital partners. Points for discussion are set collaboratively at the start of each peer learning session and the smaller conversation groups decide how much time they spend on each point. These sessions are not compulsory and we have seen around 25% attendance. Often conversations continue outside of the main session, building on the connections made in the collective session.
Festival of Learning
Through the Catalyst Festival of Learning in May 2021, we set out to celebrate the work of our grantees and showcase their achievements with fellow grantees and other organisations interested in the work. This event was built on the poster presentation events run in healthcare innovation and adapted by our wonderful colleague Joyce Borgs.
The virtual festival exhibited the work of 22 organisations through the use of ‘posters’. Exhibitors were supported in their poster creation by the Catalyst team and had access to a range of templates.
The event webpage saw 2,419 unique visits over the four weeks, however the take-up for networking conversations was low. On average each charity talked to just 2.4 people as a direct result of the posters.
We loved this event and so did those who participated. We hope to evolve our Festival of Learning model to ensure it adds greater value to the relational infrastructure we want to create.
Working in the Open
We asked grantees to work in the open by writing about their work through weeknotes. Working in the open has many benefits, from helping a person to reflect on the progress they made, to keeping colleagues informed, as well as helping others understand the ups and downs involved in user centric project/product design. More on working in the open in this blog by Christine Cawthorne and in this Open Working toolkit.
Grantees were also asked to design solutions with reuse / repurposing in mind so that the value of their work reaches far beyond their own organisation. This has resulted in more than 600 assets available for others to reuse and repurpose.
Expert support
Besides more general, dynamic events, we also offered grantees the opportunity to come together around specific themes. For example B&G Partners delivered a series of storytelling workshops, Good Things Foundation ran panel sessions on Digital Inclusion and further events on User Research, Digital Accessibility and Working in the Open were delivered by other network partners.
These themed events allowed for deeper, focused conversation and learning to happen, linking the theory with the practice of service design.
Value to Catalyst
We have learned so much from our grantees and suppliers through the relationships we have built. Conversations have been so rich and insightful and we are confident that the relationships that have been created will continue long after the programmes themselves have ended. Continuing to strengthen the infrastructure will be an exciting piece of work for the network and the new Catalyst core team to take forward from the end of this summer.
Join the discussion
I hope you have found reading this blog on relational infrastructure helpful. We would love to hear your insights and questions on this, so please get in touch on hello@wearecast.org.uk
