New power, nonprofits and networks

Unpacking community covid response and the tricky issue of grantmaking

Hi! I’m Lucy Harley-McKeown, a freelance journalist and the new curator of the New Power Review. Over the coming weeks and months I'm hoping to synthesise debates, tell stories about how communities can be a driving force of change, and look at how organisations are doing things differently. 

This issue looks at how, after the pandemic, new forms of organising networks within civil society are emerging, and how the funding infrastructure needs to adapt to empower them.

If you have a comment, an interesting project, or example of new power in action, get in touch by replying to this email.

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Tech libraries and digital poverty-busting 💻

Before Covid hit, 86-year-old Joyce* relied on seeing people in person to stay connected. As someone living with a hearing impairment, phone calls with loved ones were tricky. When lockdowns enveloped the country last year, a referral from a neighbour and link-up with local groups meant she was able to learn to use email and facebook on an iPad. 

Last summer, Rochdale-based voluntary infrastructure organisation Action Together galvanised 10 charities to make that happen. Over the course of the pandemic, they made it so that children could attend remote classes on zoom, enabled the elderly and vulnerable to connect to friends and family, and made the world a more accessible place for countless people across the borough. 

A digital device library might not seem like a revolutionary concept, but the grassroots organising behind it might just be. Action Together also worked with local bricks-and-mortar libraries to lend out tablets and laptops, give away refurbished machines, mobilised volunteers to teach people basic tech skills, and connected a community in one fell swoop.

“During covid we have been a very strong power; the organisation mobilised the groups and helped people in their time of need,” says Nazia Rehman, a neighbourhood facilitator, who helps organise these initiatives in the community. 

First, Action Together gathered volunteers and split the work it hoped to do into themes -- respond, repair and recover. Under each of these, foundation groups were formed with a maximum of eight members, making decisions through fortnightly meetings. The groups came up with ideas through four development workshops and decided whether they wanted a consensus-driven or authoritarian approach to decision making. For many of the people involved in the groups, this was the first time they had volunteered. 

“Within the foundation groups, our theory was that if we have a relationship and connection to each other, those are structures to develop and build impactful projects on,” says Nazia.  

As well as the digital library, a community warehouse was created to provide local people with things they couldn’t afford or didn’t have access to, including clothing, food and equipment, and an economic support tool has been developed to help people with finances.

Using a network of organisations connected to minority and vulnerable groups such as the elderly, women, families from Black and South Asian communities, refugees, asylum seekers, and people living with mental health issues, the library widened its reach and made it a truly impactful grassroots initiative.

The council initially gave the project around £20,000 and another £120,000 when it was in full swing. This has been topped up with donations and more money is in the pipeline. The group has now bought an extra 150 Chromebooks, organised community drop-in workshops, and created a refurbishment service for stock donated by individuals, businesses and local services such as the police. 

Although Action Together’s recent activities were catalysed by the pandemic, these initiatives are set to outlast lockdowns. They provided a crucial safety net where existing services had failed to deliver or hadn’t understood the issues facing the community. It showed how grassroots groups have the potential to provide a service better than an existing structure might. 

They have proved their potential for longevity with future plans to expand the library and spread what they learnt to other groups in places such as Norwich and the Netherlands. They have advice on their website for how to lead and implement these types of networks.

“The voluntary sector is really powerful now -- I think the government is going to realise that it saved the country from a real crisis,” says Nazia.

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Opening up grantmaking 💸

Emerging grassroots networks like Action Together also need to find funding, which for many smaller organisations or networks can be a difficult and complicated process. So what kind of projects are making this easier?  

Grants data platform 360Giving, which celebrated its sixth birthday this month, has helped catalyse a number of projects, and has given organisations the tools to understand what money is available, who’s giving it and how. It maintains a data standard for grantmaking and publishes that data so anyone can use it. Standardising data, in theory, reduces friction between those using the information and those giving it. 

360Giving says funders use the data and tools to see how they fit in the wider social sector. This helps them understand themselves better and coordinate with other funders. Charities also use the data and tools to get to know funders better, and target their fundraising efforts. Planners and researchers use the data to get a better picture of what is being funded and delivered across the UK.

Tools include a search engine for grants -- GrantNav -- which stores information on more than £100bn in grants, and the covid grants tracker which has logged over £1bn in pandemic response grants, including dashboards and maps. 

The Open Data Institute has a similar MO. It is an organisation with 2,200 members, 16,000 weekly newsletter subscribers. Rather than providing infrastructure, it is a think tank and consultancy that works to improve the data practices of organisations so that they can build and manage adequate data infrastructure and data use.

There is no default data standard to conform to, which makes it fairly inaccessible from the get go. While these organisations use data and data standards in a particular way, to some extent, the advice they give, what they choose to give out, as well as what they choose to exclude, is a form of power in itself.

The method of governance for data is important because the standards become a form of social norm which seeps into lawmaking and policy. In older institutions and traditional fields like grantmaking this kind of social norming is a powerful way to effect change in how they operate. 

The London Funders’ London Community Response is another collaboration, which, during the pandemic, brought together 67 partners. These included charities, local authorities, publishers and larger institutions such as banks – among other organisations – in recognition that the crisis was exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. The group resolved to put equity and inclusion at the heart of the funding response. They designed a set of criteria and processes that enabled groups led by discriminated-against people to access funding, and ensured they were supported and enabled to get access to the resources they need.

Examples of projects that use funding trackers in action include the work of the Baobab Foundation, which has made it its mission to build a long-term funding solution to help tackle the problems of racism, poverty and disadvantage. The foundation is aiming to raise over £1bn in endowed funds so that it can distribute £50m in grants every year and uses the databases to plug gaps in blind spots current funders might have. The foundation says it will share learnings, “encouraging better practice among other funders and policy makers - as a critical friend to fix what's broken/unequal across the funding ecosystem.”

Participatory budgeting – the tricky issue of allocation 📊

But transparency is just the first step… What happens when you give people power to set their own budgets?

The list of organisations trying to make the allocation of money fairer goes on, but despite noble intentions, budgeting doesn’t come without its problems. Deciding how to dole out money and which groups to prioritise can be a fraught process. 

Those with the money to give out can hold many types of power: be it in wealth, independence, status or knowledge, they tend to set many of civil society’s values and norms. Participatory budgeting has gained prominence over the last few years as a process that is in essence meant to shift power in grantmaking decisions by involving—or giving all power to—the people most affected by the issues or problems. 

The sphere faces a plethora of challenges. These range from a lack of common goals, to poor network links and support structures, to potential for corruption. One study, carried out by the Hewlett Foundation even found that there was a risk of the process becoming gentrified. 

Research has also shown that there can be a tendency to fall into the most common or ‘easy’ approach rather than testing what might be best for communities projects are trying to serve, or adapting programmes for different contexts. These were the findings of Hannah Paterson, who is a portfolio manager at the National Lottery Fund – one of the largest philanthropic organisations in the country and a big hitter in the sphere.

Paterson’s research also notes that “it is easy to fall into just doing the most common or ‘easy’ approach rather than exploring what is the best approach for the communities you’re trying to serve and context you are working in.”

Paterson recommends embedding an understanding of the power dynamics involved with grantmaking in work from the get go, being reflective on privilege and power and what challenging those mean to your organisation, and seeking feedback wherever possible.  

It would seem just providing the platform for evaluating grantmaking and funder decisions is not enough to make allocation of resources a fair process.

These kinds of initiatives are merely a jumping off point for the redistribution of power that might not otherwise be able to help people such as Joyce and the beneficiaries of Action Together. 

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Coming up in the next issue: New power and unions 

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