Sharing and building power: participatory grant-making
The topic under discussion on 9 February 2022 in our Sharing and Building Power cell was how to make participatory grant-making work and become more widespread.
Our first opening speaker was Cameron Bray, from Barking and Dagenham Giving, who explained how an endowment fund of £1 million had been created from external fund-raising and income from social housing and half of this is being determined through participatory means, using various approaches in a ‘big DJ mixing deck approach’, as follows:
A panel model, with participants being representative in terms of geography and also community of identity. Members shape the priorities of the fund and take the final decisions.
A community steering group was being developed to design investment policy from scratch with the freedom to determine priorities.
a closed collective pilot run by a young people’s network, where they collectively make decisions and are sharing the power and accountability between themselves.
These approaches need a lot of resources, he said, including paying people for their time and induction, but they had found the process was valuable in itself as an investment in the community and its empowerment.
Lucy Gilbert, from the Quartet Community Foundation in Avon, then told us about her experience of participatory budgeting, explaining that they were part of Bristol City Funds, set up in collaboration with Bristol City Council and Bristol and Bath Regional Council, which was implementing a ‘One City Plan’ to deliver systemic change. They too had found that processes were almost more important than the money itself and they had been exploring different ways for shifting power:
setting up a grant panel for their health and well-being budget of £1.3 million, where 40% of the panel had lived experience and members are given both training and payment for their time.
a panel of 100% people with lived experience making decisions for the Bristol Local Food Fund, which is a £60K fund raised through crowd-funding specifically to go to local food organisations. Members will be trained and paid at Living Wage rates.
a pilot ‘City Lab’, with decisions for a fund of £14,000 over 6 months devolved to people with lived experience of mental health dificulties and local organisations and involving a community research exercise to come up with solutions, and committed to developing fundable projects.
Key points made in discussion in breakout groups and the plenary include:
participatory grant-making is not just be about bringing communities into decision-making about who receives resources, but is also about allowing them to shape the agenda and the priorities for new funds.
As well as improving decision-making, it brings other benefits, helping to empower and grow community and creating new collaborations. It can be life-changing for those involved and build capacity and confidence in the community.
The process itself is important, including training and payment for volunteers. Local authorities can sometimes help by recruiting stakeholders from the community. One approach that’s worked is to bring in previous recipients of grants into the decision-making process. It is not enough just to bring people into the room - true collaboration with the community is required.
There’s a lot of potential but current practice tends to be focused on relatively small budgets, so there is a need to grow confidence in the approach.
Barriers to getting this right include culture, risk aversion and ‘white saviourism’ and that is why there is a need to build capacity across all of those involved, including funders who are not always comfortable with sharing power in this way.
There’s a lot to learn from others, rather than just reinventing wheels, including from Scotland, where 1 % of local authority budgets have been earmarked for this approach, and internationally, for example in Brazil. It’s important that practice is shared.