The Many Hands of Participatory Grant Giving

Good philanthropy is never done in isolation, it takes a lot of hands to bring about change. This seems particularly true to us at Camden Giving because of the participatory approach we take.

If you’re new to participatory grant-giving, it’s a lovely buzz word that means you give funding decisions to people who have experience of the issue you’re addressing. So if we are funding youth safety projects, we ask young people with experience of violence what projects they and their peers need. That process takes time and confidence, so we pay and train all our participatory grant-givers.

In most foundations there are 2 groups of stakeholders: the people with the money, often the wealthy family members, in the UK these people are 98% white with an average age of 65. The second group of stakeholders are the people who are asking for the money, the grantees, probably a member or staff who is tasked with generating a certain income from writers applications. Sometimes, but usually not there’s a process for bringing outside influence in, this is often the role of staff at the foundation. And there ends the list. It’s neat, it’s polite, everyone knows their place. And it’s an absolutely brilliant mechanism for preserving the status quo (but that’s another blog for another day).

By contrast, the type of participatory grant-Giving we love at Camden Giving, is a bit freeform and with more stakeholders than you can shake a stick at, with that comes some unpredictability and some added expense. But these are the people and organisations that make our grant-giving feel like a big community effort, not a hand-down:

1. The funders. Shout out the the people with the money who fund this magic! It takes a special sort of philanthropist to hand over cash to a mystery destination. We have no idea where a donor’s money will be spent when they give it to us, we can’t promise them a youth centre to put their name on, all we can promise is the process. We love our donors, they drop their egos at the door in a way that other donors don’t and let’s be honest, none of this exist without their faith in doing things upside down.

2. Our referral partners. These are the organisations, services and increasingly individuals who help us find people with lived experience of the issues we are addressing. In our case they include schools, the Youth offending service, our grantees, TRA’s and people who have been involved already in our grant-giving.

3. The panellists. Over the last 3 years we’ve worked with 45 members of Camden’s communities to award funding. When we recruit them, we’re aiming for people who are not engaging in decision-making already, usually because of personal and/or systematic barriers. We’re also aiming for lots of people, because no one person is ever the voice of an entire community. They are are central to this process, they help make sure money is invested effectively in Camden, we gain so much knowledge from them and in return we pay them, and provide a door-way in to other sorts of community participation.

4. Specialists organisations. These organisations join us to provide pastoral and specialist support for panellists who need it, such as disabilities charities and youth services.

5. Local businesses. Funding decisions are difficult to make, even more so when you know what you decide has real-life consequences for your community. Local businesses have taken our panels through a range of coaching and development sessions, including workshops on unconscious bias and communications skills.

6. Camden Giving Staff and Trustees. At Camden Giving, the staff do the same things that most staff at charitable foundations do, we make sure that our decision-makers have everything they need to make decisions, the needs of our panellists vary and we’re working on new ways to make this more flexible, particularly for young people, people with disabilities and people who don’t have a fixed address. Our Trustees have the big job of

7. Camden Giving grantees. Receiving a Camden giving grants means that the people who need your support think the work you are doing is worthwhile. But, there is a shift required for grantees, and it’s not always easy, for more established organisations this means adapting applications to impress people from the community they serve, not traditional funders.

8. All the brilliant participatory stuff going on around us. As participatory approaches take flight, we’ve been able to take inspirations from many, many sources: Camden Council’s Citizen Assemblies, Hannah Patterson’s work the promote participatory grantmaking, The Edge Fund, Participatory City in Barking and Dagenham and Luton and Bedfordshire Community Foundation.

There’s always room for more people at this participatory party, even if you don’t fall in to one of the groups above, this works is better done with lots of hands, so get in touch if you want to join in.

In June we are hosting a 2-day course learning about the highs, lows and logistics of our approach to participatory grant-giving.