Sharing power: Learnings from a participatory approach to funding

As part of our commitment to sharing power, we involved external assessors with lived and professional experience of the relevant themes at every stage of the grant-making process for our National Influencing Programme.

We recently announced funding through our National Influencing Programme for 18 brilliant projects aiming to bring about change on issues around social security, accommodation, and support for refugees and asylum seekers. For the first time, we worked with external assessors at every stage of the assessment process, and the final funding decisions were made by a panel that comprised external advisors and trustees. We discovered the value of bringing in a wider range of perspectives and we want to share some of our learnings from this new approach. 

Our commitment to sharing power 

When we launched our current strategy last year, we committed to ‘work alongside charities, people and communities to amplify their voices, using co-production methods, influencing those with power and ensuring equity, diversity and inclusion is central to our approach.'

The goal of our National Influencing Programme is to enable charities to influence change around issues that matter deeply to the people and communities they support – ensuring the social security system provides the support people need, having access to affordable, appropriate housing, and ensuring that asylum seekers and refugees can access the support they need to live a good life. A focus on addressing inequalities and approaches led by people with lived experience was built into the criteria for this programme. 

As well as funding charities to use their power to influence change in these three areas, our ambition in our strategy is not just about what we fund, but how we fund. We committed to ‘put power and decisions closer to people, charities and communities’. We recognise that bringing in a wider range of perspectives, expertise and experiences of the issues we’re trying to address ultimately results in stronger decision-making. 

Our learnings from involving external assessors

We’re on a journey of making our grant-making more open and participatory, trying out different approaches and learning as we go. The approach we took for this National Influencing Programme was different to other previous grants programmes. With the ambitions of our strategy in mind, we recruited external assessors with a mix of lived or professional experience of the issues covered by this programme, as well as influencing experience.  

We had six external assessors involved at the first stage (three per theme), sifting more than 180 applications down to 30. At the second stage, each charity had an assessment conversation with a team of three assessors – one from our policy team, one from our grant-making team, and one external assessor with experience of both the relevant theme and influencing change.  

Each assessor wrote up their own independent assessment and, as a group, we agreed strengths, weaknesses and an overall rating. They shared valuable insights based on their own experiences, asked different questions and came to their own conclusions. The process took time, but the discussions ultimately resulted in us making different, stronger decisions than we would have done without this range of perspectives from external assessors. 

The final decisions were made by a panel of two trustees and four external advisors, with expertise in the themes of the programme as well as experience of influencing change. Previously, our panels have been made up of trustees and senior staff; this time the majority of our panel was external. They brought a range of expertise and insights to the final discussions which resulted in well-informed decisions. Feedback suggested that assessors and panel members felt that they were supported and played a valuable role in the process, which gives us strong foundation to build on in future. 

What next?

This is a step in the right direction, but we realise there’s still a lot more we can improve. In particular, we’d like to bring more lived experience perspectives into our decision-making. For this programme, two of the key questions we asked applicants to address were how their work will address inequalities, and how people with lived experience will be involved in their work. Charities responded to this with a range of different ideas, and we’re looking forward to seeing the funded projects put this into practice, and gaining insights for how we can improve our own approach.  

We’ve already started to implement some of the learning from this assessment process through our Local Collaborations funding programme, which takes a similar approach, incorporating feedback from the National Influencing Programme.  

We also know that lots of other funders are exploring similar questions, and we’re keen to share our learning and hear from others who’ve taken a different approach so that we can continue to improve our processes.