Civic Power Fund and Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Funding for Grassroots Community Organising

For as long as we’ve been asking what builds successful social movements, one answer has remained non-negotiable: community organising.

Community organising is one of the few proven routes to authentic and resilient social change when there is a silent issue regarding an imbalance of power.

In spite of this, funding for community organising remains low: just 2.3% of social justice funding.

We also know that many grassroots community organisers struggle to raise the quality and quantity of funds required to sustain their work. This is especially true for minoritised communities or communities with lived experience of injustice.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s ambition is to speed up and support the transition to a more equitable and just future. We are currently developing our grassroots funding strategy and through this conference want to know how we can best grow this area of work. With that front of mind, we are excited to work with Civic Power Fund to better understand, support and fund community organising as a specialist field in the UK.