Recent Blog Posts

Why We’re Bored of Hearing About Place-based Organising Like it’s a New Hot Take

An illustrated pink tree with birds on top and signposts directing you to different community buildings

Funding Change: Why Movements Need Flexible and Long-Term Funding

Why does traditional philanthropy rely so heavily on rigid, transactional controls, and how is that micro-management stifling real, systemic change?

A Week in Oxford: What Resonated at Marmalade Festival

An image showing the Oxford Scenery

Rethinking Funding: Why Put Your Trust in Place-Based Groups

How local voices can be brought into decision-making, what it means to fund work that is rooted in communities, and why the impact of this work often reaches far beyond what is easy to measure.

Other Articles

How Grassroots Groups Are Countering Far Right Movements

The rise of far right movements is being met by powerful community resistance. Explore our list of organisations fighting hate and building solidarity from the ground up.

Overcoming Barriers, Sparking Change: What have Microgrants helped to achieve?

This blog shares the outcomes of some of our UMI Fund grantees projects, the challenges that they faced, whether they would apply again and advice for future applicants.
Students of the Women Welfare Foundations, stood with signs that advocate for the climate

How Microgrants are Powering Grassroots Climate Solutions and Fuelling Young Activists to Make Change

At The Social Change Nest, we’ve always believed that change doesn’t trickle down, it surges upward. And often, what sparks that surge is modest funding in the hands of the right people. Microgrants may be small in size, but when placed directly into the hands of community-rooted organisers, they become
A large group of happy children gather under a set of yellow swings, with the architect and project leader, 17 year old Amara, stood infront

The Social Change Nest Timeline

How The Social Change Nest came to be - Our origin story.

Risky Business at Marmalade

On Wednesay 2nd of April 2025 we ran our event “Risky Business?: An event for funders to explore risk in funding” at Marmalade, the fringe festival happening in Oxford every year during Skoll World Forum.

Inside Our International Grant Distribution Work: Supporting Activists Across Borders

Our international grant distribution service is a partnership in which we transfer money from a granting organisation to recipients in other countries. The main purpose of this work is to enable international cooperation and support development efforts globally in areas such as education, healthcare, infrastructure, climate justice and environmental protection.
Image shows a globe with birds delivery grants all over the world