Facing Fear with Trust: A Conversation on Funding & Community Resilience

Misbah: She spoke about how every single time someone else moved in next door, the fences between the gardens just got higher and higher and higher. And for me, that just really stayed with me ’cause I think… And I’m not about to say that, what people decide to do with their back garden is the cause of hate and division, but I think it really speaks to this wider problem that we have, which is that people are just not interacting with each other anymore.

You have neighbours who know absolutely nothing about each other. And when you combine that lack of in-person meeting and the kind of in-person relationships with the fact that we’ve got horrible racist rhetoric being perpetuated online by people who are incredibly divisive and who have been paid to spread these lies and to spread this misinformation and disinformation, that’s all coming into like a cauldron and creating this environment where people don’t know each other.

And so they’re so much more likely to believe these lies and this rhetoric and these hateful narratives about each other.

Ana: Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Social Change Pod. I’m Ana, a relationship manager at the Social Change Nest, and today we’re diving into what it actually looks like to build and fund community resilience in a climate that feels increasingly divided, while looking at the gap between perceived risk and the actual daily risks being carried by those on the ground.

This conversation also feels especially timely as we prepare for our Wild Times gathering this September, where we’ll be bringing together community organisers, funders, and change makers to explore many of these same questions in person. If today’s discussion leaves you wanting to continue the conversation, we’d love to see you there. Visit www.wildtimesuk.org to find out more. 

When we talk about funding grassroots groups working in communities affected by fear, misinformation, and division, the word risk comes up a lot. But what do we actually mean by risk? In this episode, we’re asking what happens when funders become too risk-averse, and what risks are created when community work is left unsupported.

I’m joined today by Misbah Malik, head of communities at Hope Not Hate, Oli Whittington, founder and co-lead of Our House UK, and Vera Harrison, director of Creative Confident Communities at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, to talk about how the wider political climate is shaping fear and misinformation, why work that protects community trust and participation can become difficult to fund, and what it means for democracy, civic life, and the people trying to hold communities together.

A very warm welcome to our guests. I hope you’re all doing well today, and if you could please introduce yourselves, your work, and maybe if you want to share a little bit about how y-you came to work in community resilience.

Oli: Hey, thanks Ana. Yeah, I’m Oli, founder and co-lead of Our House, and we’re a community-led movement for people-powered democracy.

So we’re really inspired by the Chartists, which was the foundational working class movement of the 1800s, who won many of the political rights that we have today. And we believe we’re in a mi- similar moment that the Chartists were, where we’re facing so many challenges that we can’t fight them on single issues, but that we need to build a better politics where power is closer to the people.

And we’re doing that with community groups and community organisations, big and small, informal and very established all around the Four Nations of the UK to imagine, enact, and demand a democracy that works for everyone. So how do we shift power from where it is concentrated today towards the places and communities where it isn’t, which is pretty much everywhere out of Westminster at the moment.

And well, we’re in the wake of the local elections and national elections in Wales and Scotland at the moment, and I think, you know, this is totally unprecedented times in our political democratic system in the UK. We have three parties that are pro-independent parties that are the largest parties in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.

We have a British nationalist party, uh, it’s the largest party in, in England, and I think this is really a sign that the people think the power is too far from them. You know, it’s too concentrated in England for the devolved nations, and it’s too concentrated in the intellectual elite in the English voting population, uh, broadly.

So I think that, uh, that’s a real message that we need deep systems change. We don’t need, you know, a tweak to our system. We need to really evaluate why the system isn’t working, why people want something different, and how it can work together.

Ana: Thank you very much for that, Oli Misbah.

Misbah: Yeah. Hi, very happy to be here.

Uh, yeah, so I’m the head of communities and policy at Hope Not Hate. Hope Not Hate is an organisation whose sole mission is to expose and oppose the far right, and my role within that is supporting the communities who are vulnerable to the far right and to far-right messaging. Um, and there’s kind of two work streams that we kind of have within that.

The first is community response, so that’s very short term, responding to far-right agitation as it happens on the streets. We do this through our tensions monitoring unit, so using intel to equip local partners with the information and the tools to respond to far-right violence on the streets. Uh, we saw that in 2024, obviously, around the, the racist riots in the summer, but also since then with, uh, protests around asylum accommodation, for example.

And then we also have a kind of longer term prevention work, so building long-term community resilience, addressing the root causes of hate, and that make people vulnerable to far-right messaging. Uh, essentially just creating better community power, stronger communities, working with community partners to build long-term programs of work that build community power as an antidote to, to the far right, and then also addressing the issues and policies which give rise to the far right, so that’s cohesion, immigration, anti-Muslim hatred, et cetera.

And yeah, I guess one story or one anecdote that really kind of sticks with me and makes me excited to do this work, but also, yeah, kind of really pinpoints why it’s so important, at the end of last year, we held this community training session for our community partners in Wigan, and at the end of it, it was, it was all about upskilling and bringing people together who are kind of involved in this community work that haven’t necessarily met before.

And at the end of it, I was chatting to someone who works in the housing sector, and they said, “You know what? Like there’s, there’s so much information that we’ve, that we’ve gathered from this training day.” But the most important part that they really enjoyed the most was being connected to other people who were doing the same sort of work, and they said, “You know, it’s so easy to forget that there are other people out here that are kind of fighting the same fight.”

And I think, you know, in today’s climate, it’s really easy to feel alone and feel like you’re the only organisation who are dealing with all of these issues and all of these problems. And so, yeah, for me, that really stuck in my mind ’cause it made me think, you know, if the least we can do is bring people together and make people feel less alone in this kind of struggle, um, then, then that’s what we, that’s what we need to be doing.

So yeah, that really stuck with me as I think why this work is so important.

Ana: Thank you very much for that, Misbah. And Veda?

Veda: Thank you, Ana. So I’m Veda Harrison. I’m director of Creative Confident Communities, which is one of three strategic aims that Esmée Fairbairn Foundation has. And we generally term that strategic aim, which I will from now on call CCC ’cause it’s quite a mouthful.

We call it the kind of the place-based approach that Esmée has to supporting communities. Um, and there are three priorities that sit within that, all of which are very much centered on the notion of community power. So there is our community-led art and creativity priority, which is essentially enabling local communities to not just participate in, but actually start to shape their local cultural strategies and the, and the resources that are needed in order to enable that.

The second priority is community-driven enterprise and regeneration, and this really focuses in on how local economic strategies can best reflect the needs of a local community of any different shape or form, and how local enterprises, social enterprises, and impact investing can really help shape a community to ensure that wealth is retained within a community.

And the third priority is communities working together for change. And as I said, this is the one that really underpins all of the other two and is one in and of itself, is how local people have the capacity and capability to come together, work with their local stakeholders, but also influence change locally.

And those are the kind of premise that sits across all three of the priorities Of creative, confident communities at Esmée Fairbairn. And we also work very closely with our other two strategic aims, which is our natural world, which is about the environment, and our social justice aim called, uh, A Fairer Future.

And I suppose the anecdote that I would offer is a very recent one actually. I spent about three days in Dublin last week at a learning exchange where, you know, a number of different types of organisations, civil society organisations, funders from across the four nations and the Republic of Ireland came together to discuss the scale of the challenge when it came to community resilience and nativist populism.

And what, what will it take for all of us in our different roles to actually come together and, and mount a, a pushback against what is coming down the line in terms of very far-right populist ideologies and how it’s manifesting in communities. And there was lots of conversation about social media, about AI, about one particular party and their particular approach come the elections coming up in 2029.

But what was really, really clear is that the solution lay in how do we support communities to become more resilient. That was the golden thread that came through all of this, whether it be hosting community conversations. We visited a community garden, an organisation that’s done quite a lot of work in combating hate and responding to incidences of far-right activity, particularly against migrant communities in the Republic of Ireland, and also work happening in Northern Ireland as well.

But what was really clear, as I said, is that in order for a real change to manifest itself on the ground, as you say, Oli, you know, Westminster bubble, political elites across the all four nations, they can sit in their, in their rooms and be very well paid to have conversations , and design policy responses, but the response is already happening on the ground.

So how can we, as funders and other civil society organisations, best support those that are much closer to the challenge and can see the solutions, but quite often aren’t properly resourced to do so?

Ana: Thank you so much for that, Veda, and I think that that last comment you said is a great opening for the discussion that we’re having today.

We hear a lot about misinformation, division, fear. These are words that are currently in, in the media and, and everywhere. For you specifically, what do those words mean for the organisations and groups that you work with on the ground?

Misbah: I think that’s a really good question ’cause I think a lot of the time we talk about these words in quite an abstract way, and I think, you know, again, if we’re thinking about policymakers for example, they often don’t actually know what this looks like on the ground and how people are actually experiencing it.

And yeah, I guess that question made me think about, um, a focus group that I did a c- couple of years ago now, but one of the ladies who we were chatting to basically gave an anecdote about how she’s, she’s lived in the same house, you know, since she was 30. She’s 60 now, so th- three decades in the same house.

And she spoke about how every single time someone else moved in next door, the fences between the gardens just got higher and higher and higher. And that just really stayed with me ’cause I think… And I’m not about to say that, you know, what people decide to do with their back garden is the cause of hate and division, but I think it really speaks to this wider problem that we have, which is that people are just not interacting with each other anymore.

You have neighbours who know absolutely nothing about each other. And when you combine that lack of in-person meeting and the kind of in-person relationships with the fact that we’ve got horrible racist rhetoric being perpetuated online by people who are incredibly divisive and have, who have been paid to spread these lies and to spread this misinformation and disinformation, that’s all coming into like a cauldron and creating this environment where people don’t know each other, and so they’re so much more likely to believe these lies and this rhetoric and these hateful narratives about each other.

And what that creates is essentially communities and neighbours who not only do not know each other but also want nothing to do with each other as well. And I think when you get to that point, it’s got worse than just people having different opinions, right? ‘Cause, you know, in a healthy democratic society, there is a scope for people to have different opinions about different things.

The problem comes, and the whole point of kind of culture wars and polarisation, is where you’re then demonising people who have those different opinions and who have those different ways of life, and I think that’s what’s really, really worrying. So yeah, in, in my head, like amalgamation of all this fear and misinformation and division is these back garden fences getting higher and higher and higher every single year.

Um, and I think that’s how people on the ground experience it. They’re isolated bubbles within this wider community, and that sense of community and those community bonds have just been completely broken down. So yeah, that’s how we often see it at, at Hope Not Hate and how our partners experience it as well.

Oli: Yeah, I’d, I’d agree with everything Misbah said, and, and I think it’s, it’s the isolated nature of communities, definitely. That’s that social media aspect that Misbah’s described as… There is a lot of fear as well. You know, people are a bit afraid of what their neighbours might do because of the stories we hear and the wider community, you know, what’s out there, what the threats are to them.

But I think it’s also, when I hear that, that divisiveness, I think Misbah touched on this at the beginning as well, is it’s often said by people who are not at all community-rooted. They’re, like, taking in the information that they’re seeing, say, election results or a report in a paper that has, done a few vox pops and got really, like, top surface level opinions or, or, you know, polls, and that’s often regurgitating the same information that’s been shared with them rather than their core beliefs and values.

So often, division is a sharing of an assumption that exists that people are divided because they’re voting Reform or because some are voting Greens. But, you know, I, I think the, the truth, the deeper truth of that is that there is, you know, this is a phrase that’s said a lot, but there is so much that unites us, and those community organisations and community groups that do that in-person community building, and we partner with lots of groups around the four nations that hold these spaces and have held these spaces for decades, um, they are the, the antidote to that.

They are the ones that bring people together, often holding apolitical space. You don’t have to vote for the same party or believe in the same policies or ideas, but you just wanna show up because you wanna do litter picking, or you wanna have a meal together on a Wednesday night, or you wanna sing in a choir, or you’re part of the same faith group.

You know, whatever it is that connects you at that local level, those are the avenues to counter the division that is often seen from the outside rather than experienced on the ground.

Ana: Thank you so much for that, Oli. Yes, I think everyone here present is aligned in how community and just horizontal relationships is, is one of the many ways to make the systemic change that you were mentioning at the beginning.

Because I do think that currently there’s, there’s a lot of values that at the high level, political level, you know, around, um, competition, individuality, are very different to what is needed on the ground, which is solidarity, and it’s coming together. So thank you for that. Another question quickly for you two is what type of risks are the communities on the ground actually facing?

And I’m not talking about funding or lack thereof, but w- what type of risks are people actually afraid of?

Misbah: I think what people often don’t understand just because they haven’t kind of e- engaged with people that are doing this sort of work is a lot of the time the people who are doing the best community resilience building work and are having the biggest impact, this is not their full-time job.

I feel like I’m very lucky to be able to do this kind of, you know, 9:00 to 5:00 and have this be the source of my income. But a lot of these people in communities who are doing this work- are doing this either as a volunteer in their free time or, you know, just, just lending, you know, three hours or so a week to kind of do, to do this work.

And so I think when it comes to risk, this is something that someone dedicating all of their free time to, extra money that they have. A lot of the time, you know, we come across people who are hosting initiatives that they haven’t got funding for, and they are kind of paying out of their own back pocket because they truly believe in the worth and the value of the work that they’re doing.

And a lot of the time also, you know, aside from funding, as you said, a lot of the time, especially when it’s kind of, uh, initiatives around cohesion and bringing people together, people face a lot of backlash from people within their own community for doing this sort of work. Particularly, I’m thinking about  interfaith practitioners who I’ve spoken with over the past couple of years, particularly since 2023 with Jewish-Muslim interfaith work and relations.

What I’ve, what I’ve heard from those partners is that not only do they face backlash from people from the, quote-unquote, “opposing side,” but also from people within their own religious community too, saying, you know, “Why are you, why are you encouraging us to engage with these people,” et cetera, et cetera.

And so I think, uh, you know, when… And I, I speak to myself as well as, as, as someone who kind of lives in London and, and talks abstractly sometimes about, about other parts of the UK. But when people are embedded in their communities and have a real stake in, in the work that they’re doing, yes, that is great because it means they understand the nuances of a particular area, and they have  the expertise that none of us could ever have to understand what needs to be done.

But it also means that they are real personable relations that are at stake with, with the work that they’re doing, and I think that’s something that’s often forgotten when we’re thinking about how much people are putting into this work. And so, yeah, something that I’m speaking to myself as well, that I think we all have to be reminded of when we talk about place-based work.

It’s not place-based in an abstract sense. Like, these are real relationships and real networks that people, that people have invested time and, and money into as well. And I think, yeah, when it comes to risk, that is, those personal relationships are an absolutely huge one as well.

Oli: Yeah. I, I agree entirely.

Like, the burnout risk in the short term is huge. You know, the state support and what used to exist in the realms of, you know, mental health support, housing support is just vanishing. Public community spaces are vanishing. People’s lives are getting harder. And as people are so committed on the ground to that work, they are, of course, taking more and more on because they’re human beings that care for the people that they live around, and they’re doing this work because they care.

But they have less resources and less capacity. Um, and I, and I do think a lot of the community leaders that I speak to do face huge personal risk because they often become the personification of the part on the social media algorithms that’s like the opposite to the argument of we’re all divided, that, um, you know, migrants are out to harm us, that, um, you know, whatever it is that the narratives that are being perpetuated.

Then these community leaders that are showing that if we work together, if we decide together, and if we build together, we can build a better community. They become the personification of the- enemy to that side, which is, again, can lead to people’s homes being attacked or, or fear of what their move is in their community, which is just a wild thing for people that are providing mental health support for young homeless people, you know?

It just shouldn’t be in that realm. Like, everyone broadly agrees to live in a fairer, more equal, safer society. So those are activities that would just traditionally be seen as, like, they’re good things for the community, but they’re getting whipped up into this narrative and, and this tension that we’re seeing at the moment.

But I also think a big risk that we hold and we think about in our house a lot is about a pathway for change, because it’s one thing to be doing this work on the ground and trying to firefight, but then to feel that there isn’t any route out of this, there’s no long-term political ideas that feel like they’re gonna reverse this system that we’re now working on, you know, cleaning up the rivers or cost of living support and community kitchens and whatever it might be, and that’s okay.

That’s great. You can do that work for a bit of time. But if there isn’t something that can actually fight the root cause of this issue, which, you know, what we really believe is power, who has it and how it works, then how do we, how do we overcome that? And I guess the antidote for those risks that we’re really seeing is the hope in a long-term vision for the future, that hope that really lifts all of those individual manifestations of the challenges that we see and becomes a, a long-term future where, yeah, power is better distributed, and that those communities can create the future they need in the mainstream rather than the margins.

Ana: Thank you so much for that, Oli Veda, as a funder, from your point, what is risk? And why, in some cases, are you deciding not to fund certain organisations or certain causes, and where is this risk aversion coming from?

Veda: Hmm. 

That’s a big question because there’s, there’s quite a lot in there. I think people, and I understand why, have a vision of funding and philanthropy, and perhaps historically it has operated like this, as being quite disconnected from the issues that we’re seeking to address.

What I have seen, and I’ve worked for Esmée coming up for five years now, is a real shift in the emphasis and the people that work at a particular funder and across the funding landscape. And I think it’s im-important point to make is that people that I work with, and I work with other funders, our peer funders, are all people that live in communities that, in some cases, are facing the same issues.

So they do have lived experience of a lot of the issues that we’re talking about today, and I think that’s important to reflect that into this conversation. Because there has historically been this image of philanthropy being over here as this kind of very privileged group of people sitting around a table making funding decisions, and the rest of society over there.

And I think increasingly there’s been a move within trust and foundation sector to move much closer. Hence the reason why, you know, at Esmée, a lot of our strategies do focus in on a number of kind of social justice areas, a lot of, in terms of migrant rights, gender justice, which includes trans rights, the environment sector, which is increasingly coming under attack in terms of net zero and climate change with regards very far-right ideologies.

There is a need for, for trusts and foundations to think about what role they play beyond resourcing organisations in, in this space as well. So I think it’s, it’s just important to kind of set that scene in relation to this work. I think in terms of how we make decisions, again, I think there has been a kind of a bit of a mystery, and increasingly I’ve tried, in terms of our work, to kind of help organisations that come to us for resourcing to understand how decisions are actually made.

As an organisation, we are sharing much more about the funding guidance we’re working on and making it much clearer, understanding the rate of decision-making and the challenge that we face in that there’s quite often if not even quite often, quite high levels of ask against what is an actual available allocation of resource.

And so we then have to identify what are the priority areas, what are the strategies that we’re going to design that help address lots of different issues. And this isn’t me saying we can’t, we can’t meet every need, because the case is we can’t meet every need that comes. And so increasingly, trusts and foundations, ourselves included, have to think very carefully about how do we ensure that with the resource that we have available is cut in a way that those that are doing very strategic work, that are shifting systems, enable us to work beyond just the ambulances at the bottom of the cliff dealing with the issue, but are working upstream to change how systems work And how people live and the organisations that are very much involved in that.

So there’s less kind of challenge, less of a cliff edge situation that organisations are facing. And quite rightly, you know, trusts and foundations have faced a lot of criticism over the years in terms of the approaches that they’ve taken and the lack of transparency in terms of decisions, and that’s fair.

I wouldn’t mount a challenge against that. But I think increasingly there has been a desire to, to better understand how decisions are made to ensure that people don’t feel that there is a kind of a mystery about it, and I’m sure there’s more that we can do. And I suppose when it comes to this area, finally, the pace at which this issue has gained traction has been fast.

And I know Misbah and Oli, especially you, Misbah, working with Hope Not Hate, you would’ve seen the rate at which this has really increased and, uh, you know, working at a, a trust and a foundation that has a fixed strategy, being able to then pivot can be quite challenging, but we can ’cause we’re privileged enough to do so.

So I wouldn’t say that we’re playing catch up, but a lot of our intelligence about what is happening on the ground does come from the organisations we fund. And so staying very close, staying very relational, as we say, is really important for us to understand, well, when there is a strategic change, what is it we’re, focusing in on for the now, but also for the long term to to try and address long-term systemic structural issues.

So that’s, that, that’s how I, you know, would respond to that particular question.

Ana: Yes. Thank you so much for that, veda. Because I do think when, when you said at the beginning how there is a misconception or, or let’s say that philanthropy does have a reputation in certain cases of unfortunately replicating certain power dynamics and, like, an imposition of, of certain agendas and certain priorities that are not necessarily coherent with what is happening on the ground.

So I think it’s wonderful just listening to you and seeing how Esmée is building from the bottom up and, and actually incorporating all of these insights from the groups and what the groups are reporting and feed it back into your own funding strategy. Yeah, I think that’s wonderful. I just think it’s interesting how Oli mentioned how one of the risks that, that he identifies is that sometimes groups are, and maybe correct me if I, if I misunderstood, but one of their fears is that they’re not actually having long-term impact, but that they’re just busy kind of just r-reacting to more short-term activities and short-term challenges that maybe don’t give them enough time or resources for the, for the long impact.

But then, Veda, you were mentioning how one of your criteria of selection is groups that are actually implementing long-term impact. So how- How do you negotiate those two things? Because in the ground, sometimes there are a lot of things that are very short-term and are reactive. So I would like to understand how do you reconcile those two things?

Veda: Yeah. And they are, they are challenging to reconcile because every organisation that will approach a funder, and we have a similar experience, will say that our particular approach and our particular organisation is the one to fund, and we get that replicated across thousands of applications that we get.

So we’re having to make quite challenging decisions. Now, I’m not asking for you to get out your tiny violin. That’s not what I’m asking for here. But that’s just the f- the challenge of working in a funder. And I suppose one of the things where we have increasingly done over a number of years is to recognise that short-term funding is not gonna cut it.

We know from experience and insight from our organisations that less than three years gets you nowhere, because as soon as you’ve got the money, you’re already thinking about the next application. So increasingly wanting to move beyond three years, Esmée has a stated aim to, to provide longer grants, and generally our grants are more than three years, and in some cases much higher than five years as well. There’s also a recognition of how that funding is deployed. So There are lots of different trusts and foundations, community foundations, high net worth individuals, organisations that fund in very, very specific ways. But one of the major shifts that we’re seeing, and, and we had took a while ago, is the amount of unrestricted funding that we can actually give.

‘Cause a lot of organisations that we work with, and a lot of anecdotally coming from places like Northern Ireland, where the funding picture is very, very different, is that one year project-based funding is not helpful. Because what it doesn’t do is enable the organisation to think and behave strategically and, and, and plan long term.

And also, the capacity of the organisation is always about addressing what’s in front of them, and that can lead to organisational burnout and leadership burnout as well. So I think a shift towards, you know, longer funding, unrestricted funding, recognising that there are human beings running these organisations.

So thinking about how we can support wellbeing, that’s something that we have done. What other types of funding we can, uh, make available to organisations that supports organisational capacity and development is really important as well. So as the scale of the number of organisations we’re having to address, and that’s where the strategies come into play to think, well, which ones are we going to actually support?

How do we support networks of organisations? How do we connect people to convene, to help them think about their kind of funding mix? What other opportunities are there? Social investment is something that’s really important for Esmée, and we have the opportunity to deploy that within communities as well.

But there’s also how you deploy that funding, which is really, really important. And this is where long-term unrestricted funding is actually one of the key areas that we can do that, but against the backdrop of a lot of people asking for that as well. So we’re always walking that kind of tightrope of we wanna give more, but the scale of requests is increasing all the time.

Oli: Yeah, I mean, I, I think the reality is that there is more stuff to fund than there are funds available, and there’s more issues to fix both short term and long term. So yeah, I don’t envy the decision-making process that goes on. But I also think, you know, that funding model for what is deemed possible and what is necessary is widening again, and that is driving the situation that we’re in.

You know, that there’s, there’s work that really needs to be funded always, and that’s the kind of core foundations of things that are affecting people’s safety, their, uh, you know, equality, their ability to exist and survive in society. But- But yeah, I ju- I, I really think that the move needs to be much more into the bolder funding space because if you look at what Trump has done in America, that is bold ideas that, you know, they are really tearing up constitutional rights and tearing up how systems have worked and creating a new order across political, social, economic, environmental systems.

And, and that same level of boldness is required. You know, we really need to think about if this system isn’t working, let’s not focus on defending it or firefighting. Let’s focus on how do we reimagine it to make it work, because you can’t get people excited about maintaining the status quo because the status quo is broken.

And, and I think that’s a space where funding is starting to move into, but it has been slow, you know, and, and the alternative, the anti-democratic organisers haven’t been slow. They’ve been building this for a long time and with a lot of resource and with a lot less restrictions on them, of course, than progressive movements.

Veda: I think, uh, Oli, you’re absolutely right. The boldness that we’re seeing from more authoritarian governments is astonishing. And actually, I would say quite impressive, if I’m perfectly honest. And I suppose you’re right, there is yet to be something that is matched in terms of an approach. And I think, like I said before, you know, the thing about trusts and foundations is they’re holding a system of organisations that they’re funding, and then something happens over there, and the ability to pivot means actually dropping work.

And we have to do that with care. So while at the same time, you know, considering who are we currently resourcing over a long period of time or new organisations coming in, but recognising, if you, you pardon the analogy, there’s a skip on fire over there. How quickly can we move to ensure that the available resource is enabled to still support some organisations without leaving organisations to suddenly fall off a cliff and there’s problems there, while we try and pivot towards dealing with what is an emerging and quite astonishing and frightening issue.

And that’s the challenge that trusts and foundations have. And I think that the role of funder collaborations, how we come together, pool our resources, think about other available resources that we have, is going to be really important. Because like you say, the boldness of not just the policy decisions, but the boldness of the scale of resource that is being moved to more authoritarian policy responses andhe ability for them to drop 10, 15, 20 million on something really quickly is like, “Wow, that’s impressive.” Lots of people, like certain people that live in certain countries, have got very, very deep pockets and can move incredibly astonishingly, which is something that trusts and foundations are still trying to work out

Misbah: Yeah, Veda, your, last point about the quantity of money is a really important one.

Like we are just never gonna have those funds and the ability to drop, drop them in the way that other, other people can. And I think for me, like the crucial solution or like part of the solution there is around creativity. And I think taking it back to your point about longer term and unrestricted funding, I think what that does, as well as obviously allowing organisations to think more strategically, but I think for me, more importantly, allows them to think creatively.

It allows them to take some more risks in trying new things, and I think what, what we need to be doing a- as, as Hope Not Hate, and I think funders as well, is really trusting the expertise of people who have been working in their communities for, you know, 20, 30 years or whatever, and trusting that their creativity and their i- their ideas will have some, some impact and, and some output. 

And yeah, I think, again, I’m not really sure why this question has made me think this, but I think like one of the issues maybe with this work is trying to balance celebrating good community work and funding it versus romanticizing it. And I feel like, you know, we often talk about how, you know, people can do so much with so little money, and that is true, and that should be applauded and, and showcased, but I think we also can’t romanticize, you know, grassroots community power as this like unlimited supply of work.

It needs the security, and I think, yeah, the long-term unrestricted money does that, and it allows people to be creative. And I think, you know, in, in one breath we’re saying these people are experts in their community, like they understand what needs to be done. We should put them at the forefront of the work and the front line of the work.

But then in the other breath, sometimes not giving them the recognition and trusting what they’re saying is right. Like we kind of sometimes almost have to see it before we trust it, and obviously that kind of makes sense. But I think going forward, if we are to do this in a way that is sustainable and strategic and bold and creative, I think we have to trust that these people know what they’re doing before we necessarily actually see the, the fruits of new initiatives and new bits of work, which obviously is easier said than done, particularly for me not being a funder and not having to do all of the processes and, and checks and everything and all of that.

But I think we do have to start thinking more  in that way than we are at the moment as well.

Oli: There’s just something both Misbah and Veda were saying that really resonated, and I just… When we were talking about funder strategy, I guess, and, like, the kind of long-term goals and, and you can see, you know, why these systems have been created because you need a strategy, you need an approach, you need to have some end goal.

But in a way as well, that has weakened the collective imagination of a lot of community groups because all of these community groups end up shaping their ideas that they know from their deep work to fit one funder’s goals, and then they do it again for another funder and, and it’s all of this mismatch of kind of broadly good long-term ideas, but not the strong, deeply rooted work of what is locally necessary and, uh, possible with the energy that exists there.

And I think there’s, I think there’s a big bit of the boldness because we’ve shared in this conversation already that, that we know the ideas are out there. It’s not a lack of community leadership. It’s not a lack of the energy to create change, but there needs to be that boldness of just saying, you know, “What is the path?

What, what needs to happen here? How do we do that well together?” And, and then just do it, you know? Not try and hit these indicators and do X, Y, Z, but, like, let’s do it now because we’re running out of time to do it.

Ana: Yes. So going back to both what Misbah and Oli mentioned. Veda, because you mention a lot of wonderful things, which I think, again, Esmée is a great foundation, and hopefully more can replicate this.

So you were saying more long-term funding, unrestricted grants. But, uh, something that Oli just mentioned, which I think is very important as well, is how do you negotiate internally, like, as a fund? Because one thing is unrestricted funding, but how do you just let the group be? Like, giving them full liberty, as what Misbah was saying, like, to be completely creative in how they approach the problem, in how they’re going to intervene, whether it’s in the community or whether it’s a regional scale.

Like, is the unrestricted fund enough to actually give the group, let’s say, its wings and have that full creativity and resilience that they need? Or is there still some sort of indicators that have to be met, goals that have to be met, a, a theory of change, that has to land well with you, or is the unrestricted, like, truly unrestricted?

Veda: Well, unrestricted is unrestricted. When it comes to the financial resource, what it enables an organisation to do is to deploy the funds where they see fit, whether it be project funding, whether it be organisational development, whether it be paying for a CEO or directors. Wherever they choose to deploy that resource, that’s entirely up to them, and that enables them to be creative because what…

And I can only speak on behalf of Esmée. So the approach that we take is that we have a set of kind of broad outcomes, which is a kind of the North Star for all organisations that are applying to Creative, Confident Communities. But in terms of what an organisation brings to the table, they set their own outcomes.

We don’t tell them what outcomes. We’re not a outputs driven. We’re not about KPIs, that if they don’t meet a particular KPI, then they’ve therefore de facto failed. That’s not what the approach is about. It’s not about measuring, you know, success or failure. It’s about measuring what is changing for you in terms of your organisation and what, what change do you want to see, and how will your work that you’re seeking resource for contribute towards that change?

And that’s really important because, not least because Esmée is a UK-wide funder, and we’re also a very lean team. So our ability to be in the communities that organisations are seeking to support is impossible. And we wouldn’t want to actually, ’cause what we do know is that when you put resource on the table, it becomes quite competitive, and it will, it will damage local relationships.

So we’re really, really careful about when we’re doing funder collaborations, it’s really understanding what is the nature of the relationships and the stakeholders within a place or within a community to ensure that there is equity of access. Otherwise, what happens is you just create a level of power dynamic, which is really unhealthy, and that’s not what we want to do.

So we think really hard about who we collaborate with. Are our values aligned? And we’re talking about, uh, to funder collaboration and other resource holders within a place as well. How are our values aligned so that we are collectively working together towards this issue and are in the work as much as we’re able to, while being someone that has a four nations, UK-wide footprint?

We have organisations that we’re funding in the Shetland and all the way down to, you know, the southern tip of Cornwall and everywhere in between. So we are very much… I wouldn’t say we’re a hands-off funder in that respect ’cause we are really interested to learn from them and learn what they know helps us to shape, as we said at the beginning, how we then deliver both the strategy but also the resource that’s available.

So we still have the ability to be quite agile. Um- And all of the people that work at Esmée, we have a voice and we use it when we think, “Actually, that doesn’t quite work there. Is there something we can do?” Um, and be very responsive, whether it be COVID response, whether it be ensuring that racialized communities are not disadvantaged by any decisions that we’re making, and thinking about socioeconomic impacts and all those kind of things that we have to consider.

So when it comes to unrestricted, it’s unrestricted in the sense of you decide how you want to deploy it in service of the objectives that you’re seeking to address.

Ana: Amazing. 

Thank you, Veda, for that. Now that we’re close to finishing, I would like to hear Oli and Misbah, because everything we’ve mentioned is related to funding and the nature of this funding.

What other support would actually help the grassroot organisations do the work they do and feel supported and feel safe in doing so? 

Oli: The core thing I feel is community. You know, when was talking about that space of, you know, facing sometimes division on your street and facing pushback or when you’re trying to do stuff locally and from the local council, having a community that exists beyond the place you are is so important, and that’s, and that’s a big part of our movement building work we’re doing with Our House is connecting lots of communities that represent lots of different interests and identities across the four nations.

But yeah, share that common belief that power is too far from the people, and how do we come together to change that? And, and that’s, that is an energising thing that we’re experiencing in our work at the moment, because there is no better support than collective support.

Misbah: I think for me it’s, it’s, it’s sort of answering your question, but also going on a bit of a tangent.

But what would be, what I think needs to happen, and I think what would be really helpful for grassroots organisations is if we slightly change the language around how we talk about impact. I think this is something that Esmée actually already do and do really well, but I think other funders could definitely start to do this.

I think for a lot of funders it’s all about outcomes, you know, how many people were reached, how many decisions did a certain group make, et cetera, et cetera. But I think for a lot of grassroots organisations and community, you know, community initiatives, the impact is the actual process of doing these things themselves and the community power that has been built in that process, regardless of what the outcome actually is.

Like, regardless of whether they manage to buy, you know, something back from a developer, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think once we have a language through which the value of that process can be communicated and that language is shared by both organisations and funders, I think that will really help with a lot of what we’ve already spoken about, about how do we negotiate between the two kind of quote-unquote “sides” of, of this, like, puzzle.

And so I think, yeah, developing that shared language around the value of the process itself rather than the outcomes at the end, I think that is something that would be really, really useful for both sides of this discussion.

Veda: Can I just jump in here? 

‘Cause I think, again, this is where knowing the difference between an outcome, i.e. what’s changed, and actually an output, what did you do? And there’s historically a tendency to focus on how many people did you have involved, how did they stay involved. Those are kind of the kind of quantitative outputs, and I think it’s important. You’re absolutely right, Misbah. What’s changing? What’s different and how did you go about that, and what things would you want to be resourced differently next time?

I think there’s also something, something that struck me when I was in, in Dublin last week, and I think it’s, you know, helpful to, to end on a hopeful note, to quote your organisation, Misbah, is to think about the issues that we’re talking about in terms of building community resilience against far-right populism.

There was a piece of work that a Republic of Ireland organisation did where they tracked values and sentiments that was actually prevalent within communities across the Republic of Ireland, and I think th- this could be reflected in all four nations as well. The reality is that communities have far more progressive ideas of their spaces and places and communities of identity than the rhetoric that we’re seeing coming out of certain aspects of the media.

There is a gap between what people feel and sense and understand about who they are as people, how they relate to others, that is very different from what we hear through various legacy media newspapers or through various different social media streams. And that gives me hope because, you know, there’s more of, there’s more of us than there is of them, if you see what I mean.

And that’s where the hope has to hold, is that there is the ability of that kind of, you know, progressive thinking about what kind of people do you wanna be as a nation, as a place, as a community, than what is being fed to us. And understanding how collectively we can push back against that is the work of not just the likes of Hope Not Hate or Our House, but collectively with others resourced well in order to say, “That’s not who we are, and that’s not who we choose to be.

This is who we are, and this is who we– this is what we choose to work on.” And that really, really gave me hope when I heard that last week, but it’s something that I already know. But to see it in actual graphs and charts, that was really, really hopeful.

Ana: Thank you, Veda, for that. And I think it’s a great, um, opening to what I wanted to mention for all of you and also our listeners.

And it’s, we’re all part of the same puzzle. You as grantees and as groups on the ground, funders, The Social Change Nest as this intermediary who supports groups with their fiscal and financial infrastructure so that they can have their time and resources well spent on, on what they wanna do on the ground.

And I think it’s just such an important time to remember all the good things that we are doing and we are achieving. And I know it’s really easy to get negative when you’re just reading the media and you’re just seeing everything that’s going on outside. But it’s also an important invitation just to be hopeful and a bit optimistic and just remember that there– as, as you just mentioned, there’s more of us than more of them.

And I think that in the collectiveness, there’s power. And just as a reminder as well to the listeners, The Social Change Nest will offer the Wild Times Gathering in September in Birmingham, and it’s a great opportunity where we’re going to have funders, grantees, different stakeholders, and intermediaries in this whole sector.

And we’re gonna talk about many of the things that came up in this podcast today: solidarity, creativity, resilience, mutual care, collective care, trust, alignment of values, learning, how do we input and share learnings with each other, how do we make collective decisions? So I think everyone is on the same track, and I think hopefully this event will be a great opportunity for us to continue these types of conversations, to showcase successful case studies, maybe to get some ideas off the paper and, like, actually on the ground as well, of course, as networking.

But I think the main objective is just to motivate everyone who assists this event that we are very powerful if we work together. And I think that’s kind of the main conclusion out of this. Not only that realistically there’s, there’s a lack of funding and distribution, but I think just the power of community.

Um, and going back to, uh, Misbah’s initial metaphor of how hopefully those fences can become lower and lower, and in this, like, utopic society, fences wouldn’t even be necessary.

Misbah: Thank you.

Oli: Thanks so much for having us.

Veda: Thank you.

Ana: Today’s conversation has shown that risk looks very different depending on where you’re standing. For grassroots groups, it means burnout, personal safety, and putting their own time and money into holding communities together. For funders, it means making difficult choices with limited resources while trying to respond quickly without leaving existing organisations behind.

We also heard how long-term unrestricted funding can give groups stability and the freedom to be creative, take risks, and shape the work around what their communities actually need. And maybe one of the most hopeful reminders is that communities are often far less divided than the headlines suggest.

There is still so much that connects us and so much power in bringing people together. If this discussion interests you, we’re continuing the conversation at our Wild Times Gathering on the 15th of September in Birmingham. Thanks to Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Henry Smith Foundation, we’re now offering a limited number of funded £1 tickets and support with travel expenses for those who need it.

If you’re interested in finding out more, go to www.wildtimesuk.org or email community@thesocialchangenest.org. And some exciting news, we’re also now on Instagram for all things Wild Times on @wildtimesgathering. We hope to see you there