Inside Our International Grant Distribution Work: Supporting Activists Across Borders
Whether it be fiscal hosting, grant distribution, grant management or process hosting, here at The Social Change Nest (SCN), we support grassroots groups and organisations in a multitude of ways. We would class ourselves as experts in financial management, adaptable when sending funds internationally and innovative when it comes to ideating new ways to help with your needs. We aim to focus on and handle your financial and administrative burdens so that you can concentrate on creating the impact that you would like to see in the world. Our grant distribution service is a great example of our aim in focus.
We distribute grants both to the UK and internationally, but wherever you are in the world, we support you in the same way. We co-create and work in collaboration with our partners to get funds to those who need them.
We’ll be producing a series of blogs that focus on our international grant distribution service, showcasing the impact that we have helped to facilitate around the world. With insights into our partnership with the Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMIF) and the wonderful UMIF grantees, we’ll share the challenges we’ve experienced, what we’ve learnt, and what we are excited for in the future.
What is International Grant Distribution?
In the most basic sense, 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.
We aim to distribute grants quickly, easily and efficiently to community groups, networks and organisations around the world, making the process as simple as possible for those on the ground. We send grants to unincorporated and grassroots groups, and work closely with our partners to create a grant-making process that prioritises social impact whilst being empathetic to the recipients’ time and resource constraints.
Sending money internationally also requires a different approach compared to our other services. International finance, regulation and compliance have to inform this process, along with any successes, risks, challenges and learnings along the way. Even in the turbulent times we are experiencing, we adapt to unforeseen changes and always try to find solutions.
- Blogs
An Introduction to The Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMIF)
The map below showcases some of the impactful projects funded in 2024. The Social Change Nest distributed funds to these grantees in partnership with the UMI Fund.
The Urban Movement Innovation Fund (UMIF) is a grant maker and advisor in philanthropy. Our partnership was formed when we conducted a Youth Climate Funding project together in 2021, which was a huge success. We knew that UMI Fund and The Social Change Nest shared values and aims, and these were strengthened during that first project. Our partnership continued, leading us to the Microgranting Projects that have been taking place ever since. (A microgrant is a small amount of money distributed to an individual or organization, with the intent of enabling them to start a project and become sustainable)
“I think ultimately, we have the shared goal of being able to support amazing campaigners and activists around the world with small grants that can be absolutely transformatory. And I think we both have that. We both understand that is a really powerful mechanism for change, that there’s so much good work that happens voluntarily but people do need a little bit of cash sometimes to be able to make things, and recognition that getting that out to people in an easy, quick way is really important when there are opportunities that people want to take and there are projects people want to make happen. And people are hungry to make change, to just get on with it. So that kind of feeling of let’s enable people to just get on with change making.” Anna Jones, UMI Fund.
The microgranting strand of the UMIF work focuses on developing grassroots groups and young individuals. The intention is to incubate the grantees and provide them with startup seed support so that they can grow stronger and move upwards in the funding landscape. By conducting the due diligence and processing the grants here at SCN, we support grantees’ specific capacity or capacity-building goals and strengthen the global youth field in strategic areas. Some areas that we have focused on include convenings, transport and mobility, climate justice, clean energy and zero waste.
Anna said, “We think it’s incredibly important to be supporting the next generation of campaigners and activists coming up through. Not only because they’re going to be the next leaders, but because they’re an incredibly powerful generation that really understand what we’re up against and are really motivated to make change for the future.”
“We think it’s important to be enabling activism at a really intersectional level on a diverse range of subjects. But then we mix that with having some quite specific pulses on clean energy or transport because we know that some of those issues need a bit of a boost to enable people to be really taking part and campaigning on those issues.”
The impact:
- Through our international grant distribution service across different partners, we have granted to a total of 46 countries across 6 continents.
- We’ve funneled over £2,000,000 to international unincorporated grassroots groups and projects on the frontline of social and climate impact.
As you can see from the map above, global grants to youth-led projects are having an integral impact and are essential to help fight the climate emergency. The ripple that is being felt from each project is wide-ranging, influencing policies, inspiring education and generating a new wave of climate activists to continue the work.
In our next blog, we’ll talk to some of the UMI Fund grantees we’ve distributed funds to, learning about their projects, experiences, opportunities and what they’ve learnt.
Want help distributing grants?
If you’re a funder looking for innovative, fast and simple ways to distribute grants, either in the UK or internationally, let’s chat
