Campaigners and activists live with a paradox: funders say they recognise the value of their work, but they are consistently under-supported, including financially. Why?

We surveyed 100 funders (mostly in the UK) to find out. Most said they really value campaigning and activism (on average they said it was ‘very valuable’ as a tool for change, 4.4 on a 0-5 scale) but this is not reflected in their giving. Their reasons for not giving more centred around risk (how will funding affect my organisation?), impact (will specific campaigns or actions win change?), practicalities (how can I fund small or informal groups?) and knowledge (who should I fund?).

‘The board would not approve anything which the Daily Mail could take issue with.’

The results of our survey suggest that funders are living in fear – of reputational damage, of falling foul of charity law, of regretting new or experimental funding decisions, or of uncertainty. The result is that people and groups who are working outside the system, pushing for ambitious, transformational change, using more urgent tactics, or who are simply small and unconstituted, are missing out. Yet these are exactly the people – grassroots changemakers trying to address broken systems – who progressive funders should be supporting. So, what can be done?

Funders need to take care not to let risk aversion calcify into conservatism. As one funder said, ‘We worry a lot about reputational risk. But really… we’re an organisation with a massive endowment. What do we have to lose?’

Charities have a ’right to campaign’, and funders have a right to support them. One place to start addressing risk aversion is with a critical consideration of your organisation’s charitable purpose – is it allowing you to do everything you want or is it limiting you? One funder who had been on this journey told us, ‘Our charitable purpose was very narrow. We have now widened it and have been actively developing our funding of more ‘outsider’ approaches.’ Another funder recommended that ‘It helps to get specialist legal advice’. Most rules are not black and white and progressive lawyers can support you.

If taking more risk seems too hard to do alone, funders can work with intermediaries and fiscal hosts (such as The Movements Trust, Climate Emergency Fund, Social Change Nest CIC) or other movement infrastructure organisations (Momentum Community, NEON, SMK Foundation). They can support existing philanthropic initiatives (e.g. EDGE Funders Alliance, Human Rights Funders Network, Tenacious awards, Propel Philanthropy, Global Greengrants) and contribute to pooled funds and shared knowledge banks to make resources go further, address change more coherently and set more ambitious goals.

We were encouraged to find that the two things funders said were most likely to persuade them to give more to campaigners and activists were ‘Convincing evidence that it is effective’ and ‘guidance on measuring impact’. Both can be addressed. To persuade boards of the value of supporting campaigners and activists, there is a growing body of evidence of their impact (e.g. here, here and here). Some of it (e.g. here and here) is framed using terms and tools such as cost effectiveness analysis which might be particularly helpful and familiar to some. Several organisations (including Commons Library, NPC, Social Change Agency, ProBono Economics, SMK) have useful resources or training on measuring impact. Funders can learn a huge amount from their peer networks, and they should also get to know campaigners and activists directly and invite them to speak to their boards to tell their stories firsthand.

Funders also told us that their boards could benefit from better understanding of the ecology of social change – to help broaden their thinking from short-term service delivery to ambitious, longer-term structural change. Organisations such as the AYNI institute have lots of useful resources on social change; their model is nicely summarised in this article. The SMK Foundation has recently produced the Changemakers’ Toolkit which gives useful graphical introductions to social change processes, and Beautiful Trouble has pithy guides to some of the main theories and themes of social change. The recent report from the Environmental Funders Network also has an excellent framework to help grantmakers think about how they are funding and whether they could be more effective, with a set of ‘no brainer’ recommendations for modern grantmaking.

Above all, funders need to embrace and support campaigners and activists for the passionate and effective change makers they are, even if things get noisy and difficult. As one funder put it, ‘Trustees really want to be seen as neutral, and not political. We’re not neutral! How can you be if you are trying to change things?’