How participatory grantmaking can strengthen collective power
RADIUS’ Refugee Livelihood Lab has been around since 2017, working with displaced people and migrants. For the last eight years, it’s been a space for cultivating relationships within this community in Vancouver through programs that build skills for refugees who want to work to support newcomer communities.
Now, for the first time, they’re in the midst of their own participatory grantmaking project.
More and more funders are experimenting with participatory grantmaking as a tool to shift decision-making power to communities. It can be a process that builds trust between the funder and the communities that it serves, as well as a way to understand their needs directly.
The project at RADIUS leverages the trust they’ve already established with the newcomer community and uses that to co-design a grant program for the individuals and organizations
When RADIUS started its participatory grantmaking initiative last summer, it wanted to bring in alumni from previous programs at the refugee livelihood lab to collaborate on creating the grant.
A large part of the lab involved bringing together migrants with different statuses in the same space, so the RADIUS team felt it made sense to do the same for the participatory grantmaking project.
“Projects are important but it’s really important to create a good space for people, because often the first thing they need is a strong community and that’s what builds trust,” said Shikhank Sharma, who has been working with the participatory grantmaking project to help facilitate the process.
“And those longer term relationships also set them up for potential success,” said Sharma.
RADIUS’ connection with the newcomers and migrant communities was a great starting point to spring into the project, said Sharma
If they were to find completely new people to work with for the project, Sharma said they would have likely needed a year to develop trust with them and each other as a group to move forward with the grantmaking.
Sharma also mentioned that in their process, they’ve prioritized how people build relationships through the participatory grantmaking process.
It’s through these connections within the newcomer community space that someone could perhaps get job referrals three years down the line, get connected to different funders or ultimately a stronger support network within newcomer support systems as a whole, according to Sharma.
Funding migrant justice initiatives is more important than ever in today’s political landscape, said Sharma, yet migrant funding has been cut in Canada recently. Border security and surveillance between the U.S. and Canada are increasing, while the federal government is cutting funding for newcomer programs and planning to reduce immigration in general.
For instance, the funding cuts for the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program is one that will greatly impact new migrants coming into Canada. The program has been around since the early 90s and has served tens of thousands of immigrants each year. Now, many community organizations across the country are seeing significant funding cuts for language programs, forcing them to have fewer classes, and closure of some locations.
“We’re gonna have tons of amazing people doing great work, but we just have $500K and that’s like a drop in what the need is,” said Sharma.
“I think that’s really what’s sitting on my head right now — the anxiety and tension … because we don’t know if a lot of these people will be getting funding, because we literally don’t have the money to do that.”
It’s a framework that was important in guiding the participatory grantmaking team as they discussed what criteria to use while reviewing grants and what tangible impact they want to see within the community. The grant applications closed at the beginning of February, and the grantmaking group will begin their decision-making process within the upcoming weeks.
How the participatory grantmaking group works
Nine community members who already work within the migrant justice space are on the participatory grantmaking team at RADIUS,
They already had relationships with each other, creating a strong trust base for the group’s collaboration.
The community members decided on the specifications for the grantmaking process, which will distribute $500,000 in grants.
The RADIUS team has also documented the participatory grantmaking process in detail through their blog to learn what works and what doesn’t. They also share their experience with other foundations interested in participatory grantmaking.
Their first step as a group was detailing what isn’t working in the migrant grantmaking space.
Understanding current barriers and challenges was an important starting point because it outlined what they planned to avoid within the grant they were designing.
For example, they noted that one of the main issues was the lack of access for individuals and organizations not experienced in grant writing procedures. Often, those wanting to apply might not be aware of the grant, and many who are can find the process daunting or inaccessible. The sector-specific language and extensive requirements were alienating potential grantees.
Based on this, the group designed a transparent and low-barrier grant.
The final grant application was a single two-step process of two to three pages, didn’t require additional attachments from the organization or individuals, provided support from the team through different mediums throughout the application process and even did outreach for those who might not know about the grant and encouraged them to apply.
The process “was very much organic because this is the gap we see in the space, and finally now we can actually address it,” said Sharma.
Reducing competition and creating a network within the movement
Similar to RADIUS, the Foundation of Greater Montreal’s (FGM) approach to participatory grantmaking is centred around building relationships and a more extensive network for those in the newcomer and migrant space.
For instance, Vira Kovalova, advisor of community partnerships at FGM, explained that their team was very intentional about working with French and English-speaking organizations within their current participatory grantmaking project.
She said there aren’t many bilingual spaces in Montreal for French and English organizations to collaborate, and they wanted to help grow this area.
FGM has experience with participatory grantmaking and has done a few similar projects in the past.
They are currently working on a project to help fund asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants without status through The Collective Fund for Social Equity.
The grantmaking committee for this project is intergenerational and includes people from various cultures to avoid an echo chamber and ensure that members learn from each other’s experiences or perspectives.
When members meet through the committee, they can learn about the types of work other people in the newcomer and migrant spaces are doing and collaborate, said Kovalova.
“One of our goals is to reduce competition because competition reduces impact. If we’re all thinking ‘okay I’m not going to share this information because somebody else will use it,’ in the end we’re all just not arriving at where we need to be as a movement,” she added.
Reframing the issue of conflict of interest
Marie-Andree Farmer, director of strategic initiatives and community partnerships at FGM, often converses with other funders who ask her how FGM mitigates conflict of interest issues when organizations applying for a grant are also members of the grantmaking committee.
She also said that this concern is one reason foundations and organizations are reticent about implementing participatory grantmaking in their own organizations.
“There’s still this ideal of impartiality, that the committees have to be impartial. It’s this idea that the committees have to be outside of everything, that folks who are in some positions of power don’t have a conflict of interest but folks who work on the ground do. Which is very contradictory,” said Kovalova.
“On our committees, that is the first question they ask. We all experience this tangible discomfort.
“We see conflicts of interest coming from the highest places, so we can’t presume they don’t exist there but exist on the ground — they exist everywhere. It’s around the willingness to be honest and transparent in how we’re handling it rather than avoiding it,” said Kovalova.
“It’s not a zero sum game, we can implement elements without going all in. You can do it imperfectly and that’s totally fine. But of course when you do it imperfectly, take care of the people – that’s the most important part.”
For foundations that have the resources and money to support migrant justice spaces right now, Sharma encouraged them to step up and contribute to funding these grassroots organizations, which are a lifeline for newcomers, refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers in an increasingly hostile political environment.
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