It was an honour to be a guest speaker at a face-to-face, closed, funder roundtable hosted and facilitated by NPC (New Philanthropy Capital), with support from Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
I presented with Louise Armstrong, our systems change expert. We shared findings from a recent evaluation of the Backbone Fund, an innovative mechanism that offers unrestricted funding to infrastructure organisations in the UK.
The event focused on UK infrastructure organisations and here are my main takeaways:
- Infrastructure organisations should be supported
There was a recognition that civil society in the UK needs infrastructure organisations to thrive and meet the challenges of our times. And that funders should be supporting both front-line and infrastructure organisations – it is not a choice between one or the other, but a mixed funding approach that is needed.
Yet over the last three decades funding and recognition for infrastructure organisations have decreased. This is because infrastructure organisations are less visible and their work is often taken for granted.
- Jargon gets in the way of sector-wide collaboration
Funders use a wide range of words to describe what they mean by infrastructure organisations and there is yet to be a commonly agreed definition of what kind of organisations they are talking about. This makes it difficult to identify relevant organisations and funders that could work together more strategically.
In this blog, we share a list of commonly used words and a range of functions they play and types of organisational models to enable a shared understanding and language.
- Approaches to identify needs and relevant organisations
A lot of what we discussed on the day centred around ways to identify sector-wide needs and relevant organisations that could serve those needs. Here are the three main approaches discussed:
• Bottom-up approach: listening to needs on the ground, particularly from ethnic minorities and other vulnerable groups, is key to identifying emerging needs not met by front-line organisations. For example, we know that local communities would like to be more involved in decision-making and co-creation of solutions, but many organisations and leaders are yet to develop capabilities that would allow for new governance models. We need more infrastructure organisations that support organisations to evolve towards more diverse, equitable and inclusive practices.
• Infrastructure-led approach: many infrastructure organisations get a sense of what is needed from those they serve but are not always in the position to develop those capabilities and secure funding to pivot and evolve as needed. Tapping into these insights can help funders identify new organisations and business models that need funding to better meet new challenges and needs.
• Funder’s led approach: funders can use their existing network of grantees to get a sense of their unmet needs and emerging trends and challenges, which can inform their funding strategy.
A mix of all of the above would enable adequate foresight, long-term planning and funding strategies that better support the civil society sector.
- How to build sector-wide collaboration while avoiding duplication
A key challenge towards sector-wide collaboration is to find how different funder’s interests overlap while avoiding duplication with other initiatives.
Issue-based and placed-based collaboration can be a way to bring together funders committed to supporting a specific issue in the UK. Successful examples include the Infrastructure Support group in the Youth Sector.
Subgroups of funders working in specific places or geographic areas could work under the issue umbrella.
Cross-cutting funding collaborations are also needed. Examples include infrastructure organisations that support more equitable, diverse and inclusive business models and practices.
Supporting the well-being, resilience and recognition of Black and ethnic minority leaders is very much needed as well as helping white leaders evolve and transform their organisations.
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