‘Digging Deeper Report: Insights on tailored funding to organisations led by black people and communities experiencing racial injustice in 2020’

As stated in a previous article, The Baobab Foundation has been set up in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the stark inequalities further exposed by the global pandemic. The foundation aims to reestablish how black and ethnic minoirty-led VCSE organisations are funded and expose how the funding landscape has “enabled” or “limited” the work of these organisations.

Their report spoke to 26 respondents from 19 organisations.

Findings:

• Rise in funding but exposure of limitaitions of support that would bring about systemic change, proportional investment

• Focus on emergency response, not long-term solutions to tackle racial injustice

• Some funders are putting social change as a priority, but more needs to be done to “integrate a racial and intersectional lens across funder strategies”

Thoughts:

• Baobab do not use acronyms, as they regard them as an oversimplification of the lived experiences of individuals

• Need to use ‘Intersectional approach’ as a framework to understand inequalities. Intersectionality which considers the various plethora of contexts and backgrounds that contribute to a persons lived experience, needs to be taken into account to build knowledge and resistance.

Funder Progress:

• Increased availability & flexability of funding

• “Shift towards participatory funding models”- including funders listening to experts on racial injustice

• Investment into “lived experience funders and organisations”

Community issues now:

Progress remains limited, due to inhibted long-term and scaled flexible investment:

• Funding doesn’t go beyond March 2021

• Funding has failed geographical and intersectional disparities across UK

• Groups still struggling with historic underinvestment

Moving towards an anti-racist & intersectional funding approach:

• Funders need to be explicit about racial inequities

• Understanding that racial injustice spans many social change strategies

• Funders need to increase equity and transparency

• Funders need to adopt risk-taking behaviour to generate innovations

• Funders need to consciously work with groups outside of London

• Trauma-informed approach to reduce harm in funding process needed

Call to Action to Funders:

• Long-term and flexible funding (5+ years)

• Address dispairites for groups outside of London

• Build strategic partnerhships with organisations led by black people and communities experiencing racial injustice

• Use “transforamtive policies and practices”

• Adopt a trauma-informed approach across funding

Full report here.

Brief report here.