Funding for deep systemic change

Written by Raji Hunjan, CEO

For anyone already signed up to Tudor’s newsletter, you will know that we have recently updated our website to give more information about our grant-making plans going forward. Whilst we continue to operate within closed application processes, we are also committed to being transparent in how we share and make decisions. This is particularly important when we know we don’t have all the answers.

As we have taken time to reflect on our first round of grant-making, we are growing in certainty that we want to fund in ways that move us beyond isolated interventions to resourcing change at a systemic level. We believe this means developing an ecosystem of organisations that complement each other and can work together to support communities to achieve their ambitions.

We believe there is an imperative for stronger organisations that are working at the intersection between racial justice and systemic change to be able to work collaboratively. By this we mean resourcing work that not only addresses root causes but does so in ways that build pathways to a more just and equitable world. It is with this in mind that we will continue to make grants that are larger and longer-term. Philanthropy in the UK has long understood the value of unrestricted, multi-year grants. But what more do we need to understand, in the current economic and social context, about the size of grants and other forms of resources that are essential for organisations to be able to shift from surviving to thriving? 

One key learning from our first set of grants has been the extent to which leaders have been working to burnout, particularly those who have stepped up over the last five years, to challenge injustice and inequity in an increasingly divided society. Through our own listening and learning, we see this has been disproportionate in its impact on Black and Global Majority women leaders. Burnout for them goes way beyond sheer number of hours worked or even the challenges of fundraising. It's about the pressure of representing and translating the needs of entire communities, explaining complexity and nuance in a sector where we are so often advised to keep messaging simple. 

Often this work is happening whilst also navigating the relationship between their own lived and professional experiences. All the leaders in our first set of grants have taken on the responsibility at various levels of mediators, peacekeepers, designers and innovators, in spaces where they have often been made to work in competition with others. This is in addition to teaching the mainstream parts of the sector about the impact of racism and other forms of oppression. This is a lot, and I know the team at Tudor will have this on their minds as they start building the grants portfolio.

Our commitment to larger grants comes with the inevitable consequence that we will continue to make fewer grants. We know this can seem deeply problematic in a context where there is so much need. We engage with some brilliant organisations that we will not be able to fund. We believe in the power of conversation, and by building connections with those in the field, we can share learning and build power through knowledge.

We have made a strategic choice to prioritise being deeply relational over managing volume. Our aspiration is that this approach will enable us to go beyond simply the distributor of resources to partner and facilitator in supporting the sector to achieve its shared goals in pursuit of justice and equity.