The power of collaboration
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London Funders is the only cross-sector membership organisation for funders, having members from corporate foundations, to social investors, and independent trusts to public bodies. Collaboration has always been at the heart of what we do at London Funders, knowing that many of the issues facing our communities are too complex for any one organisation to tackle alone. For us, collaboration comes in many forms and its fundamental to the culture we want to create as a movement of funders. It’s about building connections and networks together, so we can better share learning, practice and opportunities to do things differently. From our regular member-led networks and local forums, to our longer-term programmes, we want to put it at the heart of our work. Our commitment to enabling funder collaboration is rooted in the understanding that together, we can achieve more than the sum of our parts.
How we collaborate
In our latest member audit, (a survey we undertake every two years with members to understand their funding practice and priorities), we’ve seen that funders collaborate in more ways than just money. Over 80% of our audit respondents share intelligence with other funders. This can be from attending our thematic networks, to our annual Festival of Learning, bringing over 1,500 people working in funding to share learning from strategy development to grant processes and advancing equity and justice through their work. Bringing cross-sector funders together brings diverse perspectives and experiences to the table, which can lead to innovative solutions and more effective strategies. Alongside this 56% of our members collaborate through local partnerships, e.g. working with their local authority and community groups. Almost a quarter are involved in pooling funds in some way.
At London Funders we’ve put collaboration into practice over the years, to test, support and understand how it can benefit Londoners and shift how we work as a community of funders. Each one of these collaborations has happened because community groups and funders have come together, pooling their knowledge, funding and experience. We worked with funders to distribute £4.7m in response to the Grenfell Tower fire, £58.7m through the London Community Response to Covid-19, and now £100m through Propel, an ambitious ten-year funding programme. We’ve also supported a growing movement of place based giving across the city, and brought funders and partners together to collaborate on issues from immigration advice to due diligence. These collaborations have helped build trust – not just between funders, but also between funders and the communities they serve. This trust is essential for accountability and long-term impact.
The power of pooling
While we’re huge advocates for collaboration, we’re also realistic about the challenges. Through our work, we’ve also learned why it can be difficult to do collaboration at scale, and we’ve encountered some of the barriers to creating truly collaborative spaces for funders and civil society to design, plan, learn and make funding decisions together.
All of this has been the driving force behind creating the Collaboration Circle, a subsidiary of London Funders. This provides the space and infrastructure for pooling not just money but the expertise and power needed to create change. There is a growing appetite to use pooled funds to not just achieve lasting change but also shift power in the way we work. We are building on some inspiring examples of pooled funds from across the UK and globally, where funders have been able to act in ways that would be too risky for them to undertake alone. They’ve built leadership and capacity across networks of grantees and funders, and together acted on new learning about how change happens. We want more funders and communities to benefit from the opportunities presented by pooled funds. The Collaboration Circle provides the infrastructure, governance and space to make pooling funds easier, to embed more equitable decision-making and to overcome the processes, and cultures, that can sometimes hold us back.
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