our story so far
Below is a short summary of the journey we’ve come on so far, and where we’re going next.
Getting started
This project was borne out of years of frustration and anger. Having worked within social change for a long time, a few of us initially got together because we felt this ‘sector’ is too often, in too many ways, deeply broken.
The core problems we saw that we wanted to tackle:
- Power and resources are often in the wrong place – not with the communities they are meant to serve. Instead control largely rests with big/established charities and donors – who are mostly white, middle class and/or privileged in other ways, often distant from the communities they say they are working for.
- Accountability flows in the wrong direction – to funders and donors, not to the communities the work is meant to be about.
Shifts in the ‘sector’ are painfully incremental (e.g. slightly better staff diversity, small experiments in grassroots accountability), but are often hailed as major progress by those in the social change establishment. At the current pace, the kind of changes really needed would take decades, if they ever happened.
Our idea was to come up with something different, that could be a useful provocation for potential change in the sector – What would a completely different reality look like?
The right people
From early on the three of us who were the white, middle-class, London-based founders felt they should not be the ones to lead any future initiative, wanting to embody the aims of the project in how it was set up. It was important that leadership would be diverse and broad, and able to draw on multiple perspectives and experiences. Aware that people with lived experience often get called on to give their time for free, they worked to secure funding alone – eventually succeeding with a start up grant from Friends Provident Foundation.
When funding started, the founders were open to stepping away from the project and handing over entirely to the new steering group, but both the steering group itself and Friends Provident as a funder suggested that they should stay, as to do otherwise would be replicating the paternalist white saviour model the charity sector is founded upon.
This perspective recognised that the founders’ privileges meant they are also trapped in harmful and violent systems and worldviews that they want to break away from, which make them KEY foot soldiers of violent systems, and that they needed to do the work alongside working class, black and brown folk to overthrow the status quo. This was not initially included in the blog but was pointed out by a steering group member- showing there is work still to be done by the individuals involved on the relationships between their privilege and the harmful foundations of the charity sector.
In June 2021 the beginnings of the steering group met for the first time. Initially, our group was predominantly white, middle class, London-based and with limited lived experience of marginalisation (as some people interested at the start were no longer available when funding arrived) – so bringing in others was really important to us, and the group is now much more diverse.
Paid right
We discussed pay and acknowledged the tensions between money, capitalism and working for social change – based on negative experiences of this, we thought it was important to decide on a payment structure that was fair for all. The steering group agreed a model in which people choose the amount they are paid, on a sliding scale. Both the process and the outcome of this meant that we were able to critically engage with the relationship between money and social change.
guiding principles
Our early priority was to establish a culture of working collaboratively and build a framework/structure around discussions being had in the wider steering group. We collectively agreed to the following goals, principles and commitments for working together:
Goals
1) We believe lived experience is undervalued in the third sector and want to work towards lived experience being centred in social change, so that communities have real power and control over their lives, determining what’s important and holding the purse strings to set agendas, identify priorities and address them
2) We will work to disrupt the systems of oppression that hold up the status quo – such as capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy – in pursuit of justice
3) We aim for the birth of something new in the third sector in systems, cultures, values, organisations and practice, recognising that this will entail the collapse of traditional power-holding organisations and structures with failing working ways. We acknowledge the communities and groups that have come before us (working to disrupt the systems of oppression that hold up the status quo) and we’re open to learning and collaborating.
4) Our end point is emergent. We are not tied to any specific vision. We remain humble in the journey and recognise that the journey is in part the objective (in line with the principles of co-production)
Ways of working
5) We aim to prefigure the outcomes we want to see, in the sector and the world, in how the project is constituted and run
6) We will centre relationships and care, building trust and respect
7) We value people’s different perspectives, making space for learning that can come from tension, and being intentional about holding this with care
8) We will work on minimising the ways in which the systems of oppression that hold up the status quo show up in our behaviour, individually and collectively
9) We strive to be open and honest – all decision making will be completely transparent.
10) Neither the coordination group or the steering group has a fixed membership, and any work the coordination group do is accountable to the steering group
11) We value moving at a pace that feels collectively comfortable for the entire steering group, acknowledging we have different commitments and capacity, and people’s involvement may ebb and flow.
12) We will make space for humour, joy, love and compassion
13) We will work iteratively and flexibly, changing approach if it isn’t working
14) We will distribute project funds on a sliding scale according to need
Taking the work forwards
We have sought to model the future we’re looking to re-imagine, worked as a diverse group to build relationships, get to know each other, explore the issues, agree values and principles and set down some processes for working together (like processes for collective care). We have prioritised moving at the speed of trust over rushing to achieve outputs – it has been an important, more inwardly looking phase.
We’ve also worked on our analysis of what’s wrong in the ‘sector’, looking at both the obvious problems and the deeper roots, trying to come to a common understanding.
Above: as well as some working together on some longer written analysis, this diagram shows some of our thinking – from root causes (at the bottom) to how these manifest (the branches and leaves)
Now we want to consolidate what we’ve learnt and start to reach out to others to explore both what a re-imagined sector might look like and how we might proceed with the project. Where can we take inspiration from already? How can we best influence change ourselves?
In early 2023 we are reaching out to a range of people to explore these questions, in order to form a plan for where we go next. If you’re interested in the project, we’d love to hear from you – please drop us a line.
right way up 