what

We want to create a radical, practical new vision for social change.

We want to turn things upside down – so change is built from and within communities, rooted in accountability to those communities, with a culture and structure that puts them in charge of power, money and decisions.

We want to come at big questions the sector has been grappling with, complementing what others are doing.

But we want to come at it from a different direction ⁠— not tethered to how things already are, but instead starting from how things could be, with all options on the table.

We believe this could help contribute to more far-reaching change than is happening today.

key questions?

These are some of the key questions we are asking – and we want to hear from others on these too:

  1. What are the underlying problems in ‘the sector’ preventing deep social change?
  2. What are the solutions to these problems?
  3. Who inspires us already with solutions?
  4. What would our vision be for a sector turned the right way up, re-imagined to be much as a social movement against exploitation and domination, of humans and non-humans?
  5. How could our initiative contribute to change?

examples of change

We are not starting from a blank slate.

At the community level grassroots organisations and activists across social and economic injustice issues are modelling the kinds of behaviours and ways of working we’d like to see the sector adopt at scale.

In the funding world, groups like Edge Fund and Community Foundations, plus crowdfunding and place-based funding initiatives are of potential interest.

Groups such as Charity So White are holding organisations to account for failure to uphold basic values.

Initiatives like Rad HR are developing new ways of operating that don’t take as their starting point orthodox assumptions about how things are done.

Others are acting in solidarity and sharing power with communities e.g. PEACH or joining up connected struggles e.g. the COP26 coalition.

Some organisations are elevating the voices and expertise of those that the mainstream sector has failed to recognise and support, such as the Centre for Knowledge Equity.

Established organisations are exploring more radical responses, whilst  new groups like We Belong, We Care, Generation Rent, Wretched of the Earth are modelling new ways of operating.

Meanwhile, the nexus of civil society and local democracy is being explored through initiatives like Flatpack Democracy and the Community Land Trusts movement.