Before you fund
Stage 3

Grant Types

The type of grant a funder offers is a values decision. Equitable grant types start from a different assumption: that organisations closest to the issue are best placed to lead the work.

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  • Setting the scene

    Traditional grant models tend to what the funder controls: restricted budgets, tight timelines, narrow definitions of what counts as impact. For larger, well-resourced organisations, these conditions are manageable. For grassroots, Black-led, and small community-based organisations, they can be the difference between sustainability and survival.

    Equitable grant types seek to rebalance that relationship. Rather than treating funded organisations as delivery vehicles for donor priorities, they recognise them as agents of change with deep contextual knowledge, long-term community relationships, and a clearer view of what is actually needed than any external funder is likely to have.

    The funding model is never neutral. It encodes assumptions about risk, accountability, and whose judgement is trusted. Choosing a grant type is, in that sense, a values decision.

  • What the evidence tells us

    The literature on equitable grantmaking draws from academic research, sector-led analysis, and philanthropic practice guides, much of it originating in the United States, where the philanthropic research infrastructure is most developed, but with consistent parallels across global health, social justice, and community development contexts.

    A clear distinction runs through this body of work: equity focuses on reducing barriers and allocating resources proportionate to need, while justice goes further, redistributing power and changing the systems that produce inequality in the first place. Funding models, the evidence argues, are not passive instruments. They actively shape who benefits, who is excluded, and who gets to decide.

  • Key issues and challenges

    One of the most persistent problems is the continued dominance of grant structures that prioritise funder control over community autonomy. Short cycles, restrictive conditions, and narrow impact frameworks force organisations to reshape their work around donor priorities rather than community need. Over time, this produces a quiet distortion: funded organisations become increasingly skilled at performing funder expectations rather than pursuing their actual mission.

    Risk aversion compounds this. Many funders rely on financial proxies such as reserves, turnover, or board wealth to assess organisational viability. These measures tend to reflect historical inequity more than genuine organisational strength, systematically disadvantaging the very organisations working closest to unmet need.

    Internal barriers within funding institutions matter too. Trustee governance structures, compliance frameworks, and entrenched accountability expectations can all limit the appetite for flexible or long-term funding, even where individual staff are genuinely committed to change.

  • Existing approaches

    The range of equitable grant types in practice is growing. Unrestricted or general operating support, multi-year funding, trust-based and relationship-led grant making, participatory and community-led models, capacity-building grants, and funding explicitly designed to support organising and movement-building all represent different ways of shifting the balance toward community autonomy.

    The evidence suggests these approaches work best in combination. Unrestricted funding is most effective when paired with genuine relationship and trust. Participatory models are most meaningful when communities hold real decision-making authority, not just advisory roles attached to small pots of money.

    No single grant type solves everything, but the direction of travel is consistent: the more funding reflects trust, flexibility, and long-term commitment, the more likely it is to support the kind of change it claims to be funding.

  • Benefits and disadvantages

    Equitable grant types enable organisations to plan ahead, invest in their people, respond to shifting community needs, and pursue deeper, more systemic impact. They reduce administrative burden, ease funding precarity, and create the conditions for more honest learning and stronger relationships between funders and grantees.

    The challenges are real. These approaches ask funders to hold more uncertainty, revisit established risk frameworks, and accept that accountability can take forms other than quarterly reporting against predetermined outputs. Governance structures can be slow to shift, and there is a genuine risk that equitable grant types become symbolic gestures if they are applied inconsistently or without corresponding changes to how decisions are made internally.

    The gap between aspiration and practice in this area remains significant. Naming it is at least a start.

  • Something to consider

    If the funding model stayed the same but the language around it changed, would anyone outside the organisation notice the difference? Equitable grant making shows up in what is actually offered, how long, how flexible, how trusted. That is the measure worth returning to

Explore our recommendations

  • Provide unrestricted, multi-year funding with clear communication

    Unrestricted funding, offered on a multi-year basis, supports stability and long-term impact, particularly for smaller and under-resourced organisations. Funders should communicate openly and early about the length of funding, expectations around renewal, and whether continuation is likely. Clarity here helps organisations plan sustainably and avoids uncertainty that falls hardest on those least able to absorb it.

  • Use trust and relationship-based approaches

    Trust-based grant making reduces power imbalances by shifting from compliance-heavy oversight to relational approaches grounded in transparency, dialogue, and mutual accountability. This includes proportionate reporting, shared learning, and honest conversations about challenges. It matters most where historic funding practices have excluded or disadvantaged Black-led and grassroots organisations.

  • Adopt participatory and community-led decision-making where appropriate

    Participatory models place decision-making power with the communities most affected by funding decisions. When used, they should be clearly defined, well-resourced, and supported by fair payment for contributors and genuine accountability. Participation should be connected to real decision-making authority, not used as a symbolic or extractive exercise.

  • Offer flexible, proportionate reporting requirements

    Grant requirements should be proportionate to the size, risk, and purpose of the funding. Low-burden reporting reduces barriers for grassroots organisations and helps address inequities in access. Funders should regularly ask whether their reporting requirements generate genuine learning or simply reinforce compliance.

  • Use micro-grants and rapid response funding intentionally

    Micro-grants and rapid response funding can play a vital role in supporting community-led action, early-stage work, or time-sensitive needs. These approaches should complement longer-term unrestricted funding rather than replace it, and should not rely on burdensome monitoring or short timelines that undermine sustainability.

  • Fund organisations that genuinely share power

    Rather than focusing narrowly on whether organisations name lived experience in leadership, funders should look for evidence of cultures and practices that share power meaningfully. This includes how decision-making is distributed, how accountability to communities is maintained, and how people with lived experience are resourced and supported over time.

  • Balance transparency with proportionality

    Transparent, disaggregated grant data is essential for understanding who benefits from funding and who is excluded. But funders should balance transparency with care, ensuring data requirements do not place excessive burden on smaller organisations or compromise safety and trust. Anonymised or aggregated data can support sector-wide learning while protecting those involved.

  • Examine and reform internal institutional practices

    Funders should review their own governance structures, risk frameworks, and decision-making cultures to identify where inequality is reproduced. This includes examining assumptions about risk, capacity, and value for money that may systematically disadvantage Black-led and community-based organisations.

  • Support grants explicitly designed to build power

    Funding that supports organising, movement-building, and collective action plays a critical role in addressing structural injustice. These grants should be long-term, flexible, and grounded in accountability to communities, recognising that power-building work does not always produce short-term or easily measurable outcomes.

Read the full report on grant types

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Case studies

Stages of grant making