The Civic Power Fund is the UK’s first pooled donor fund dedicated to community organising. Established in 2021, it invests in grassroots groups building the power of excluded communities, with a particular focus on organisations led by women and people of colour. Its founding observation is a simple one: just 0.3 per cent of social justice funding in the UK goes to community organising, and 75 per cent of social justice grants focus on national-level work.
In late 2022, the Fund launched the Community Action Fund: an open grant programme offering one-off grants between £2,500 and £20,000, backed by £336,000 in total. Rather than operating through closed invitation lists, it accepted applications openly and in multiple formats, with a short eligibility questionnaire (averaging 2.5 minutes to complete) taken by over 7,500 people before a first-stage form of just four questions. Applicants could respond by video or voice note, and almost a third chose to. Every unsuccessful applicant at any stage was offered a one-to-one feedback call.
A Community Action Panel of grassroots organisers and activists, recruited through an open process, made all final funding decisions using a scoring framework they designed themselves. The panel selected 18 groups from across 42 towns, cities, and villages across all UK nations and regions.
The Fund was candid about what the process revealed. Over 900 potentially in-scope applications were received. Mapping this to the shortlisted funding requests suggests a total unmet need of around £13 million. Of panellists, 100 per cent agreed their input was valued and reflected in decisions. Of first-stage applicants, 77 per cent rated their experience as good or very good; second-stage applicants unanimously did.
The Fund has since reflected publicly on what it would do differently: tighter criteria, earlier panel recruitment, more time for deliberation, and deeper capacity support for funded groups. This learning in public is itself characteristic of an organisation committed to equity in practice rather than presentation.
What practitioners can take from this
The Civic Power Fund shows that open processes find work that closed ones miss entirely, particularly work led by communities that funders have historically overlooked. Designing applications around people’s lives rather than funders’ convenience is not just fairer; it produces better funding decisions.