Cripplegate Ltd is the registered trustee of Cripplegate Foundation
Registered Charity 207499 Cripplegate Foundation Limited
Registered in England and Wales, Company Number 6129936 © 2021 Cripplegate Foundation
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Learnings and reflections on our grant programme for organisations in Islington led by, and supporting, people from marginalised groups.
In 2022, following an internal audit of our grant-making, Cripplegate Foundation launched a new grant-making programme. It was designed to offer multi-year, core support specifically for groups led by and for minoritised communities in Islington. The fund, which totaled £400,000, formed part of our wider Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) work as a foundation, with a specific focus on addressing inequality through our grant making, ensuring our funds get to where they are needed most, and creating inclusive spaces and processes.
“Diversity is one of the many reasons why Islington is such a great place to live and work. We are committed to working for social justice and equality for all communities and our aim is to ensure that we understand, consider and address inequalities in everything we do at Cripplegate Foundation and Islington Giving. In doing so, we strive to become a more diverse and inclusive organisation that truly reflects the community.” ~ Cripplegate Foundation’s DEI strategy
The aim of the fund was to start addressing unequal access to our funding for groups in Islington. As the report below will detail, we were able to fund some groups who had not previously accessed our funding as a result of this focus, but the programme is part of an ongoing process, and we faced a number of challenges from which we are learning in the development if this work.
Other resources: ACF Stronger Foundations Report, London Funder’s learnings from equity-led funding during the Covid-19 pandemic and Funders for Race Equity Alliance.
When we reviewed the grants awarded through our main grants programme in 2021, we found that all had been awarded to organisations previously supported by Cripplegate Foundation. The organisations who received funding represented a broad range of issues within the borough, delivering vital services and support to residents. Our ongoing work with these organisations, who received multi-year funding in 2021, means that Cripplegate can continue to provide stable support to core Voluntary and Community Sector organisations within the borough. This includes our continued commitment to advice services such as Islington Law Centre and Citizens Advice Islington.
However, we were also keen to understand gaps in our funding and to reach groups in the borough doing good work that we had not heard about and/or had not previously applied to Cripplegate Foundation or Islington Giving open funds before. Further to this, we wanted to analyse the level of funding we were giving to groups led by Black and other minoritised leaders. To do this, we:
The new grants programme, aiming to specifically reach organisations in Islington led by, and supporting, people from marginalised groups was designed in light of the insights gathered from our review and outreach, and in consultation with a number of groups. Multi-year funding, up to around £30,000 per organisation, was available for core and project costs.
“At Cripplegate Foundation, we recognise that communities usually have the best answers to their challenges but often not the money to achieve the outcomes they would like. We want to help with resources by investing in organisations that have an impact within their own communities. This funding is part of Cripplegate Foundation’s overall approach to considering how we give away money and to whom.” Excerpt from the call for applications
When inviting applications, we outlined that we were particularly interested in hearing from organisations directly helping residents to tackle poverty and inequality, who have not received funding from Cripplegate or Islington Giving before. We also specified that for this round of funding, we defined marginalised groups as “black, Asian, minority ethnic groups, deaf and people with disabilities, and LGBTQ+ people.” By “led by” we specified groups where the majority of the board and/or senior staff are people from those communities.
In addition to publicising the grant round via usual channels – such as VAI, the Council and our own social channels – we also targeted groups working across marginalised communities and sent it directly to groups we had met or who we knew who met the criteria. We also made a short film about the fund for our website and invited all groups interested in applying to call us first if they had questions. The Cripplegate programme team visited or met with all eligible applicants.
To make final decisions about the funding, our Programme Committee was joined by our Governor DEI Committee. Together, the panel comprised of diverse representatives from the Islington community, including representatives from minority ethnic communities, with a disability or caring for disabled family members and the LGBTQ community.
One of the aims of this fund was to look for groups not previously funded by Cripplegate Foundation. Before publishing the funding call, we had conversations with a range of those new to us to help us shape the focus and priorities. While some of these groups turned out not to be eligible to apply because they were not delivering enough work in Islington, six groups applied that had not applied to us before and we funded one, Say It Loud Club. Say It Loud were impressed with the conversation we had with them while designing the fund, saying they appreciated being part of that early process.
Overall, we did not find a large number of groups we had not been aware of before this work, but the fund enabled us to support a range of groups who have not been able to access Cripplegate Foundation core funds before. It has also given us new, multi-year relationships with groups who we have previously only supported year on year through Community Chest. This multiyear funding extends our commitment to local minoritised communities.
Thirty-three groups applied:
One group was an LGBTQ organisation working with migrants but has been included here in the LGBTQ+ category. One group described itself as cross cutting. One group was not eligible to apply. The total value of the applications was £1,446,443.
15 groups received a share of the £400,000 funding. The table below shows the breakdown by identity group the applicant defined themselves as led by and for.
For those unsuccessful, we were able to point a few applicants to other funds, either in place of this fund or to complement this award, particularly where we awarded less than the group had requested. One group has since applied to Islington Giving’s Disability Fund; one group received a core grant from Islington Giving; three groups were recommended to apply to Islington Council’s Community Chest fund in addition to receiving partial funding from this fund.
Groups who did not apply
Despite our work, there were still some communities from which we received few or no applications. We were disappointed that only two LGBTQ+ groups applied. One of the issues seemed to be that, while there are many great London-wide groups, those running just in our borough are limited. We reflected that if we want to fund more LGBTQ+ work, we may need to widen our approach to encourage groups to bring their existing work into the borough.
There were some communities who were not represented in the applications, including from Black, Asian and other minority communities. No applications were received from groups led by people from the Chinese, Jewish, or South Asian communities.
“Led by”
The term “led by” is not straightforward. We offered groups the opportunities to ask questions before applying, and the most common question was about the meaning of “led by, and supporting, people from marginalised groups”. When considering applications, it wasn’t always easy for us to categorise how to apply this term. In particular, with the youth groups we funded, we appreciated that they are led by members of minority communities but are not solely targeted at those same communities. Youth projects reasonably argue that they are about inclusion so would not restrict their activities, even informally. We took the view that disability groups led by parents and carers, were included, although we are aware others may take a different position.
It takes time
Research for this programme began in autumn 2021, with grants distributed in July 2022, and the process took a lot of our collective time (staff, board and applicant groups). The programme team visited a huge range of organisations both before designing the call, and afterwards, once the applications had been received. Discussions with applicant groups always help us to think about our wider grant giving so are useful beyond this one fund.
Core funding
It was important to be able to provide core, unrestricted funding to groups for this funding programme, particularly for small local groups for who we know that securing core funding is a constant challenge. We heard from many groups that it would make real difference to their capacity, often freeing up a leader’s time to invest in strategic planning and fundraising. We hope to see the difference this makes over three years.
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Cripplegate Ltd is the registered trustee of Cripplegate Foundation
Registered Charity 207499 Cripplegate Foundation Limited
Registered in England and Wales, Company Number 6129936 © 2021 Cripplegate Foundation
Cripplegate Ltd is the registered trustee of Cripplegate Foundation
Registered Charity 207499 Cripplegate Foundation Limited
Registered in England and Wales, Company Number 6129936 © 2023 Cripplegate Foundation