Wednesday, February 14th at 3pm UTC

The Abundance Fund, Robert Bosch Foundation and Guerrilla Foundation

What happens when you give a group of climate justice organisers a bunch of money and tell them to dream big? That is exactly what the experiment that led to Collective Abundance was all about. And now? We are extending that opportunity further with the goal of strengthening the climate justice movement in Europe on the one hand, and shifting how climate philanthropy understands it on the other. This session of EDGEy Wednesdays explores what it means to fund more freely, despite common barriers, and in line with visions for well-resourced and climate-just communities. Our intention is to expand our growing network of movement-focused individuals in philanthropy who are seeking to push the boundaries of traditional funding practice, share our successes and challenges, and nurture relationships to hold one another accountable along the way.

Lessons from the conversation:

The process of the Abundance Fund as a testament of why flexibility and trust matter

The granting process for the Abundance Fund is imagined in aim of strengthening the Climate Justice movement on a country-to-country basis. It begins by inviting or putting on an open call for nominations and inviting a local scout to join in identifying 10 groups who are ultimately invited into the participatory grantmaking process. This can take anywhere up to 2 to 4 months as they move at the speed of trust.
The process is different in every country, of course. But the first ask is that the selected 10 groups join the fund’s team for an online call, which is meant to help all participants create a collective consensus on what Climate Justice and what it looks like in their country’s context. This definition is used as a baseline for how the group chooses to move funds towards the movement ecosystem that they’re envisioning together. And then the second ask is that these 10 groups come together in person to build relationships and get to know one another and their work.
And from there the groups take ownership of the grantmaking process and collaborate amongst each other and the fund’s team as they best see fit.
The goal is to move 5 million euros directly to grassroots organizers through this fund throughout the next 5 years and that’s reflected in funding 10 groups in 3 different countries this first year, adding groups to that movement as it grows in each of those countries and adding at least one country per year.
The Robert Bosch Foundation moved money to the Abundance Fund with the intention of funding Climate Justice in Europe. Robert Bosch as a foundation would not have been able to reach the activists and movement partners that the Abundance Fund was able to reach. Trusting the Abundance Fund, letting go of control and being flexible created the right conditions for the fund and its community of grassroots organizers to work together towards Climate Justice.

Expanding the definitions of Climate Justice to be more than just an environmental issue

Climate Justice is about dismantling systems of oppression that caused the climate crisis in the first place. The Abundance Fund chose to focus on the European climate movement because in many ways, that is the belly of the beast; addressing root causes of the climate crisis in Europe can relieve some of that injustice in other parts of the world as well.
The fund, in partnership with grassroots activists, looks at climate and environmental issues as something that is fundamentally tied to collective liberation and struggles for equality, visibility and representation. So those invited to the grantmaking process and who become grantees can be feminists and, farm workers that are looking at the intersections of their labor rights as well as their rights as women farm workers, while understanding the ways that climate change is impacting their direct areas of work and the regions in which they are working.
The fund works to involve groups that are doing Climate Justice work without necessarily seeing themselves as climate activists or even as activists at all in anything related directly to climate. Or groups that perhaps funders wouldn’t consider as climate groups.
For example: what does taking refuge in the mountain necessarily have to do with Climate Justice? But it’s so rooted in a holistic understanding that in order to address the climate crises, we need healthy, robust, connected communities that can deal with that crisis and come up with the wide range of solutions that we need.

Participatory processes can start much earlier than the point of grant distribution

Participatory processes like the Abundance Fund could be mechanisms of really freeing up money from the same-old decision making bodies and funding groups to come together to make mistakes, discuss definitions, build movements, organize and rightfully re-taking control of decisions in the fields they know best.
Participatory grantmaking has gained traction over the years, which is great, but the conversations have primarily been about participatory processes in grantmaking. It’s about a foundation setting aside a certain part of their budget that is decided on in a participatory way. There is usually some sort of community board and they make the decision which can happen in many different ways. All this is great but we are missing the discussions that address the more fundamental questions like: who actually holds the power to decide how big that budget is? Who makes the strategy for that overall part of money and how it’s supposed to be used?

Bigger funders need external pockets of experimentation around new practices before implementing them in their work, but they need to eventually do the implementation

Funders and grantmakers often have internalized limits for participation in grantmaking and strategy development. These are acquired through various experiences in current roles, previous jobs and adhering to what seem to be a “common standard” in philanthropy. But actually in funding spaces, a lot more participation is possible than is apparent from looking at common practices. And there are plenty of good examples of funders trying to do things differently.
Projects like Leap, which brought about the Abundance Fund, host experiments on participation, power sharing and transparency within the philanthropic sector for funders to be able to learn and take back into their wider programming.
Funders cannot rely solely on these experiments and see them as a full contribution to shifting philanthropy, they need to implement the lessons in their wider work and in the foundation’s full offerings.
Experimenting in external pockets and pool funds is needed but it is not enough since the groups that are part of those experiments, are people and organizations with needs and hopes, they are not just experiments so these experiments need to ensure there is a larger effect on the sector beyond them so the groups are sustained and funded long-term by larger pools of funding.

Movement building needs to be funded more and without an expectation of feeding into a strategy or another transactional veil

Movements are not strategic transactions but webs of relationships. Funders do not build movements, grassroots people do. The Abundance Fund, as a group of organizers and climate activists on staff, obviously have a vision themselves on what the fund should do but through a deep participatory process, they work to extend as much of that autonomy.
Making space for movements to decide on priorities, agendas, and approach to relationship building is key. Instead of starting from a place of strategy and production which centers “what can you give me?” to a place of relationship building that can look like dancing, talking, exchanging requires a change in funding reporting expectations.
At the same time, current reporting expectations make it hard for grantees to report on the process of relationship building. Besides funding, funders need to reassess their reporting and impact measurement.
Movement building is key as participatory processes attract actors further from the center that can be getting geting funding for the first time. Funders cannot be their only source of support. A robust movement is integral .
Funding movement building is essential, money in that sense becomes a “glue” rather than a divisive element since groups can decide what events to host, who to collaborate with, who else can be brought into the conversation rather than competing over project grants.
More funder-movement spaces are not necessarily needed, more resources for movement building outside of funder’s expectations is what is

Are we making activists grantmakers? What burdens can funders carry?

There is a lot of buzz on participatory grantmaking and it being the best way to share power but is there a way to do it without turning activists into grantmakers? The participatory processes set up a way in which activists and invited groups could discuss how they wanted to distribute funds. How did we reach a point in which the participation part is focused on the distribution of money rather than the participation part being focused on the movement building?
Instead, could funders and those working in philanthropy bear the burdens of grantmaking and for the strategy, direction, movement building be done by the activists?
There are real legal and reporting limitations to grantmaking, how do funders put the least amount of burden on the grantees?