ABOUT THE CIRCLE
The Collaboration Circle is a new space for funders and civil society to design, learn and make funding decisions together.
It will hold ‘pooled’ money on behalf of multiple cross-sector collaborations, and be a space where people from across the funding and social justice sectors come together to design and decide how this money should be used.
WHAT IS THE COLLABORATION CIRCLE?
Collaboration Circle is a subsidiary company of London Funders, the cross-sector membership network for funders and investors in London’s civil society.
Its ambition is to create change through a more equitable and collaborative funding system. It’s been set up to make it easier to pool money across different geographies and boundaries, and enable funders and civil society to share decision making, learn together, and rethink how we achieve change.
It is being overseen by a Board of Directors drawn in equal number from the funding community and civil society organisations focussed on equity and justice.
To achieve long term change, we believe we need to be better at putting our resources together to address the issues that affect us collectively.
HOW DOES IT WORK
For each pooled fund, they will appoint a Funding Committee, made up from funders as well as partners from community organisations, which could include specialists in the area or issue being funded, or people with lived experience in the communities being supported.
Each Funding Committee will make collective and equitable grant decisions about the pooled funds in line with the priorities and principles of each pooled fund. Alongside a Funding Committee, each collaboration will have an Operational team. It will be their role to put the funding collaboration into practice - things like the design of the fund, application process, and decision making.
WHY IT IS NEEDED
Funders and civil society tell us that they want to work more closely together when designing and distributing funding. The challenges we face are too big for any funder, charity or community to tackle alone, and collaborating enables us to draw on the strengths and assets of us all.
But we also hear that in practice, this can be difficult due to the different systems, restrictions and cultures which often hold us back. The Collaboration Circle offers a new space to make our ambition for joint action a reality. It opens out a range of opportunities to do funding differently and more equitably, and overcome some of the long-standing challenges which currently can inhibit collaboration.
The Collaboration Circle builds on many examples of collaboration – from the funder response to the Grenfell Tower Fire, to the London Community Response programme during covid-19, to the £100m ten-year Propel partnership. It also draws on some inspiring examples of pooled funds from across the UK and globally, where funders have been able to act in ways that would be too risky for them to do alone.