Funding Justice 3: a report on UK social justice grantmaking in 2022/23

Since the second edition of Funding Justice, Civic Power Fund has continued to witness inspiring efforts across the UK to confront injustice and build community power. Through these challenging times, people have continued to foster solidarity, nurture local leadership, resist the politics of division, and build the power of marginalised and minoritised communities. 

Funding Justice 3 is based on a rigorous analysis of over 20,000 grants worth £935.7m from 84 funders in 2022/23. The report includes some examples of recent organising wins and power-building milestones, reminding us of the critical role that community organising plays in driving social change, and the positive impact it is having across the country. 

We have also seen the emergence of new funder initiatives investing in this work, and the wider infrastructure needed to sustain it.

But this major study of social justice grantmaking in the UK from 2022/23 has shown that funders are still not doing enough to support the organisations and individuals fighting injustice, building the power of communities and organising at the grassroots. 

1. Funding to tackle injustice remains scarce

In Funding Justice 3, we drew on over 20,000 grants worth £935.7 million, from 84 funders in 2022/23. This is equivalent to c. 16.1% of giving by the UK’s largest grantmakers in 2022/23. 

Grants directed to social justice work were worth £260 million, and account for c. 4.5% of the funding from the UK’s largest grantmakers.

2. Funding for community organising and power-building work is particularly lacking

The grants in Funding Justice 3 that had organising at their core accounted for just 2.3% of all the social justice grants we analysed (by value), and were equivalent to 0.2% of the giving from the UK’s largest grantmakers.

3. Social justice grants were heavily weighted towards ‘service delivery’ and ‘inside game’ initiatives

We looked at the approach to change that was funded by each grant, applying a framework for understanding social movements and the different theories of change that drive them, developed by the Ayni Institute. As in the second edition, we found that there was a weighting towards funding ‘service delivery’.

The findings revealed that 46.9% of social justice funding went to ‘service delivery’ work, and 26.3% was directed to ‘inside game’ work in elite settings, aimed at influencing decisionmakers. 

Less than 9% of social justice funding went to ‘outside game’ work - mobilising, activism, and organising - that excluded communities rely on to be heard. 

4. Social justice funding is still not reaching many local communities

Just over half of social justice funding went to work carried out at the national level (UK-wide). 

At the regional level, London continued to receive the most funding on a per capita basis - £411 of grants per 100 people. 

Four of the five regions receiving the lowest amounts of per capita funding in Funding Justice 2 remained at the bottom of the list for 2022/23 grants - East Midlands, East of England, South West and South East.

5. Social justice funding was spread thinly across a broad and changing group of grantee organisations

The 3,871 social justice grants in our 2022/23 data went to 2,238 different grantee organisations - an average of 1.7 grants per organisation. 32.8% of grantees secured less than £50,000 in funding, and 22.8% received £10,000 or less. 

Looking at the grants collected across the three years of the research for which we had information on grant duration, we found a lack of long-term social justice funding. Only 4.7% of these grants were providing more than three years of support. 

We also found that just 13.7% (307 organisations) had received a grant in all three editions of Funding Justice. 

Responses to the funder survey suggest that few funders have focused ‘political’ strategies, with many funding a wide range of work and relying on their grantees to have developed effective theories of change. This contrasts with the approach of ‘radical right’ foundations: research into the way in which these foundations support their grantees reveals a willingness to support organisations, their organising capacity, and the infrastructure needed to sustain a movement over many years. (For further information on this, see also section B: Effective Environmental Grantmaking in Environmental Funders Network's report Where the Green Grants Went 9, and this article from NonProfitAF)