Philanthropisms Natasha Friend and Maria Ahmed: Participatory Grantmaking
Apr 17, 2025
51:38
In this episode we discuss participatory grantmaking with Natasha Friend, Director of Camden Giving, and Maria Ahmed, a participant in Camden Giving's own participatory grantmaking work. Including:
- How did Camden Giving’s experiments with participatory grantmaking first come about?
- How does it work in practice?
- What has been the primary driver for keeping going?
- What have been the main insights from grantmaking meetings?
- Do the citizen grantmakers have full autonomy over grant decisions, or do they make recommendations that are then considered and implemented by foundation staff?
- How do you manage disagreements or differences of opinion?
- Are there any constraints on the causes/organisation types that the citizen panels can recommend?
- Are all the grants made in the form of unrestricted gifts? If so, over what time period? What is the average size of grant?
- Does Camden Giving provide advice or data to help guide decision-making? If so, how do participants make use of this?
- Do participatory approaches work particularly well for place-based giving schemes, due to the nature of the donor base?
- Could these approaches work for all funders?
- Should ALL grantmaking be participatory?
- What sort of infrastructure is needed to enable more funders to adopt participatory approaches?
- What kind of challenges might there be for traditional grantmakers when it comes to bringing communities and people with lived experience into decision making processes? How do you overcome these challenges?
- How should you measure the impact of participatory grantmaking? Is it this just about the impact on grantees, or does it need to take into account the impact on participants in the process?
- Does participatory grant making work best in places that already have a high degree of civic engagement, or can it be a tool for building civic engagement?
- Does Camden Giving’s participatory approach act as a motivating factor for any of the donors to the organisation?
Related links
- Camden Giving
- Research on "Building London’s Participation Infrastructure"
- Participatory Grantmaking global community
- Centre for Evidence and Impact report on "Participatory Grantmaking - Building the evidence"
- WPM article "Why isn't all philanthropy trust-based philanthropy?"
- Natasha's guest article for WPM "Fears for Tears – Why Are We So Afraid to Allow Emotion Into Philanthropy?"
- Philanthropisms podcast interviews with Mandy van Deven & Chiara Cattaneo; Fozia Irfan and David Clarke.