Voice-led transformation: learning from community-led decision making
By Rachel Searle, Head of Communities and Impact at Foundation Scotland.
The recently published manifesto for Voice Led Transformation from What Matters 2U offers a powerful vision for how meaningful change can happen when people are placed at the heart of decisions that shape their lives.
Firmly rooted in addressing child poverty, the manifesto argues that sustainable solutions must be shaped by those with lived experience of poverty and inequality, rather than imposed by systems from above.
These principles and reasoning set out in the manifesto strongly echo Foundation Scotland’s own long-standing approach to much of the place-based funding we distribute - namely that communities need to be at the heart of decision making.
One area in which Foundation Scotland has long experience of this, is in our community benefit fund work. Since 2004 Foundation Scotland has worked closely with communities and renewable energy projects, to design and distribute the community benefit funds that accompany these projects for their operating lifetime.
To date in Scotland these funds have primarily been linked to onshore windfarms and hydro projects, but increasingly are also provided by battery energy storage sites, solar projects and most recently transmission infrastructure. Notwithstanding some of the current contention around these projects, and particularly the cumulative impact on some communities, what is compelling about the funds is that the renewables industry has always recognised the communities as the experts in how the funds should be designed and spent. It’s been of significance that the funders have not needed to be convinced about the merits of putting communities in the driving seat!
So working with communities to establish and convene best fit operational arrangements for these place-based funds is standard practice for Foundation Scotland’s Communities Team. In fact we support over 65 community panels and community boards across Scotland who collectively distribute over £13million annually in line with funding strategies and priorities they themselves have shaped.
Our work in this area has evolved further in the last two years through hosting and co-funding the Regenerative Futures Fund in Edinburgh, and also being appointed as the fund manager for Clackmannanshire’s Transformation Space, both of which place residents at the centre of decision-making, accountability and governance.
With this scale and volume of community and resident led funding activity, we sometimes forget that this way of working is not a common feature of the wider funding environment, which is one of the many reasons we so welcome What Matters 2 U’s Manifesto on Voice Led Transformation. Because communities being at the heart of decision making should not be exceptional.
To enable and support communities being in the driving seat has required us to craft systems and approaches that create the space for communities to be co-collaborators. This includes for example, developing practice to ensure a fund design reflects community priorities, building opportunities for involvement that reach deep into the community, finding appropriate ways to navigate the influence of gatekeepers and working out timescales with the community rather than imposing ones to suit us on them
To do this we’ve had to look at ourselves in the mirror, recognise where we’ve still been pursuing first horizon (limiting) thinking and systems and put in the work to build more enabling processes from the inside out so as not to inhibit voice and community led funding work to flourish. This isn’t always straightforward and many funders have blind spots that they need help to see. At Foundation Scotland we’ll be the first to say we are continually taking stock and adjusting.
So it’s a huge testament to What Matters 2 U that they have road tested voice-led, community-driven change in Dundee and Clackmannanshire that is indeed transforming neighbourhoods into communities of hope and possibility.
The What Matters 2U manifesto provides both clarity and inspiration for a movement that some communities and funders are already building. It affirms that transformative grant making is not simply about what gets funded but also that how funding decisions are made and who by is equally key.
Foundation Scotland welcomes this manifesto and urges other private and public funders to consider what resources and power they hold and where these could be meaningfully shared with the individuals and communities they exist to serve.
The full manifesto is available to read here: WM2U Manifesto.