PUTTING TOMORROW’S LEADERS IN CHARGE TODAY

In preparing its new funding strategy, the Co-op Foundation went to their community to find out what they wanted. Jamie Ward-Smith, Co-op Foundation chair and ACF trustee, explains what they learned in the process.

In early October, Co-op Foundation released a new strategy after 18 months of highly cooperative development with young people, community partners, other funders and the Co-op. ‘Building communities of the future together ’ was a watershed moment for the Co-op's charity and a high point of my six-year tenure as chair. It heralded a new funding direction for the foundation, a vision of future communities we could all enjoy, and an invigorating approach to learning that would move us away from traditional reporting and towards a focus on improving practice.

But what stood out for me more than anything else was that young people didn’t just want to sit back and inherit what we’d build – they wanted to be at the forefront of how we created it, too. Would we truly have the courage to give away power like this? And what would we learn on the way?

ABOUT THE CO-OP FOUNDATION

Co-op Foundation is Co-op's charity and we’re cooperating for a fairer world. We believe cooperation is at the heart of strong communities and we believe this makes us a different kind of funder.

Previously, we were best known as a thematic funder, tackling issues like youth loneliness and the financial sustainability of community spaces. Our £7m grants programme for youth groups has helped to connect and empower more than 31,000 young people to tackle loneliness, while our Lonely Not Alone campaign has reached more than 3.1 million young people UK-wide.

January 2021 to bring this ambition to life. We wanted to build our new strategy cooperatively and give away as much power as possible, so it was truly owned by the people that it was for. Lived experience would be key.

It was an innovative, albeit challenging, way to work, and we knew from the start that it would take time.

HOW DID WE DO IT?

We recognised immediately that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to cooperatively build a strategy while maintaining the day-to-day running of a foundation. “Changing the engines in midflight" was an expression Nick often used to describe the challenge.

For this reason, the trustees empowered Nick and his team by partnering with strategy consultants Impact Works Associates. The eventual process followed these steps:

• ‘Learning’ through desk research and interviews into the funding principles and strategies of our sector peers and colleagues.

• ‘Listening’ sessions with funded partners to understand what worked for them in the funding they’d received so far (and what didn’t).

• ‘Imagine’ sessions with Co-op Foundation colleagues and trustees to look to the future and consider where we’d want to be, and how we’d want to support communities in 10 years’ time.

Young people taking part in a youth social action session at Greater Manchester Youth Network, funded through the Co-op Foundation’s #iwill Fund.

But our learning throughout this time and, later, during the Covid-19 pandemic, compelled us to build an increasingly flexible way of funding with cooperation embedded at the heart of the process.

Our CEO, Nick Crofts, joined us in

• ‘Alignment’ sessions with the Coop to ensure our future plans would complement and add value to their broader vision of ‘Co-operating for a Fairer World’.

‘Building communities of the future together’ is the product of this work. It is founded on three principles:

1. An aspirational vision of what communities could look like in 10 years’ time if they were fair and built on cooperative values.

2. A commitment to support organisations and, for the first time for the foundation, young people directly to bring this vision to life through distinctly cooperative funding that is more accessible and tailored to needs. This moves us away from being a thematic funder and directs us to becoming a much more participatory, flexible and unrestricted grant-giver.

3. A focus on collaboration with Co-op and other funders and partners to extend our reach and impact.

What We Learned

1. Putting co-operative values first meant two separate pieces of work

Once we had agreed our outline strategy we had a conundrum – what could a Future Communities Vision actually look like? We couldn’t do this on our own, in-house. Instead, we needed to ask the people who would inherit these communities – today's young people. In all, we spoke to around 100 diverse young people from all over the UK and gave them the power to shape this vision through focus groups and WhatsApp diaries. From this, we could identify the strategic priorities and steps we’d need to fund to bring it to life – such as inclusion, community safety and sustainability. Some might say we were brave to give away so much power but, for us, it was simply the right thing to do to ensure our strategy was fit for purpose.

To enable the participation of the broadest range of young people, and remove any potential barriers to inclusion, we reimbursed them for their time. We also donated to community organisations that opened up their youth groups to us.

2. Look to the long term

The current trend for strategies is to look to the long term, and we agree. We’re building a vision of communities in 10 years’ time. This initial five-year term on our strategy will enable us to check in on how we’re getting on.

3. Give young people the power to lead longer term, too.

As well as empowering young people to imagine our future vision, we also plan to engage them long term. For the first time, we’ll fund young people directly to help us achieve their vision. This will be an iterative process for us as we build our understanding in this area, and we’re committed to learning from other funders who already work in a similar way.

If you work with any young people who might be interested in helping us allocate funding and measure success and impact, ask them to get in touch at foundation@ coop.co.uk

4. Re-imagine what you want from learning

We’re passionate about moving away from traditional monitoring and reporting. We want to celebrate and share learning and take away the duplication of work that goes into a lot of reporting to ensure we don’t just tick boxes and file reports never to be seen again. We held creative sessions with our funded partners to understand more about what this could look like. There was a real focus on reducing form filling, so our partners can think more on their impact while we learn together about what works (and what doesn’t). We’ll report back more in 2023.

5. Participatory grant-making will take time

We’re at the start of a journey to become a truly participatory grant-maker and it will take time for us to understand what best in class looks like. We didn’t launch a fund on the same day as our strategy for this very reason. Participatory grant-making is still a relatively new concept, so we’re committed to sharing what we learn with others, as well as learning from the pioneers who have already taken those first steps.

For me, participatory grant-making is also about exploring the potential for funders and other partners to come together. This would involve learning from each other and co-operating so we can maximise the impact of our resources and achieve the bigger goal of making our communities fairer for everyone. I’m proud of our track record of working with other funders and, with this strategy, I hope we can take this even further.

SO, DID WE REALLY GIVE AWAY POWER?

It was certainly challenging as a funder. But by giving young people the platform to imagine aspirational, fair and co-operative communities, we’ve developed a vision that will direct our funding and campaigns for years to come. And by funding young people directly, they’ll be on the journey with us.

Building communities of the future together. It’s in our hands. Learn more about our new strategy and how we made it at coopfoundation.org.uk

Follow me on Twitter @jamiewardsmith