Participatory Grantmaking (PGM) - Blackbird Leys 2023

PGM is not a new approach, but we believe it is more impactful because it shares decision making power with the communities being funded.

In the Blackbird Leys Community Fund case (2023+), we recruited a panel of 7 local people to determine how to best spend £50k on improving health and wellbeing in the Leys.

Participation can be achieved in many different ways; in this project we trained our panel on how to interview, evaluate and make decisions about funding projects for their community. The initial criteria for the grants round was in part determined by the funding (public health), but largely was discussed and agreed by the panel. The panel also supported the decision to invite applications from start-ups as well as more established organisations -they felt the mix of new and existing projects was more beneficial to the community and wanted to support local residents’ initiatives. 

We believe this approach has multiple benefits at different levels, not just in terms of the effectiveness of decision making, but also the impact that sharing power has on the panel, as well as how this promotes shared investment for these community initiatives. 

What we’ve already learnt from past PGM

In 2021, £20k was made available for a pilot PGM grants round. The learning from this indicated the importance of trusting the panel, and the importance of coordinating processes rather than leading decision making.

We also understand now that energy put into provision of training for the panel is well spent and increases confidence which is crucial. Applicants had told us how they welcomed the chance to pitch in person, (which was more accessible than longer written applications) and they were encouraged by the idea they were pitching to a panel of their peers. They also said they’d like more support on provision of the grant. 

All these points were taken into account when designing the new round of funding.

A more inclusive approach to grant making.

Finding and Recruiting the Panel 

At the start of January 2023, an advert was placed for community panellists and shared amongst local networks, in social media and by flyering including to our own programmes and partner agencies working in the OX4 area.

Our criteria were that applicants would have an interest in the health and wellbeing of the local community, be resident in The Leys and be able to commit to over 15 hours of work with the panel.

We offered to pay Oxford Living Wage to panellists, or for them to partake on a voluntary basis if they preferred.

We recruited 8 panellists through interviews. The panel was then made up of a diverse demographic including ethnicity, religion, age, people with young families, people in retirement, those in further education, people with experiences of SEND within their families, people who either do or did work within The Leys community.

The panel was also supported and attended by Roz Warren as a learning observer, and two Oxford Hub team members, one of whom is also a long term resident of The Leys. 

Most of the panel had other commitments; part-time jobs and caring commitments. This often made it difficult to find a suitable time when everyone could meet. However, the process was made easier by a WhatsApp group and some regular prompting! It was hard for those in full time work to join in given the timings of the pitches. 

The panel members didn’t feel that the panel duties were too onerous or time-consuming. One member said she sometimes found it hard to get child care and it was agreed that if there had been someone available, on-site, “to keep an eye on the kids”, that would have been helpful.

One of the panel suggested that we should find a way to get the potential users of services on the panel. For instance, young people or people with direct experience of SEN etc. On discussion, we agreed that, in fact, our panel members did represent a variety of family needs, childrens’ needs, ethnic needs, male and female, and adults of all ages but having a “junior parallel panel” might be an interesting way of including young people more directly in their community. One of our panel members felt more focus could have been given to messaging in partner agencies including GP practices, to recruit more potential service users who could provide input to how to improve health outcomes in the area.

Working with the Panel 

We wanted to achieve several objectives through supporting and training the panel, namely; 

• Bringing the panel together as a group in the community, to represent the needs of the community 

• Increasing confidence around how to make good funding decisions for grant making

Over the next two months we held training sessions with the panel, involving a lot of snacks, tea and coffee, laughs and challenges!

The sessions covered:

• The content and needs arising from the ward profile

• How funding works in public health and the funding context

• Unconscious bias and decision making

• How to interview people and get the best from potential proposals

• Consent decision making 

• The process of grant making and what that would look like

• How to chair a panel meeting 

The training sessions were invaluable, not only for disseminating information and knowledge but also for bringing the panel together. People were able to talk about their own experiences and local knowledge which drew empathy and respect from other panel members.

The session on “content and needs arising from the ward profile” helped to address the question of “what makes a good project” which had been a source of debate in the earlier pilot. It was clear when it came to the choice of projects to be funded that the panel had taken on board the requirement that the projects had to benefit the local population and answer the needs identified in the ward profile (they rejected projects that didn’t meet these criteria and were very focused on fairness.)

The training session on “unconscious bias and decision making” gave members permission (and the vocabulary) to gently hold other panel members to account if they felt someone was talking over another member, not listening or taking someone else’s views into account. 

The panel felt that some of the presentations used during the training had “too many words”. It would have been better to use pictures/videos. This was particularly true for the session on how to allocate the grant money between projects.

Encouraging and engaging applications

The grants were advertised by flyer, social media and word of mouth through local organisations, receiving 17 different applications from projects.

The eligibility criteria included that projects must deliver to The Leys community, benefitting health and wellbeing and have appropriate policies and protocol in place (data protection, health and safety, equality and diversity etc).

For those who weren’t constituted or without the appropriate policies, The Hub worked with other organisations to support them to get these in place, including referring a number of applicants to Aspire’s Enterprise Hub.

Funding was available up to £5,000 but bigger applications would also be considered, and could be used to design, implement, and evaluate new projects or to continue an existing project. As part of the application process, two Information Sessions were run in March for potential applicants to ask questions and get support, between two and five people attended each of these sessions. Written or online applications were then invited, in the form of a short form. All applications on paper met the criteria and were invited to present to the panel. 

When we invited presentations we provided applicants with a list of questions the panel had agreed they would like answered. This helped to structure the presentations and most applicants followed this structure reasonably closely. Where we found the written applications, particularly those from start-up projects, very brief and without much detail, in general the standard of the presentations was high. They were both well structured, and passionate even though many of the people pitching were new to presenting. 

Feedback from the pilot project had flagged that by taking their duties so seriously, some members of the previous panel came across as slightly intimidating. We had worked hard on avoiding this through training and by making sure the panel felt comfortable with each other and less likely to feel they were going to say the wrong thing - one member of the panel introduced each of the other members and gave their local credentials. There were not more than 3 panel members at each of the pitches so that applicants didn’t feel overwhelmed.

In a couple of cases, it wasn’t clear whether the project was directly relevant to the health criteria required. We went back to the applicants to see how it would improve health outcomes and encouraged them to refer to this in their pitch.

Who gets funded - making the decision

Decision making was informed by the notes and scores that each panel member had taken on each of the pitches. These were collated and provided to the panel at a decision making session. Panel members were then given Lego bricks representing money, which they could allocate to the project proposals.

Before allocating their funding panellists were invited to express any critical concerns. The lowest scoring project proposal was determined that it was not sufficiently in service of The Leys community and therefore would not be funded. The other projects were funded to varying degrees and a discussion was then had about what made sense in terms of community needs. For example, there were three similar fitness proposals - the panel decided to award these an equal but lesser amount than had been requested because of the number of them. They felt each one catered to a different cohort of people and therefore wanted to support all three proposals.

Another applicant (robotics) had applied for more than one project (robotics classes for children, training up of robotics instructors and also STEM career workshops)- the panel discussed that the main element of the project was around the classes and training of instructors and this would be could get underway without the third proposal (for STEM career workshops), which was therefore not funded.

Summary of Impact 

It became clear as the PGM round progressed that the involvement of a local panel is a major strength of this approach. Obviously, positive outcomes from the various projects will be an important determinant of success, in terms of the effectiveness of decision making, however, even at this stage, feedback from the panel indicates that 3 of the initial 5 hypotheses have been met, ie:

• The process will gain more meaningful insights around local issues from all participants. The evidence of their local knowledge both of projects and people applying for funding and of the needs in the area, is clear.

• There will be a positive shift in power dynamics and a greater sense of agency and belonging created amongst residents for having been part of the process. Panellists talked about a greater sense of belonging, feeling more part of it and being better placed to make these decisions.

• The process will create better local relationships - between residents involved and between residents and us as an organisation. The panel bonded well and feedback was generally that they had enjoyed the process and building relationships with each other. Relationships between panellists and applicants and local residents were also being built on - one panellist has already supported an applicant to deliver local fitness sessions in groups she attends for example. 

Learnings

We learned about the process; to ensure that advertisements were sent out more widely by leafleting, that presentations from applicants were generally much higher quality than written applications and that people really valued presenting to a panel of local people. A key learning was to slow down the decision making session and to include a trial run first. Practical communications are worth considering, we found WhatsApp to be the best way of communicating with people and even then we needed to be flexible around times. 

We learnt more about empowering people. Spending time in training sessions, getting to know each other and making it fun were all valuable in helping to foster local relationships as well as a culture of encouragement and support of new ideas, helped to foster relationships between local people with ideas, other organisations and panellists. The benefits of sharing decision making power, supporting new and local start-ups and funding projects within one geographical community are complimentary because all of these elements of the project lend themselves to improving understanding and relationships within that community. The elements of this on their own - e.g. running PGM at a county level, would likely be around the increased understanding, confidence and peer to peer support gained within training and within the panel itself.