Online spaces are now central to how people understand the world around them, form values, find belonging and interact with others. Platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and gaming communities are not just communication tools; they are social and cultural environments that increasingly shape how communities connect, organise and respond to change.
Many social harms funders are responding to offline – including polarisation, mistrust, hate and disengagement – are being shaped upstream online. At the same time, much funding for civil society remains focused on offline services, formal organisations and traditional models of participation. For many funders, this raises new and still-emerging questions about how digital culture, platforms and online ecosystems fit within existing missions and approaches, particularly in relation to risk, funders’ role and the speed and scale of change online.
Our January Insight Meeting will support London Funders members to deepen their understanding of how online environments are shaping how people interpret social and public issues, community dynamics and social outcomes, and to explore what this might mean for funders working across social justice, democracy, wellbeing, community resilience, children and young people and other areas.
The session is designed as a space for collective sense-making, recognising that this is an area where many funders are still developing their thinking. It will offer an opportunity to build shared understanding and confidence in engaging with a rapidly changing external environment that is already affecting funded communities and programmes.
We’ll be joined by Hannah Perry, Associate Director (Information Ecosystems) at Demos, Amy Braier, Director at the Pears Foundations and Alan Finlayson, Professor of Political and Social Theory at the University of East Anglia. Through expert input and facilitated discussion, the session will:
- offer insight into how online ecosystems shape values, narratives and participation
- surface key tensions funders are grappling with, including risk, role and relevance in fast-moving online environments.
- support collective sense-making across the London Funders membership
Rather than aiming to land solutions, the focus will be on developing a shared understanding and more confident questions about how funding practice may need to adapt in an online-first world.