From crisis response to long-term change
Our work through the pandemic was driven by our learning from funder collaborations responding to the Grenfell Tower fire, the Manchester Arena bombing and the Borough Market attack in 2017, captured in “The Possible Not The Perfect” we commissioned from IVAR. We’ve been able to build on this learning through covid-19, with four learning reports on collaborating for the future, and our Festival of Learning, that brought together nearly 1,000 participants to look at learning from the pandemic response and what this could mean for the future.
All this learning has shown us that it's clear that collaboration at pace and scale is possible. Building on the learning and the commitment funders made during the pandemic - to develop bold and innovative programmes rooted in equity, inclusion and justice - we're now coordinating a large-scale, long-term funder collaboration, Propel.
What we're learning from doing long-term, collaborative work
Propel is a funder collaboration that is primarily long-term and systemic. The collaboration prioritises the communities who experience structural inequality and the civil society groups who are best placed to make change happen.
The growing collaboration represents public, private, and independent funders, including Bloomberg, City Bridge Trust – the City of London Corporation’s charity funder - The National Lottery Community Fund, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and advice funders co-ordinated by London Legal Support Trust.
Our aim is to continuously share our learning from Propel with members - from what actually happens when we ‘operationalise’ collaboration to what it's teaching us about systemic change. Here is some of the learning we've shared so far:
- What it takes to collaborate at scale towards systemic change
- Reconsidering risk: what working in collaboration has taught us about pushing boundaries
- Propel learning day: what we heard and next steps
- How we’re using what we’ve learnt so far to inform a further round of Propel funding
- Lessons from 2022: turning ambition into action
As the collaboration progresses, we will keep sharing what we learn with our members so make sure you are signed up to our member-exclusive newsletter to stay updated (email Jessica Allsop to be added to the list).