After the Storm

In response to the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, members of our network provided much-needed support to organisations and communities across London. For many funders, this meant pausing their strategies in 2020 and focusing on distributing emergency grants. Others were able to continue implementing their strategies in parallel but had to be more flexible about timelines.

As the peak of the crisis has passed and with expectations of a mass vaccination programme in 2021, but also a continued recession, funders have started looking to the future and how best to support the renewal of London’s civil society. We've commissioned 'After The Storm' as part of our work to understand what plans funders are putting in place, what challenges and opportunities they anticipate and how they are responding to them.

The report is based on findings from a survey run by us and from a series of interviews with members of the network exploring their current and future strategies. It identifies three areas that funders are focusing on: 

• The need to plan in a flexible way;
• Changing ways of working;
• And supporting capacity building. 

It also identifies three key challenges: 

• The expectation of a second wave of demand as unemployment rises and recession takes hold;
• Navigating the sector and identifying gaps, overlaps and commonalities;
• And the financial precariousness of the sector and what that means for maintaining social infrastructure.

Click here to read 'After the Storm', which makes the case that funders need to reflect on what they have learned over the course of 2020, and that this will help open up conversations about what they might do differently and how they plan to act on the ideas being generated by their peers and the organisations and initiatives they are supporting.