Barking and Dagenham Giving are putting the decisions for social enterprise investment into the hands of residents
We were fascinated to hear from the community investment charity Barking and Dagenham Giving a few weeks ago. We often covered another initiative for this area, Participatory City, in these pages from our start in 2017.
According to these reports from Municipal Inquiry (here and here), Participatory City finished in a regrettable welter of protests around the closure of community spaces, and poor relationships between the P-City project and locals.
So in this context - of communities feeling alienated from large-scale urban “interventions” - it’s interesting to hear Barking and Dagenham Giving’s vaunting its status as the first “community-led investment fund”.
A Community Steering Group of B&D locals (all women) are making investment decisions about social and with-profit local enterprises. The GROW Fund is held by B&D Giving, and here’s how they describe the CSG’s role:
The CSG’s role is to gain the support of BD Giving’s Board of Trustees for the decisions they make about the Fund. They have a unique opportunity to make a real difference in the borough by sharing their experience.
The CSG members bring different professional and personal experiences, but all are agreed on a set of shared values. In regular meetings, they learn about social investment, use decision-making techniques and tools and find a way forward that includes all voices in the group.
This is one way to address the question of governance of resources. Here the resource holders are a charity with a trustee board, and the community representatives have to convince trustees that the enterprises they’re choosing to support are worthwhile.
The question is begged: what are the criteria on which projects are rejected by a board? How far is this structure from a “commoning” or “development trust” approach, where the assets are fully transferred to community control?
B&G Giving want to explain their method further, so they’ve launched a podcast series, involving resident businesses and stakeholders. It’s called Nine Miles East, available on most podcast channels, but embedded below on a YouTube channel:
From their blog:
The first episode of 9 Miles East looks back at Barking and Dagenham’s history, exploring the rise, fall and rise again, of one of London’s most underfunded boroughs. And asks, what could a brand-new funding model do to change things for the local community?
BD Giving’s Head of Learning and Participation Cameron Bray breaks down how the GROW Fund works and why it’s so important for the people and local businesses in the borough.
In episode 2 of 9 Miles East listeners meet Wunmi Oyewole, a proud member of BD Giving’s Community Steering Group. It was Wunmi and her steering group colleagues who decided which local businesses would receive the £25,000 grant and 6 months of business support from The GROW Fund. In the podcast, Wunmi explains what inspired her to get involved and why it was so important to involve people who knew the borough best in making the decisions.
Future episodes will feature GROW Fund grantees and local business owners, Carol Pluckrose from Boathouse Studios, Georgina Alexiou from Barking & Dagenham Youth Dance, Sarah Robertson from Future M.O.L.D.S Communities, and Kemi Oloyede the Creative Director of the Sew London Project.