Overview
Covid-19 caused mass devastation particularly for minoritised communities and led by and for organisations in the UK. The pandemic amplified entrenched structural racism people face in every part of their lives, from health, education, employment, housing and more.
The Global Majority Fund began as a response to Covid-19, recognising that structural racism disproportionately impacted Global Majority communities and traditional funding models and practice can reinforce this racism. With the Global Majority Fund, we were determined to work differently, recognising Grassroots community organisations were spearheading the Covid-19 response in their communities, from Covid-19 messaging in community languages to culturally sensitive mental health and bereavement support and more.
We knew in order to support smaller community groups, we would need to partner with respected medium-sized community organisations who already held trusted relationships with grassroots organisations and could onward grant funding to them. This helped ensure funding rapidly reached the people who needed it most.
Whilst the national emergency surrounding Covid-19 has thankfully passed, the work with Global Majority communities has continued and evolved. As a funder, we have reflected on how traditional funding models have also reinforced this inequality, resulting in led by and for organisations historically receiving less funding and consequently, are more vulnerable to closure when national emergencies and shocks arise.
Therefore Phase III of the fund is working in partnership with ten medium sized organisations led by and for the Global Majority, which aims to build organisational resilience, strengthen their internal systems and processes and support their ambitions as future grant makers, by allocating each organisation a fund to onward grant to smaller grassroot organisations working with Global Majority communities.
Phase I of the Fund began in July 2020, with a second phase following in November 2020. Phase III of the Fund began in January 2023.
AT A GLANCE
Timeframe:
42 months
Funded partners:
10 organisations led by and for communities experiencing racial inequality
Value:
£5,017,398
Location:
UK
IMPACT
Phase I:
10 organisations led by and for the Global Majority funded, who went on to award funding to 644 organisations.
Funding for onward distribution was designed to support at least one of the following:
A. Organisational survival: This included funding to pay for organisational overheads, salaries, office premises and adaptations to the office required to enable social distancing.
B. Emergency Covid 19 response activities: This was to be determined by organisations but broadly included: food security, distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE); mental health services, bereavement support, facilitating access to services and information, supporting those with no recourse to public funds, supporting remote learning…etc.
C. Remote working adaptations: Supporting organisations to pivot service delivery online through the purchase of Zoom subscriptions, upgrading IT equipment, purchase of data packages…etc.
112,041 individuals supported at the height of Covid-19
5,356 volunteers mobilised to deliver community work
Phase II:
10 organisations led by and for the Global Majority funded, who went on to award funding to 336 organisations.
63,253 individuals supported at the height of Covid-19
2,383 volunteers mobilised to deliver community work
23 organizations unsuccessful to the fund were offered organisation strengthening support from Comic Relief
GMF - Current Funded Partners
Funded Partners
We are partnering with the following organisations, to implement the work on the Global Majority fund:
Anti Tribalism Movement
Sporting Equals
Action for Race Equality
Voice 4 change England
Greater Manchester Ethnic Communities Fund
Next Step Initiative
Migrant Centre NI
African Health Policy Network
Partner voices
Reflections from funded partners across Phase I and Phase II:
"Some of the most experienced and best placed Black and minoritised led-organisations who work with their communities are not constituted or registered organisations. Funders need to appreciate that the ambition of organisations is not always to be registered and constituted – recognising that this is a colonial model and that charity articles can in some instances, serve as a blocker for organisations to rapidly pivot their activities towards an emergency response in times of need. Funders need to critically examine and challenge internal process and perceptions if they wish to work with the best-placed organisations to respond to their community’s needs."
“Funders need to be bolder, willing to trust, willing to take risks. If the litmus test for getting a look in for grant funding remains the ability to write a good English essay about why you need funding, then Black groups will be forever disproportionately excluded. So long as the key decisionmakers remain almost exclusively white then Black groups will remain underfunded.”
“All funders need to continue funding this work via this model. You have worked with certain communities for the very first time and there is now an expectation that you will invest in the sector, you will take steps to try and disrupt how traditional funders work.”