Backing the country’s first community-led investment fund
I’d love to see philanthropy let go of the old ways and stop sitting on massive funds
A Lankelly Chase Legacy Interview. Hosted by Generative Journalism Alliance
Cameron, can you speak to what was made possible through your work with Lankelly that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise?
Pretty much everything. Lankelly was our first substantive funder, and funded our work for the first couple of years. BD Giving was funded to start exploring participatory grant making, when it was still relatively novel. They took a risk on a relatively new charity and saw the potential, given the levels of deprivation in Barking and Dagenham. There are a lot of assumptions about participatory work, that because it’s resource‐intensive, it can’t work in deprived places. But in practice, those places are where participatory work is more likely to take off – if you don’t have a lot, you’re more open to different ways of doing things, rather than if you’re in a comfortable, wealthier area, there’s a status quo, there’s a way things get done.
Lankelly not just putting money, but also the transfer of power to the place—the idea was for residents to make decisions about money to make stuff engaging and involving. It wasn’t just them waving a magic wand and fixing all the problems; it was that they had money and they could provide some support. And then also, just giving us access to a wider network—the other places that they were supporting, knowing that you’re not doing it alone. Some funders do try to join up the things that they fund; I’ve not felt it work anywhere as effectively as with Lankelly Chase. They were doing residentials, and they would pay for our time and for us to travel. It isn’t just, “Oh, we’re doing this thing,” with an expectation attached to the funding; it’s on top of the funding you’ve got.
It created a good foundation for us as a charity, because we’ve never really experienced that big power difference in terms of a funder having a lot of money—as we’ve grown, we’ve obviously come into contact with that. But because we had that initial experience with Lankelly, it put us in a much more competent position to push back on funders and say, “Well, actually, this other fund has given us a substantial amount of money, and they’ve been comfortable with it,” and we’ve asked if we have leeway to push back on you with your restrictions.
What social shifts have you witnessed through your work that was made possible?
One of the biggest is we have been able to set up, thanks to Lankelly’s funding, what we think is the country’s first community-led investment fund. During the pandemic, resources got even tighter; areas that already had wealth were able to tap into that, and Barking didn’t have that. We’ve been able to set up an investment fund led by residents. Residents have designed what it invests in, and they’re picking solar energy. They’re picking businesses that themselves are about racial equity, social justice, and those things. The investments they’re making are starting to make money for the borough, so small scale. We’ve not had to ask anyone for this; we’ve not had to go out and fundraise, and then that return is going to help people test out new ideas, because it’s our money—because it’s the borough’s money, we can fund things that other funders aren’t prepared to take a risk on. There’s been that knock-on effect of Lankelly’s approach to funding, of trusting people to make good decisions. We’ve been able to replicate that at a smaller scale, but that ethos is still there; nothing’s really going to change unless we give people the tools to do things differently.
We’re seeing people feeling more confident and more optimistic. This is a recurring theme over the last year—we’ve got better data collection, so I’ve got a bit more data—but this feeling of optimism that we’ve been able to bring to our borough is because people now see an organisation that they didn’t know existed, that we exist for everyone in Barking to take part and to make decisions. Even as recently as a couple of weeks ago, you had a woman saying, “Oh, I’ve lived in the borough for 19 years, and this is the first time anyone’s ever asked me my opinion.” And not just asked my opinion, but tried to give me the tools to make a difference about it as well.
I’ve just seen more of those things. We’re at a stage now where we still promote—we do some marketing—but most of our new contacts have just come from word of mouth. That’s also a nice thing to see, that people have a nice experience and then go and tell their friends about it. We’re reaching communities that, when I started five years ago with Lankelly, we wouldn’t have been able to tap into different communities. But now we don’t need to, because we’ve worked with people who’ve passed on their experience, and our networks are growing.
What meaning was made for you through the experience with Lankelly?
Lankelly’s ethos helped us stay rooted in our community, because the emphasis from Lankelly was always on having a conversation.
Yes, we had a funding agreement with outcomes and stuff that we had to report on. But I think that sense came from Lankelly accepting that it was participatory—as long as we could come back to them and say, “Well, we’ve done participation, and this is what residents want,” even if it was slightly different from what we set out initially to do. This is where the energy is, this is where residents want to go.
There’s a lot of meaning in being able to work for an organisation and feel part of a community rather than feeling set apart or paternalistic. I guess Lankelly helped instill values in our organisation that made us side with our residents.
What, if anything, would you have liked to have been different?
Maybe a bit more direction. Lankelly’s thinking is so big that it often felt difficult to understand our place in it. I wrestle with similar problems – if you’re trying to share power and get more people involved in decision-making, it feels very difficult to then use power, even though you might have a better, more informed perspective and be able to bring that insight without worrying that you’re telling people what to do.
If we had been able to have a more structured conversation about what Lankelly thinks we should do, it would have been nice to have that trust, having reached a point where our relationship was very good and we wanted to know their opinion. We wanted to know what they think – not because we were going to immediately change course and do whatever they told us to do, but because they were people who spent a lot of time thinking about this and worked in many different places.
How are you feeling about Lankelly’s decision to wind down its current structure?
From a Barking and Dagenham perspective, we had already made a plan – within two years we had decided that we didn’t want to be dependent on Lankelly Chase, so we had started to pivot away. When the news came, we had a reaction, but it wasn’t existential.
I have friends in other places for whom that announcement caused a lot of concern and upset – something that could have been avoided. It felt like they made a very big decision without consulting the people in the community they were working with.
Yes, I agree with the principle, but it’s the implementation that felt like it went against their values as well.
What would you like to see now from the wider philanthropic field?
I’d like to see people take notice of what Lankelly is trying to do. It’s wild that they face such barriers to winding down, with systemic hurdles keeping wealth locked up. No charity of Lankelly’s scale has ever tried this, and the Charity Commission won’t let you just drop 50 or 60 million overnight—you have to go through a long process.
For philanthropy, it’s useful to know these challenges, especially since a good chunk of the field, particularly in America, cares about social justice. We see it with those who inherit wealth and aren’t comfortable with how it’s managed—like the roughly 70% of women in America who change investment advisers within a year once they learn where their family money is coming from.
There are folks who want to shift the impact of their wealth—take the North Star Fund in America from the ’80s, for example. I’d love to see more philanthropy move away from just sitting on massive sums and giving away a mere two to three percent a year, and instead, invest a significant portion into something that truly drives systems change and social justice.
What steps, if any, are you taking or willing to take to make that possible?
We have four strategic pillars at the moment: with each community, for the place, for each person, and to change the system. The first three feed into that. The last one is that, rather than us going to meetings or conferences, we bring residents with us or send them on our behalf, representing the borough, especially those involved with the Community Investment Fund. We gave them the training and education they needed to understand the world of investment, and then they speak at conferences with traditional investors. As a result, people approach us asking, “Can you come and advise our fund? Can you help us make these changes?” and that’s been really beautiful to see.
We see our role as making sure that residents feel safe and confident and ensuring that some of them have reached the point where they are happy to fully advocate for themselves. Normally, when people approach us, we make it clear that they need to pay for this, just as they pay any other speaker. I think when people hear “charity sector” or “volunteers,” they assume the person will do it for free. For us, trying to demonstrate that philanthropy can learn a lot from our work, nobody needs to hear from the “I can stand in front of a crowd and talk about all my data and our learning”—that only appeals to one audience. I could talk about the impact of 30 people’s experience with us, but one person—one of those 30 standing on stage and telling their own story—can have a tremendous impact. That’s partly what we’re trying to do: shift the conversation around philanthropy and investment.
Ultimately, it’s about people. Markets and investments exist for the benefit of people because people exist. We abstracted those two ideas: it’s like, “Oh, this fund gives you a 4% return.” Then you scratch beneath the surface and find it’s investing in guns, in oil—money that is being paid for because some people on the other side of the world are getting very sick and lack a good quality of life—whereas you can choose to invest in things that don’t harm people but instead make their lives better. It’s about bringing those stories to people. We’ve started to make our first local investment, and those we’ve invested in want to say, “Look, we’ve got this investment from our community. We’re able to pay back with interest so you can still make money, but this is the impact.” For example, we’ve invested in a local arts institution, which supports artistic and creative activities in our borough because residents decided to invest in it. I think it’s about reconnecting people with the impact of their investments—telling stories rather than letting people hide behind numbers. That’s what we want to see.
What’s the best thing that could happen?
The best thing that could happen is shaking up the old ways of doing philanthropy, you know?
Imagine if big charities and wealthy folks stopped just sitting on their massive sums and actually used that money to push for real systems change. Instead of just handing out a measly two to three per cent each year, they could invest a significant chunk into initiatives that genuinely challenge the status quo. It’s all about breaking through those bureaucratic hurdles—like the red tape that makes it so hard to actually wind down these huge funds—and finally letting go of the old ways.
When you look at models like the North Star Fund, it’s clear that there’s a lot of potential for impact when people start shifting how they handle wealth. Radical, meaningful use of money, one that truly aligns with social justice and real change, is what I think would be the best thing to happen.
Hosted and edited by Tchiyiwe Chihana
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