At the heart of the Love Alliance is the commitment to participatory grantmaking, a methodology that shifts power and resources from those who hold the money to those who benefit from funding. Participatory grantmaking involves communities in all aspects of grantmaking, from application to decision-making. The process is open, simple, and transparent, helping to build social movements and making funding more accessible to underserved populations. By shifting power and decision making on where resources go directly to communities, participatory grantmaking ensures that funding priorities and strategies are informed by lived experience, indigenous knowledge and local context.
The Love Alliance works with four regional grantmakers who each employ their own model of participatory grantmaking. Collectively, grantmakers use an adaptive approach that responds to contexts and needs, focusing on capacity strengthening, movement building, and advocacy.
Explore here:
- how in West Africa participatory grantmaking is shifting the power in leadership, community autonomy, resilience building and empowering movements;
- how in North Africa participatory grantmaking has supported organisations to formalise and build structures that ensure that the work can thrive for the long term;
- how in East Africa participatory grantmaking has help building people with skills, leadership, exposure, infrastructure and confidence;
- how in Southern Africa participatory grantmaking has led to sustainable change made through connecting organisations, building platforms and a truly inclusive intersectional approach.