Funding from the edge to the edge

We’ve mentioned the Edge Fund before. Time to mention them again as their second funding round has just opened and decisions will very soon be taken as to who gets what from their first round – in fact the decision will be taken on Saturday.

So who are the Edge Fund and what do they do? You could do worse than read the Fund’s guest post over at the New Left Project‘s blog. Here’s a couple of snippets that will hopefully answer any questions you have:

We hope we are removing as many barriers to funding as possible. Barriers which include: funding being restricted to people in ‘the right networks’; groups and communities not knowing that the funding exists; groups and communities with language and literacy issues; the need to complete complex, written application and reporting forms that often use jargon; and organisations and activists being regarded as ‘too radical’….

 

…The aim is to prioritise groups who are working for systemic change, and ideally organisations who are led by those who are most affected by an issue. This is because if we want real, long-lasting change it has to come from the bottom up and it has to be people taking back control over their lives. So we are supporting groups which are grassroots-led and which do not suffer from the growing ‘professionalisation’ of activism, where salaries from large charities and other organisations have diluted people’s politics and often distanced them from the grassroots.

It’s a brave attempt to fund radical work in radical way – funding from the edge to the edge. Rhizome has had a modest input, in the form of facilitation of meetings, into the development of the fund. We watch that development with interest!

Matthew