Founded in 2012 by activists and funders, Edge Fund is one of the UK’s most radical experiments in participatory grantmaking. It started from a simple question: if community organising and development can involve those directly affected by decisions, why can’t funding work the same way?
Edge Fund is not a foundation. It is a non-hierarchical membership organisation in which grantees, applicants, donors, and community members share equal standing. There are no staff holding strategic power over funding decisions. All grantees automatically become members and are invited to participate in deciding who Edge funds next, as well as how the organisation itself is run. Since 2013, the fund has awarded over £600,000 in grants.
Funding decisions are made through Community Committees made up of members, with each member’s influence over any given application weighted by whether the funded work directly affects their own community. This ensures those with the most at stake hold the greatest voice. Over 60 per cent of Edge Fund members are non-white.
Edge deliberately funds where traditional philanthropy does not: groups organising around racial justice, gender justice, environmental justice, and solidarity with communities facing colonial violence. It has issued emergency funds for Palestinian-led groups in the UK and for communities organising against Islamophobic violence following the 2024 riots.
Edge has also actively influenced other funders. It secured a grant from Lankelly Chase Foundation to support an action inquiry into participatory grantmaking and is regularly cited in sector publications and funder convenings as a working proof of concept for shared governance at field level.
What practitioners can take from this
The Edge Fund demonstrates that governance without hierarchy is not only possible but produces more equitable, more robust, and more legitimate funding decisions. For funders willing to genuinely share power rather than simulate it, Edge’s model offers both inspiration and a blueprint.