And how can we meet those needs?

On 4 November we had a meeting and lunch with some of our funded groups to have a chance to catch up with each other and also to think a little about what they need and how Redistro can better support them. It was a really lovely meet up with lots of support, ideas and generosity. Thanks to all who came along 🙂 

The meeting was attended by:

• Bristol Copwatch – police monitoring organisation working towards community safety and police accountability https://cop-watchers.org 

• Black Mothers Matter – supporting and celebrating Black pregnancies across the UK www.blackmothersmatter.org 

• Cushion – supporting Black women facing bullying and harassment in the workplace

• Moon Fest – arts and culture festival for East and South East Asian (ESEA) creatives www.instagram.com/moonfestofficial  

• NextGen Circle – providing a safe and supportive environment designed to instil values, skills and self-confidence in young people from minoritised communities https://www.nextgencircle.co.uk 

• Rebel Girls Club – wellbeing and mental health support for women and non-binary people www.therebelgirlsclub.co.uk 

Redistro started in 2019 and we ran our first round in 2020. Since then we’ve raised and distributed around £60,000 to around 60 grassroots groups. All the money we raise comes from individuals, either via monthly donations or through crowdfunds. Our funding decisions are made by the groups we’ve funded in the past. Currently we are a small collective of 4 volunteers and have been struggling to keep up with the workload involved in fundraising and the large amount of admin and organisational work required to run a funding round. Unusually, we currently have £8,000 in the bank to use to make some changes. We’re very grateful for the suggestions people shared with us during the meeting to overcome these challenges, thank you!

Updates from groups

It was amazing to hear how groups had used the small amount of money we gave them and how far they were able to spread it. We heard about how funds were used to help support Moon Fest (an arts festival for East and South East Asian creatives), to run wellbeing drop-ins for women and non-binary people for Rebel Girls Club, to help enable an event for Cushion to support Black women experiencing bullying and harassment at work, and supporting Bristol Copwatch’s ongoing work to monitor police and support people mistreated by them. Black Mothers Matter received their funding back in 2021 and were able to use this for important governance and core work to develop their services to support Black pregnant people in a society where Black women are four times more likely to die during pregnancy than white women. 

We all enjoyed hearing about Nextgen Circle’s Heartzone practice. If something hasn’t gone well, a member of the group can ask to take someone to the ‘heartzone’ to discuss what’s happened. They both have to agree to take the issue seriously, to listen rather than argue, to try to move on for the better of the team, as well as keeping it confidential. They shared that it can be difficult to encourage young Somali men to talk about feelings and love for each other, but they were keen to build a culture of care. 

The groups shared challenges around only being able to run services and not being able to carry out other important aspects of their work, such as being together as a team and planning their work. Some groups also spoke about working as volunteer/member-run groups and challenges around recruiting people and keeping them involved, how to work to people’s strengths and provide training where needed. We also heard that they’d find it useful to have support around models of support for volunteers and team structures. The idea of an informal skills exchange was mentioned, recognising the wealth of knowledge and expertise within the Redistro community. Of course securing funding for work at grassroots level is an ongoing challenge for most groups. 

What do grassroots groups need? 

Over the last few years, groups have told us about what they need to do their work well. We wanted to check in with people to see which needs were most important to them and how we might meet those needs. We gave everyone present the chance to add to the list, then gave them stickers to show how they felt about each point, bearing in mind the capacity of Redistro and other organisations that might be already providing these services. 

• Green – most important
• Orange – medium importance
• Red – least important

This was the result: 

From this exercise it seemed clear that providing more funding in a flexible way that trusted groups to use the funds as they need to was most important. Groups also emphasised that the unrestricted grant allowed them to prioritise aspects of their organisations that conventional or project based funding would not typically support, such as website development. More public awareness of grassroots groups seemed fairly important as well. With this in mind, we split into two groups focusing on fundraising and how we can either lessen the workload or improve capacity so that we can distribute more money. 

Fundraising

• Registering Redistro – people were sceptical about registering as a charity as this would create more admin and there would be more restrictions on what we fund and how we operate. There was a suggestion we register instead as a CIC. Consider using Open Collective for transparency

• Fundraising events – groups presenting about their work at fundraising events, perhaps in places like Clifton and Redland. Attracting people to attend via banks and businesses.

• Approaching Triodos (and other possibilities) for funds

• Outreach – attracting donors via radio, news outlets (eg Cable), or papers in richer areas of Bristol. Need for more capacity to do this 

• Range of strategies – don’t put all eggs in the same basket, have a mix of fundraising strategies

Capacity – can we lessen the workload or increase capacity?

• Run more subject/group specific rounds (e.g. like the racial justice round). This may mean fewer applications per round (more manageable)

• Rounds for previously-funded groups only

• Funded groups recommend groups to fund rather than having an open call for applications

• Give groups repeat funding (e.g. fund for one year, then crowdfund to fund them for a second year – ideally groups would share news of their work to motivate people to donate)

• Research number of hours needed to run a funding round so we have a better idea of how this can be managed

• Find students who could support the work, perhaps placements? (These would need to be paid)

• Open up process for feedback – have a webinar where we show people what our funding round process is and people can make suggestions on how it can be improved and what technology might be useful

• Marketing push using case studies

• Open event showcasing funded groups, to raise more funds. Feb 14 for Valentines?

We finished the meeting with a tasty lunch from Aizzy’s. Thanks to Aizzy’s, Docklands and Ruth, our facilitator.

Get involved! 🙂

So, there is work to do! Would you like to join us to make it happen? We’d love to hear from anyone with fundraising or event organising skills. Email us on info@bristolredistro.net.