The Grassroots Movements Fund is a new area of work at the grantmaking organisation The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. It is a pilot fund, to resource movements on the frontlines of social and environmental injustice, and who are striving for transformative change – a vision in which the systems of discrimination and domination of the present no longer exist.
The process of setting up the fund goes way back, to around 2018 where the journey begun with discussions and interviews with movement organisers and activists to understand what social movements were, how they worked, what the challenges were and what they needed. One participant described:
“transformative change can be hard to identify when it’s happening, for a long time its effects may not be very visible and then there is a sudden breakthrough, but long-term work is needed to build towards itâ€
JRCT’s Grassroots Movements Fund has been created to support the sustainability of that long-term movement work, and the values, aims, criteria and decision-making process have all come from what we heard movements wanted and needed. To learn more about the journey of this fund, please read Developing a Pilot Movement Fund report
JRCT was established as a Quaker Trust in 1904 by a donation from Joseph Rowntree.
Joseph Rowntree’s wealth came from the Rowntree sweet company. JRCT was a shareholder in the Rowntree business until 1988, when the company was bought by Nestle.
You can read more about the history here:
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust - History and heritage (jrct.org.uk)
A recent investigation into the origins of the money used to set up the Trust showed that the Rowntree company bought cocoa and other goods produced by enslaved people and benefitted from the system of colonial indenture. You can read a statement, including our next steps, here:
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust - News: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust: Q&As on the origins of our endowment
The Grassroots Movements Team has three paid staff who work part time in shared roles as Programme Managers:
Mumbi began working on the seeds of the fund in 2020, dreaming and scheming how to resource movements at a larger scale. Their role is now focused on coordinating the grants process, outreach, supporting applicants and holding relationships with grantees.
Mumbi is a project manager and community activist guided by Black feminist principles of connecting struggles and practising solidarity most recently in anti-racism movements, migrant rights organising and climate justice. They were born in Zambia, settled in London and now their immigrant spirit finds them exploring a new life in Sheffield, walking in the Peak District and learning about the history of racialised communities in South Yorkshire.
Sophie works on coordinating the grants process, supporting applicants and holding relationships with grantees.
Sophie co-founded Edge Fund, a participatory, activist-led grant-maker, in 2012 and was part of setting up a local version of it in Bristol in 2019. She has been involved in grassroots groups and movements for many years, including those focusing on feminism, housing, mutual aid and self-defence. Her favourite ways to switch off are gigs and dog walks.
Elena joined the Trust in September 2022. She brings over a decade's experience in facilitation, community activism, narrative change work, and organisational development: connected by a common thread of creating spaces that facilitate transformative change. Originally a city kid, now fully rooted in the rolling green of mid-Wales, she enjoys navigating how to parent, be in community, and be in movement in a rural area.
A core aim of the Grassroots Movement Fund is to redistribute power and to ensure those closest to the communities and issues we fund make the decisions about which groups get funded. In line with this, we aim to rotate around 50% of the Movement Assembly for each round, to bring in new voices and perspectives and to ensure power isn’t concentrated into one group over the long-term. We also recognise the need for continuity and appreciate the members who stay on for longer as this is a real support to newcomers and the process generally.
Bios of the Movement Assembly members: Elio Beale, Maria Delapava, Yaz Brien, Ali Tamlit, Linda Burnip, Dr. Dania Thomas, Marissa Begonia, Dom Hunter, John Pegram, Chao-Ying Rao, Tyler Hatwell, Sai Murray, Martha Williams, Kym Oliver, and Tami Pein:
Hi everyone, I’m Ali. I’ve been involved in environmental and migrant justice campaigns with groups like Plane Stupid and End Deportations. I’m part of Resist + Renew, which is a training and facilitation collective and that’s the way I’m mostly involved in movement work these days. I live in a small village in South Wales near Bridgend with my partner and our cat. I’m into walking in the hills, playing board games and going rock climbing. :-)
I am a co-founder of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) which has been opposing the attacks to disabled peoples’ human rights since 2010. We organise non-hierarchically and all do bits of many tasks. Our members and local groups are spread around the UK but I’m based in the Midlands. This picture was from a visit to unseat McVey in the Wirral.
Living in Sheffield with my partner and kid. Currently doing a PhD in how masculinity and whiteness impact political solidarity in the working-class. I wrote a couple of books about my experiences growing up in the criminalised working class, including my terms in prison and years as a street homeless young person. I co-founded the Class Work Project (and Lumpen Journal). Over the last decade my political priorities have been community accountability work and political education in working class communities that are often ignored or consciously excluded from social justice movements. Other current work includes a community organising deconstruction training called Embrace the Mess, supporting local economic redistribution projects and developing class analysis workshops which engage with various class analysis models. But mostly I think about football and films and try to be a semi-competent Dad.
Currently based in Bristol I’ve been involved in grassroots organising and social movements in the UK and Americas for over 25 years - bringing a queer, anti-racist and feminist perspective to all that I do. In more recent years I’ve become a bit of an ‘elder in training’, supporting activists and organisers with advice, support and facilitation. I tend to think in patterns and webs so often find myself in the grey areas trying to connect the dots and flows between groups and movements, while exploring how we might practice giving and receiving care for collective liberation.
London-based; my organising over the last few years has focused on sex work, prisons, housing, labour, and disability. Historically I worked around gender based violence, community accountability, queer/trans collective living, and creative practices as community organising. I tend to approach understanding collective liberation struggles by understanding how the systems we are resisting function and produce exploitation. Much less involved in activism these days as I adjust to some massive changes in my health and ability since 2020, spending more time reading and thinking about histories of criminalisation, imperialism and global cultural trade.
I’m a mother of three, a domestic worker and a community organiser at The Voice of Domestic Workers (VODW), an education support group run by and for migrant domestic workers campaigning for our rights and welfare in the UK. Having met my fellow domestic workers who suffered from abuse and exploitation led me to building VODW to equip ourselves with knowledge and skills that empower us to fight against injustices, inequality and discrimination. There’s power in our voice!
John is an IT Professional and community activist and the founding member of Bristol Copwatch an independent grassroots police monitoring group that has been established since March 2020. He speaks publicly about the police and criminal justice system and what alternatives to punitive punishment and incarceration could look like.He has also been involved in anti-racist campaigning for many years and believes that real change starts from the ground up. He has lived experience of institutional racism and the police and criminal justice and fights fiercely for people’s rights as a volunteer caseworker. He believes that communities deserve fair treatment and justice in the face of police misconduct and grassroots independent police monitoring is part of that picture.
My name is Dania Thomas, pronouns she/her. I am a first-generation migrant, mother of two, born in Gujarat, India and have lived and worked in the UK for 23 years. I hold a PhD in law and currently work full time in the University of Glasgow as a lecturer in Business law. My research interests include racial capitalism, the black radical tradition and financial law. I am also a founder member and currently a Director in Ubuntu Women Shelter, Glasgow. Just to make my life more complicated but infinitely more interesting I am also a trustee in Sangini, a woman’s arts group in Sunderland and a director in Playwright Studio, Scotland. I was the first Asian woman to be elected as the branch president of my local union UCU, Glasgow in 2021.
In my life of 56 years my guiding truth has been June Jordan’s work. Here is an excerpt from her Poem for South African Women
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And who will join this standing up
and the ones who stood without sweet company
will sing and sing
back into the mountains and
if necessary
even under the sea:
we are the ones we have been waiting for.
Visual artist and grassroots organiser based in Glasgow. My family and I migrated to Belfast in 1998 from mainland China and I’ve been located in the UK ever since. I started stripping at 17 to pay my bills and those experiences inform my work today in community organising and my art practice. I have two undergraduate degrees: English Literature and Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh, and Fine Art Painting & Printmaking from Glasgow School of Art. While my main area of community organising is within sex worker liberation, I’ve also supported arts organisations with infrastructure work to provide much needed spaces to local movements to help them thrive. Currently, I am trying to become less strategy-focused in my approach and learn more about rest, I think that would be very, very welcome.
Tyler Is a psychotherapist and trainer living in South London. He is a proud Traveller man and grew up working his family’s travelling funfair throughout the south. He has a vast work experience within schools, education more broadly and working with young people which led him to his first involvement in Traveller rights advocacy working initially as a youth outreach worker but going on to advocate for Travellers in various settings with a particular focus on education, mental health, access and representation. In 2019 he set up Traveller Pride, the first space for LGBT+ Travellers in the country and helmed it until 2024. He runs a private therapy practice, delivery trainings, teaches on an LGBT+ affirmative counselling course and is currently employed delivering creative therapeutic workshops with students within Pupil Referral Units. In his spare time he has trouble finding meaningful things to write in a bio.
Sai is a writer, poet, performance, and graphic artist of Bajan/Afrikan/English heritage. Based in Leeds, Sai has two decades of experience as a creative arts facilitator in the racial-climate-social justice sectors with various mental health, migrant, and youth communities. He is a founding artistic director of the youth arts educational initiative, Voices that Shake!; an organising member of PARCOE (the Pan-Afrikan Reparations Coalition in Europe); a co-facilitator with Healing Justice Ldn's Re-imagining Masculinites programme; and a former trustee of The Racial Justice Network. Through Liquorice Fish Sai has designed, edited, and published over 30 books, resources, and toolkits. He is a resident poet at Numbi Arts; an Inscribe original; and member of artist collective Virtual Migrants. His first poetry collection, Ad-liberation, and his novella are published by Peepal Tree Press.
Martha is a facilitator, trainer, writer and organiser based in Glasgow. Black feminist world-making is at the centre of her work, often working and thinking around Black mental health and the liberatory potential of storytelling and creative education. She has organised and trained in community organisations, grassroots groups, schools, prisons, early years settings, youth centres, and libraries; often supporting folks to set up their own projects and campaigns. Currently, her organising work is focused on supporting grassroots groups to develop their processes, relationships and strategies.
Kym is a Thinker, Public Speaker, published Writer, Guest Lecturer, Creative, PhD Researcher and Consultant, with an international, diverse list of credits including Google, UNFPA, University of Oxford and NASA. Kym is passionate about psychosocial approaches to understanding the cultural harmonies and dissonances within marginalised communities, and holds a related Masters Degree. They Co-Founded The Triple Cripples - a platform dedicated to Disabled Women, and Gender Expansive people; and the intracommunal healing project, Our Living Archives. Kym, a board member for the Black Feminist Fund, strongly believes that funding grassroots feminist movements and Black Disabled feminist researchers ‘like we want them to win’ will pave the way toward loving Black Feminist Futures. (Photo credit: @art_n_lens)
Tami is a grassroots community organiser based in Glasgow. They thrive when they're bringing people together, whether it's for dancing, meaningful discussion or movement building. For work, they produce festivals & events which combine arts and social change. Starting out in Leeds, they worked with Leeds Tidal on The Summat a gathering of activists. In 2020 they moved to Glasgow to work for SCCS during COP26, hosting and welcoming civil society in Glasgow. Excited by community infrastructure, Tami is part of the core committee at Glasgow Autonomous Space which provides free space for those who are marginalised and excluded elsewhere. Recently they worked with T4P to organise Big Up Festival in south Leeds to give voice to incredible grassroots creative catalysts in the city. Since 2021, they have produced Solas Festival centering arts, discussion and justice. Dance and music is a huge part of their life, recently building a mobile sound system for protests and creating queer utopias in temporal space.
