The Cornerstone Fund
The Cornerstone Fund aims to bring about systemic change, enabling civil society support organisations to work in partnership with others to achieve the goal of a thriving civil society
Race on the Agenda
Race on the Agenda participated in the first round of the Cornerstone Fund, between 2019 and 2022. Cornerstone is a funder collaboration which was set up to explore ways of creating systemic change.
Race on the Agenda
Grant type: Cornerstone Fund
Grant amount: £257,100 over three years
Race on the Agenda’s CREME partnership offered proactive and reactive communications support to build media skills and increase coverage of Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee community services and voices.
The CREME partnership, which stood for ‘Communicating Race Equality Messages Effectively’, was one of ten partnerships set up during the first round of the Cornerstone Fund. The CREME partnership connected Race on the Agenda with the Runnymede Trust and the Black Training and Enterprise Group, now named Action for Race Equality.
Together, the three organisations worked as a partnership to bring issues of racism and race equality to greater prominence in the media. In doing so they aimed to elevate race equality issues, thereby influencing policy and cultural change. A shared Project Communications Officer led the work and enabled a collaborative approach.
The first round of Cornerstone was severely disrupted by Covid-19, necessitating a switch from face-to-face media workshops to online resources. YouTube videos provided guidance on topics such as a writing press release, supported by a podcast.
As the international Black Lives Matter movement rose in prominence in 2020, relationship-building with journalists became easier and media expertise became vital in managing proactive and reactive media engagement.
More than 40 race equality groups received media training or tailored support during the lifetime of the project. The lessons learned, along with the connections and capabilities built through CREME, will continue to support race equality groups in communicating their messages.
“Changing public opinion instead of advocating with government directly can be considered a system mindset change”
This case study has been adapted from Changing Systems Together: Stories from Round One of the Cornerstone Fund (PDF), produced by Collaborate CIC, the learning partner to the Cornerstone Fund.
The Cornerstone Fund is a funder collaboration involving City Bridge Foundation, the Greater London Authority, the National Lottery Community Fund, Trust for London, and the John Lyon’s Charity.
The Cornerstone Fund is not open to new applications.
Funding
Our rolling grants programmes are currently closed to new applications. We will open a new funding programme to applications in autumn 2025. Our new funding policy, Standing with Londoners, was announced in March 2025.