Towards a new funding policy

In March 2024, we started the process of developing a new 10-year funding policy to replace our current policy, Bridging Divides. Our aim is to ensure our funding is targeted where it has the greatest impact.

We are acutely aware that available resources currently fall far short of meeting the needs of the sector and many of London’s communities. This places even greater responsibility on us to work with the sector in considering how we can best support it.

The new policy is being informed by a review of our past funding practice, data and evidence-gathering and a wide-ranging consultation — which has included funded organisations, funders, civil society, local government, young Londoners, policy and research specialists, business and a cross section of the public.

In March 2024 our Envisioning London 2035 event at the Barbican brought together more than 130 participants representing London’s civil society, local and central government, policy and research, the academic sector and more.

City Bridge Foundation is a social justice funder, which means our ultimate aim is to support efforts that are focused on tackling the causes of injustice experienced by the most disadvantaged and marginalised communities – especially efforts to empower affected communities themselves.

To effectively provide that support, we know that ​‘how’ we fund is as important as ​‘what’ we fund. We carried out an in depth review of how funded organisations have experienced us as a funder. As a result we’re implementing new practices, that mean funded organisations will soon have a different experience:

• They’ll be able to pick up the phone to us
• Application processes/​pathways will differ according to applicant needs
• We will support flexible, long-term, core and unrestricted funding
• We’ll be focusing more on tackling root causes

We’ll continue to support infrastructure organisations critical to the change we and our partners aim to achieve as well as organisations meeting immediate needs.

Our thinking on what we fund is still very much emerging and we will be consulting with sector partners in November for their feedback. How we deliver impact is our key focus.

Funders and practitioners are increasingly acknowledging that scaling individual organisations is insufficient to solve complex, evolving social problems. Achieving impact and change at scale, requires meaningful, intentional coordination between all the individuals and organisations working to address common social justice issues.

We want to play our part, through our funding, our investments and our activities, to make sure this happens. We’re thinking of doing it in three ways: Connecting Communities, Meeting Needs and Catalysing Change.

• Connecting Communities: infrastructure, building capacity and networks and convening
• Meeting Needs: advice, support and crisis interventions
• Catalysing Change: advocacy, campaigns and community organising

These three approaches will inform the programmes that we develop to deliver greater impact.

And in addition to our funding, we will also Stand with Londoners by using our voice, our platforms, our assets and our networks. We have a unique trustee in the City of London Corporation which strengthens our ability to influence and mobilise key stakeholders and resources across the capital, to support those we fund to achieve their goals.

With our new policy we expect to be offering more focused funding programmes where funding is targeted where it’s most needed, but the precise nature of what funding will be available has not yet been decided.

There will be important elements of continuity, not least our commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion and to addressing climate change.

We will take a draft funding policy to our Funding Committee this December, with an initial articulation of the type of goals we want to work towards. Once agreed, we will look to co-produce the associated funding programmes.

City Bridge Foundation has been around for 900 years, as a world-class bridge owner responsible for five Thames crossings. We have been funding London’s charitable sector for 30 years and are the capital’s largest independent funder — but we know funding alone is not the answer to the problems we seek to tackle.

Partnership and collaboration will be critical as we work together with the sector, utilising our combined efforts and commitment to deliver the transformation we all want to see – a socially just and more sustainable London.

Sacha Rose-Smith, Chief Funding Director