Influencing the Funding Sector

Camden Giving is uniquely placed to influence and strengthen the UK’s funding sector while benefiting Camden’s communities. We have the staff, tools, and systems to support in-house participatory grant making (PGM). Our approach goes beyond advice, helping foundations put participatory grant making into action and embed genuine learning into their teams

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Our Services:

We offer flexible support tailored to each foundation, while ensuring all programmes include team learning. Our services are designed to allow Camden Giving staff to bring their relational expertise directly to foundations.

    • Acting as a banker for participatory funds 

    • The ability to award grants directly to un-constituted groups. 

    • Acting as the employer for participants. 

    • Creating contracts and ensuring relevant legislations is covered. 

    • Holding payments in trust for those unable to be paid. 

    • Designing safeguarding processes that ensure participants are safe and that risks are minimised. 

    • Carrying out check-ins with participants to support wellbeing. 

    • Managing serious safeguarding issues. 

    • Other foundations could pay for use of the tool for their grantmaking. 

    • This has little impact on staff time, but would have some costs to the developer that need to be factored in. 

    • Tailored sessions to support boards and/or staff to interrogate where power lies within the organisation. 

    • Co-created ground rules of how staff and/or trustees want to work with participants. 

    • Working with boards to understand the potential of participatory approaches. 

    • Designing recruitment processes. 

    • Promoting opportunities and working with referral partners to get a diverse candidate pool. 

    • Sifting and interviewing candidates. 

    • Involving our Camden Giving Alumni in interviews. 

    • Supporting participants to understand the grant process, data, managing bias and good grantmaking practice. 

    • Facilitating grantmaking meetings. 

Meet Our Experts

We bring together expertise in community engagement, grant making, research, and organisational development. Key staff include:

  • Danielle Green - Assistant Director

    Danielle leads the co-design of partnerships between local government, communities and major land developers in London. She set up a Citizen Social Scientist forum to influence decision-making in Camden and has extensive experience running community-led projects, from citizen research to participatory grantmaking. Within Camden Giving, she has built key operational systems covering fundraising, governance, HR, finance, volunteering and grantmaking.

  • Natasha Friend - Director

    Natasha is our Director and expert in participatory grantmaking. She will be involved throughout the programme, Natasha designed and implemented Camden Giving’s participatory grantmaking approach, shaping its governance, policies and culture. She is part of the global Participatory Grantmaking Community of Practice and has created an open-source toolkit to help others adopt participatory approaches. Natasha has also supported other foundations to design and deliver participatory processes.

  • Suraya Miah - Participatory Facilitation Manager

    Suraya recently joined Camden Giving as Participatory Facilitation Manager, supporting residents to take the lead in funding decisions. She has begun facilitating our community grant panels, working alongside local people to shape funding for grassroots projects.

    Before joining, Suraya worked with Camden Council, the Greater London Authority and UCL’s Institute for Global Prosperity, focusing on youth participation, safeguarding and citizen-led research. She brings extensive experience in co-designing programmes that amplify lived experience in decision-making.

  • Daniel Jourdan - Head of Grant Programmes

    Daniel has facilitated more than 50 participatory grantmaking panels and overseen over 200 grants to local charities and resident-led initiatives, distributing more than £1.5m in Camden. Before joining Camden Giving, he spent over 15 years in youth work across London, including developing an award-winning NHS partnership supporting young people affected by youth violence.

Get in Touch

If you’d like to explore how Camden Giving can support your foundation to embed participatory grant making, contact us at danielle@camdengiving.org.uk or click the button below.