For citizens to have a say in their lives, we need to build a participation infrastructure across the UK. This movement goes beyond just funding. It's about creating the skills, systems, and policies that give money and power to the people closest to the issues. By working with funders, policymakers, businesses, and civil society, we can build a strong foundation for participation to grow nationwide.

Over the last eight years, more than **400 Camden residents** have decided how **£7.9 million** of Camden Giving funding is invested in their communities. We do this through Participatory Grantmaking: local people with first-hand experience of the issues decide how money is spent and who receives support. Many of those sitting on our panels are also those most affected by the outcomes. They know which groups are trusted locally, and they recognise the community leaders working just around the corner who can deliver the solutions. This isn’t just about distributing funds — it’s about surfacing the complex, living knowledge citizens hold. By co-designing criteria, strategies, processes and funding decisions, residents bring insights that non-participatory grantmakers or government department can often replicate. Citizens are uniquely placed to spot ideas that can deliver real change.

In Camden, local government has leaned into this mission-led approach. For the past four years, the council has co-created shared missions, seed-funded our participatory grants, and convened others — including businesses — to channel resources into them. This has created a culture where participation is celebrated, and where officers feel confident to take risks in order to make it happen. But Participatory funding isn’t just unique to Camden and what we’ve developed isn’t a rigid blueprint, but rather a practical toolkit — one that funders, councils and civic partners can adapt to bring missions to life in their own places and contexts.

Our vision is that by 2035, citizens across the UK will play a direct role in decisions about the funding that shapes their lives. They will have the tools, the power, and the opportunity to confront inequality and drive social change. This is about far more than money. It’s about changing how businesses, government, funders and institutions work with communities — creating an ecosystem where citizen power fuels lasting, deep-rooted change.

What is a Participatory Money Movement

Across the UK, funders, local governments, and communities are already experimenting with ways to put people closest to an issue in charge of money decisions. Participatory funding doesn't just move money; it also acts as a catalyst for civic and democratic engagement.

When the ecosystem is healthy, participation takes root and spreads. When support is thin, it struggles to take hold. This type of funding is growing, but its benefits will remain uneven without more investment. To build a truly national movement, we need to create a national participation infrastructure.

This goes beyond just money. It requires building the skills, systems, policies, and structures that empower people to make meaningful decisions. This is supported by government and funders alike. Not every local decision needs to be made by residents, but with the right policy, infrastructure, and partners, participatory investment can activate powerful community solutions.

This is why we've started mapping Participatory Money Movements across the UK. Our goal is to see where this infrastructure exists and where the gaps are. This will help us, alongside the government, funders, and civil society, build a framework that gives UK citizens control over how money impacts their lives.

Mapping the UK’s Participation

In April 2024 we carried out desk research to map where citizens in London were directly involved in spending decisions, focusing on Participatory Grantmaking, Participatory Budgeting and Citizens’ Assemblies which can be seen here. To deepen our understanding — and to inform how funders and government can support this growing movement — we’ve expanded our research to cover participatory money movements across the UK.

Our research drew on a mix of sources, including reviewing:
Government data, to track where budgets have been devolved through Participatory Budgeting and Citizens’ Assemblies
Place-based funders in any beyond London, using their reports, websites, blogs and public information.
Sector insights, such as publications from The Social Innovation Partnership (TSIP).
Reviewing where our own consultancy has supported UK grantmakers to design and deliver participatory funding programmes.
We also documented existing infrastructure that could act as an important foundation for participation if properly resourced:
Big Local Areas – funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, giving residents in **150 neighbourhoods** more than £1m each to invest locally
London's Giving Network – formed of 22 place-based giving schemes mobilising resources across London; 72% are using participatory approaches to allocate funding.

It’s also important to stress that our dataset isn’t exhaustive. New participatory movements are emerging all the time, often under the radar and usually under-resourced, without the infrastructure to sustain them. That makes it even more important to pay attention to the UK’s participation gaps: where participation thrives, where it struggles, and what support is needed from funders and policymakers to strengthen civic participation everywhere. We’ve made our research open-source so that you can add your own contributions here.

At a Glance

Looking at our UK map of participatory money movements and a pattern jumps out: the more dense, darker clusters of orange appear where infrastructure and participation already exists in layers. Where there are place-based funders, civic hubs and trusted partners, participation glows. Where that scaffolding is missing, the map fades to pale orange, or nothing.

In London, the density is no surprise: place-based funders like the London’s Giving network are embedding participatory grantmaking and participatory social investment. Big household name foundations are experimenting with participatory grantmaking too – like BBC Children In Need who are running its first pan-London youth-led participatory grantmaking programme, supported by Camden Giving. But the story isn’t confined to the capital. Plymouth Octopus (POP), and Young Manchester are proving the model in their own cities, working with residents to decide how money flows.
It’s not just funders. Local authorities are part of this story too. London boroughs like Camden, Newham and Walthamstow have hosted Citizens’ Assemblies and Participatory Budgeting. Beyond London, Scotland offers a striking example: since 2017, the Scottish Government has required councils to devolve at least 1% of their budgets through PB. By 2021, communities had already exceeded that target, directly allocating £154 million, equal to 1.4% of council budgets. Foundation Scotland has also embedded participatory grantmaking into its portfolio.
And then there are the Big Local Areas: 150 neighbourhoods across the UK given more than £1m each by the National Lottery Community Fund, multiple schemes exist in the same cities like Leeds and Birmingham. These areas already have residents actively making decisions about money, making them fertile ground to grow deeper participatory infrastructure. On the heat map, they stand out as seeds of potential.
The map highlights the geographic spread of participatory approaches, though this doesn’t always match exactly where the money flows to grantees, or where the decision-makers live. In most cases, participatory funding is channelled back into local neighbourhoods, directly supporting community priorities. However, participatory money can exist beyond place-based infrastructure. We’ve seen grassroots actors channelling funds through participatory models that reach beyond place-based funding supporting systemic change.

Beyond place: participation also works across themes and movements

It’s no surprise that where communities come together, they’re powerful. Participation grows fastest where trusted partners, civic spaces, and skilled facilitators exist. That’s why regions with strong civil society infrastructure show up as hotspots on our map. But the lesson isn’t that “London has cracked it” — it just demonstrates that an infrastructure for participatory money can turn engagement into agency, by giving people a real say over real budgets. It does something else too: it rebuilds trust and grows civic confidence in a way traditional consultation and engagement never will.

Our research shows that participatory decision-making thrives in thematic areas, not just geographic ones. Only 3.7% of organisations we identified use participatory models in this way, yet their impact is significant. They prove that participatory funding can succeed beyond place-based structures. Take the Edge Fund, a grassroots social justice fund where members and past grantees decide who receives support. Since 2012, it has run 16 funding rounds, distributing over £550k to frontline groups—an explicit model of redistributing power as well as money. Or the Three Guineas Trust, whose Access to Justice for Disabled and Neurodivergent People programme is co-designed with people who have lived experience, funding legal advice, advocacy and barrier-removal across the UK.

Place-based participation gives us the roots; thematic participation gives us the reach. Do both, and we don’t just scale participatory money - we build a UK-wide infrastructure that shifts power to where it belongs.

Why Infrastructure Matters

Only 27% of people in England feel they can affect local decisions (Community Life Survey 2021/22). Even in London, the Civic Strength Index suggests only about a third of residents feel able to shape what happens locally — a reminder that even where participation is visible, there is still a long way to go. And if that’s true in the capital, places without infrastructure will struggle even more — unless we invest.

Participatory money is not just an approach — it’s an ecosystem. Where the ecosystem is strong, participation flourishes; where it’s weak, it either doesn’t happen or it fails to stick. That’s why we need to build participatory infrastructure across the UK: trusted partners, skilled facilitation, and real budgets for citizens to decide on. To close the UK’s participation gap we need strong infrastructure across both place-based and thematic funding, so that citizens can shape decisions not only in their neighbourhoods but also on issues that cut across boundaries—whether that’s youth employment, disability rights, climate, or racial justice.

The benefits ripple outwards. If you’ve ever sat with a participatory funding panel, you'll be told about their improved wellbeing, confidence, and understanding of other people’s lives. It strengthens civic and democratic engagement by uniting people around shared goals, helping them to see across divides and striving to do more to meaningfully take part in issues that matter to them and see their actions are acted on. The impact isn’t only on individuals; it’s on whole communities, creating solidarity, bridging difference, and building power. Powerless communities often focus on division; powerful communities organise and act.

Building The Infrastructure

To grow participation nationwide, three building blocks are essential.

1. Invest in People and Organisations

Participation depends on local trust. This means we must properly resource and pay civil society groups, place-based giving schemes, community hubs, faith groups, and libraries. They are crucial for outreach and convening. We also need to build a pipeline of local facilitators, such as youth workers and organisers, and support them through training and peer learning. This is a better approach than "parachuting in" consultants.

How Government can help:

Champion funding and policies that guide public money with lived experience.
Involve citizens and community leaders in procurement for public services and the NHS.
Listen closely to commitments in the Civil Society Covenant.
Expand funding for existing participatory programmes through departments like DCMS.

How Funders can help by:

Invest in communities with little to no participatory infrastructure to level the playing field.

2. Devolve real budgets

Real power follows real money. Councils and funders should shift core funds—from Community Infrastructure Levy to local grant programmes—into participatory processes. They should embed participation into mainstream funding and require developers to contribute to place-based funds.

How Government can help:

Support councils to devolve funding locally.
Invest in councils to run Participatory Budgeting and Citizens’ Assemblies.
Impose requirements on developers to financially support place-based funding.
Use devolution to give communities a real stake in decisions.

How Funders can help:

Pilot participatory grantmaking in existing programmes this year.
Partner with organizations that already have participatory infrastructures in place.
Champion the release of dormant funds and endowments for community-led decisions.

3. Design for context

One size won’t fit all. What works on a local estate won’t necessarily work in a rural district. Participation must also extend beyond place. Communities of identity need participatory routes not tied to a postcode. Alongside neighbourhood-level funds, we need investment in thematic and national models that can connect people across the UK — from youth-led funds that span regions to national disability rights panels. This ensures participation isn’t only rooted in geography, but also reflects the movements, identities and networks that stretch across boundaries. Funders and governments should back experimentation — participatory budgeting in rural areas, grantmaking with disability rights advocates, participatory social investment where community enterprise is strong. Share learning, not cookie-cutter models.

Join us in shaping the UK’s participatory money movement

In January 2026, we’ll convene funders and government to explore the UK participatory money movement gap and move from interest to action. To help communities everywhere share power over money, get in touch: danielle@camdengiving.org.uk

Building The UK’s Participatory Money Movement