Field Building is a model of keen interest to Place Matters and we wrote a recent blog about why we think it’s an approach whose time has come in UK place-based change. Field building is a term coined by Bridgespan Group in the US. In their work advising and commenting on the development of philanthropy in the US they noticed a new form of organisation emerging. Sometimes coming from existing civil society organisations, sometimes being created to catalyse a specific change, Field Building spans the spaces between those doing the work and those influencing or campaigning for wider change. A Field is defined by a shared ambition or “northstar” where there are common challenges and a shared systemic challenge to be tackled. Field Building is the activity and capability that joins people and organisations together to make that wider change happen.

As the scale and impact of inequities around living standards, educational achievement, health and a just transition to a fairer system of farming and food explored in this case study get worse, communities need to build the power to make change happen and Field Building is a framework and a common language that helps funders and those who are changing things on the groundwork come together around a common cause. A key enabler of Field building is collaboration across funders to create a better funding environment. On our own part Place Matters convenes a group of UK place-based Funders looking at how they might work together to create a better funding environment for place-based work and to explore where they share an ambition for change that might become a Field Building collaboration. As part of the thinking around how to develop place-based practice we are looking at where it is taking shape in the UK and this is a case study of a UK example that we hope provides some insight and inspiration.

This case study refers to both Field Building and Movement Building and in this case they are best understood interchangeably.

Farming the Future’s purpose is to create a transition to a more just system of food and farming that works for people and the planet, shifting power to alternative providers and divesting from the extractive economic behemoth of our current system. It is a David and Goliath task that will take decades. Their strategy for building this field of agroecology is to create space for the pioneers — a movement of the ‘little guys’ who in the Berkana Two Loop model demonstrate the possibility of the future and shift the narrative. As an emergent field, the job of the catalyst — in this case Farming the Future, is to punch above their weight and nurture other pioneers and connectors to build the enabling conditions for a new system to emerge.

This piece is based on an interview with Bonnie Hewson, a notable innovator in UK philanthropy and the Director at Farming for the Future whose work was the subject of a recent article in the Financial Times. She came to Farming the Future from Power to Change where she led the Empowering Places programme and is a leading thinker in UK philanthropy and place-based change.

Who is Farming the Future

FTF was established in 2019 by The Roddick Foundation and the A Team Foundation who came together around a shared ambition to enable the UK to transition away from the dominant systems of farming and food, that they argue cause ecological damage and social injustice, to a system that centres people and planet. They understand it is an ambition that goes way beyond the resources and influence they have individually so they have built a vehicle for funders sharing their ambition to collaborate. Farming the Future was created to lead that shared agenda and it describes itself as a movement builder for the sector and an intermediary funding organisation for funders. Whilst Farming the Future’s most visible activity is to distribute pooled philanthropic funds, which at the time of writing are supported by [8] donor partners, it sees its principal purpose as supporting and connecting a movement to enable change, listening to its stakeholders to understand the opportunities to leverage the system, building bridging to resources and targeting funding into areas of need, building capability at a grassroots level and strengthening the work of people and organisations through connection and collaboration.

How does the pooled Fund work?

At the moment Farming the Future has 3 grant funding strands and a separate field building pot for working in partnership with the movement they resource. The funding strands are re-evaluated annually to respond to what they see as the priorities and needs of the agroecology sector.

1. Collaborative Project grants bring people and organisations together to advance the mission for a just transition to an agroecological system. These are projects with established partnerships working together on something bigger than one organisations mission..
2. Exploring Collaboration grants provide the resources for organisations to take time to explore the scope for collaboration before they decide on what to work on and who needs to be involved for greatest impact.
3. New Growth grants support emergent organisations who need to develop their capability and approach in order to support a more diverse movement.
4. Field Building partnerships resource capacity support for movement infrastructure and equitable convening, as well as uplifting groups and networks collaborating on just access to land, networks of supply and progression pathways for new agroecological producers.

All funds are available by invitation working through existing funded partners, sector Ambassadors and the broader network they cultivate. They consider the most promising opportunities for changing the system and leveraging the movement, identifying and backing the groups and organisations well positioned to enable change. This participatory role for funded partners gives them a broader interest and ownership in building the movement beyond the funding they receive. See an example here of an organisation funded by Farming the Future.

In building UK capacity Farming the Future also looks at geographical gaps where there is less local capacity for developing an agroecological food and farming system — this has included proactively seeking to deepen relationships with groups in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. One example is an Exploring Collaboration grant given to 6 different organisations in Scotland who wanted time together to time to understand their similarities, differences, the skills they each bring and what their decision-making processes should be, so they could co-design a long-term strategic plan about how they work together to embed agroecology in Scotland. Other examples can be found here.

The New Growth grants are designed for organisations furthest away from securing funding, particularly those representing more marginalised and less well-represented communities, including racialised or LGBTQ communities. This builds on a foundation of previous collaboration work with organisations within the agroecology movement who tackle the complex issues of injustice, equity, diversity and inclusion entangled within a just transition for food systems. See example of work funded here.

Drawing on the Berkana Institute’s Two Loops model, Farming the Future seeks to identify the pioneers, connect them together, nourish them, with time, connection and resources and illuminate their work, or stories of change. The effectiveness of Farming the Future’s resourcing depends on the quality of knowledge and relationships in their network and so they invest significantly in funding people’s time in the movement to connect with others and are actively working on a collective impact approach to learning..

Funder collaboration

We discussed how funders had come together to create and work through a pooled fund. In Bonnie’s view it has been important that it was a new initiative for the funders. It did not inherit ways of working or expectations. It is important that funders see the fund as a means to a broader ambition and to focus less on the administration of funds and more on its purpose in enabling a movement. They don’t have artificial timelines or quantitative targets; the work evolves and the funders participate as equal actors in making sense of emergent work, rather than looking for results.

“It is necessary for funders to think beyond core funding or project funding, or funding any one particular organisation or solution. It’s to do with building the connections and strengthening people so they have the capacity to work beyond their individual missions on something that is a collective problem. They might not see eye to eye on everything, but they share a mission that they want to work on and they want to change something significant together” Bonnie Hewson

Key to all their work is trusting relationships. That means there is a relationship between grantees (funded partners) and Farming the Future, and between the sector decision makers (Ambassadors) and the funders of the collective (donor partners) because they are part of a shared collective and purpose. Individuals nominated to Ambassador roles can participate in the process of allocating funds.- and funders are deeply knowledgeable of the work of grantees and can bring experience of trust based philanthropy. That sense of being in it together and using non-hierarchical processes (Sociocracy) helps to equalise power and share responsibility and accountability.

Due to the size of the pooled fund (c£400,000 pa) Farming the Future operates an invitation only fund, building on previous partners bringing new collaborators into the network, drawing on the relationships and connections across the movement to organically grow the pool of potential recipients. For New Growth, supporting organisations at the earliest stage of development or furthest from funding, existing partners and donor partners take responsibility for nominating new recipients and submitting simple grant applications on their behalf to minimise the barriers to accessing support.

See this resource from Bridgespan Group on different ways of working depending on the different stages of field building.

Enabling the change

FTF’s strategy reflects the fact they are a small organisation playing a significant role in a highly ambitious field of change. They position themselves as an enabler, putting the resources they have into strengthening the capability of a wider movement committed to enabling and leveraging change. Through their network, they seek to understand the opportunities to bring change about and influence others to act on those opportunities. Understanding their role in relation to the wider system and participating as an actor in that wider field of change is an important positioning of expectation and ambition. Much as they build capacity directly by funding and convening, they connect and support the work of a much wider ecology of actors in the field.

But, they have established the reach by collaborating with others to influence change in the heart of existing power structures. For example, they have worked with the New Economics Foundation to make the case to mainstream funders, like banks and investors who back the existing system of provision, to understand the opportunity for a more regenerative farming system and move capital accordingly. A key value in their work is in generating the evidence and creating the language and framing of needs so it can be understood by those that can resource and create shifts in the system, whether through shifting policy, creating new resourcing mechanisms or supporting movement infrastructure.

Equally important is putting a spotlight on the innovations that shift farming and food practice at grassroots level and connecting people to learn, adapt and start new things. The structure of their current funding strands provides the resources to enable connection so that the value and purpose of deeper collaboration can emerge. Bonnie’s experience with the Empowering Places programme and in Farming the Future points to the necessity of funding people to connect so they can explore what a collaboration might look like. It is the nature of relational work that those opportunities emerge over time, but in most contexts people are time and resource-poor and need the impetus and enablers to take part.

Collaborative funding and Field Building in place-based work.

What Farming the Future demonstrates is the value an intermediary can play in building a movement that connects different actors with a shared ambition and a platform for funders to back an emerging and still disparate field. To access capital beyond major philanthropists with their own priorities and infrastructure, mission-led intermediaries like Farming the Future come with a deep understanding of and connection to the field and play a critical role in attracting new donors and different types of capital. Although they deploy funding and this is important, their identity is linked to the purpose rather than the process and to a broadly based movement of actors that includes but isn’t dominated by funders.

What can be learned from this in place-based practice is the value of creating funds where decision-making power is put in the hands of those with the best understanding of the levers of change and where there is a sense of common purpose. A pooled fund provides a vehicle for many different types of funders, including high-net-worth individuals who want to contribute to something meaningful but don’t have the infrastructure to achieve it. It shows the potential to shift the relationship between grantees and funders both by devolving decision making power to those doing the work and by making grantees part of managing as well as benefiting from the work. We see some of this in the way that funds like Kindred recycle social investment capital, with those receiving loans sharing responsibility for recycling capital to others in the community. Both models are about creating collective responsibility at a community-level and blurring the boundaries between grant-receiving and grant-making in a shared movement for change.

What it also shows is the value of voice and influence. The role Ambassadors play in Farming the Future both as part of the governance of the organisation and amplifying its reach and influence more widely, is a role that could be crafted for people in places who exemplify the opportunities for change and speak for the interests of the place. Farming the Future’s non-hierarchical approach opens up spaces for new types of roles that shift power and perspectives between actors. In much of place-based work we are trying to shift power to the community through partners that work in traditional hierarchies and limited roles and it is difficult to make radical changes when our ways of working are locked into institutional norms.