Three Uncomfortable Truths Grassroots Movements need Funders to Understand 

By Evie Muir

When I founded Peaks of Colour in 2020, a lot of the initial advice I received was centred around the amount of funding we could access if only we moulded ourselves into an organisation that would be appealing to funders. Having worked in the charity sector – or as INCITE! defines it, the ‘Non-Profit Industrial Complex’ – for over ten years, I was sceptical about following that kind of advice. I understood how easy it was for organisers to lose their radical agency the more they became dependent on institutional support. So, one of the first tasks was to root ourselves in strong values and principles. With an openness to our positionality changing and evolving over time, we established our needs, our boundaries, and our points of negotiation. Central to this was the question of who we would and wouldn’t accept funding from. Organisations are expected to constantly contort themselves into uncomfortable postures to meet the ever-changing requirements of a funder, but we refused to do this and proceeded to turn down money from those who had not met our criteria instead.  

Organisations are expected to constantly contort themselves into uncomfortable postures to meet the ever-changing requirements of a funder, but we refused to do this and proceeded to turn down money from those who had not met our criteria instead.  

This was a risky experiment, but we have been able to evidence that it is possible to resource our work in ways that feel right for us. Since Peaks of Colour came to be, the landscape of funding has also shifted. One such groundbreaking example is when, in 2023, Lankelly Chase recognised its role in maintaining what they named as ‘a traditional philanthropy model entangled with Colonial Capitalism’, and pledged to wholly redistribute their assets to organisations doing life-affirming social justice work. Though many funders are trying to do things differently and are creatively exploring decolonial approaches to systems change, in contrast, many remain inflexibly loyal to an outdated model. The implications of this for grassroots movements like ours is that despite a strong sense of organisational self, these tumultuous waters will always feel unavoidably difficult to navigate. Rarely are organisations able to honestly communicate our needs in this process. Below, I attempt to do just that, in the hopes that if seen and heard by funders, they may plant seeds of change which will allow our movements to truly flourish.  

I have friends whose annual salary is greater than our organisational salary. 

Ask any racial justice activist and we’ll say we don’t do this work for the money. Our motivations are driven by both a lived experience of and a witnessing of injustice as a normalised part of our existence, coupled with an unquenchable knowing that an alternative way of being is not only possible, but entirely achievable. The reality however is that doing grassroots community work – particularly in a cost of living crisis – comes at an almost incalculable cost for organisers as individuals. One impact of this is that we are disproportionately more likely to experience burnout in this work – and when we burnout, our movements die with us.  

As a founder of an organisation dedicated to exploring alternative routes to healing and justice for racialised communities, I often come to pause and consider the emotional, physical and financial impact this work continues to have on me. It is normal for me to assume multiple roles at once; the creative director, the project manager, the media and comms lead, the fundraising officer, the community engagement officer and more besides. Yet my salary reflects that of a part time paper round. In any other work this would be unethical, potentially even illegal. Coming to the realisation that your friends who do not work in movement spaces are on salaries almost double that of your organisational income is perhaps one of the only quantifiable points of comparison.  

We as organisers are continuing to navigate due to a philanthropic sector which encourages martyrdom, urgency, paternalism and savourism

As sobering a realisation as this is, I say this not to advocate for a more capitalist approach to funding. Rather it is to simply name the unsustainable complexities we as organisers are continuing to navigate due to a philanthropic sector which encourages martyrdom, urgency, paternalism and savourism. Coupled with a lack of confidence around financial literacy, this leaves many founders like myself sacrificing our own security and personal needs for the sake of the organisation and wider community. The evidence of this scarcity is screaming out of our budget lines, but very few funders notice, nevermind say “we’ve identified you should be paying yourself more, let us help.”  

If we do not secure core, long term funding we will have no choice but to close shop.  

It is with the above in mind that I have had to resign myself to the fact that, if we are not able to secure core, long term funding, the likelihood of Peaks of Colour disintegrating into nothingness is extremely high. One of our organisational principles is to ‘practice abundance’, where we embody the anti-capitalist truth that there is enough for everyone. But admittedly when receiving two years’ worth of funding in 2023, the first thought that came to mind was sadly “but what will we do in 2025?”  

Since receiving this funding I have since had to reckon with my own experiences of burnout and the physical and emotional toll of this work. The truth is that I simply do not have the capacity, the energy or the fight within me to endure another round of funding applications – I am not yet over the exhaustion of the last one – nor are we able to afford to outsource this support. I’m not the only one who feels this way. In fact many of the racial justice collectives we consider our comrades, have announced their imminent closure in recent years, with over-working and under-resourcing routinely cited as two of the most common contributing factors.  

Black Feminist writer Toni Morrison said “the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being”

We should be being resourced to dream of and imagine generations into the future where our present work has been able to have impact. Many organisers like myself however struggle to see beyond the stifling limitations of project-based funding or a fixed term contract. Black Feminist writer Toni Morrison said “the function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being”, and we can understand this current model as doing exactly that: keeping us repeatedly justifying the need for our work to funders who have the power to determine our value. Meanwhile, core, long term funding remains the universally consistent and unwavering ask.  

We don’t want to do this work forever, and so we need funders to resource our own abolition. 

My next point may feel contradictory to my former, but let me first make a distinction. An organisation being forced to end their work prematurely, due to systems beyond their control rendering their work so harmful it becomes unsustainable, is not the same as an organisation being supported and encouraged to dream of a world where they have been so successful in their work that their efforts are no longer needed.  

In my upcoming book, Radical Rest, I explore this using the Violence Against Women and Girls sector – where I previously worked supporting Black and queer survivors of domestic abuse –  as a case study. The mainstream VAWG sector’s origin story is one rooted in an anti-carceral politic, which saw movements in direct opposition to a violent, patriarchal state. It is my opinion that the landscape of funding has played a huge part in creating the sector we now know. One which, instead of campaigning and fighting for the eradication of gendered violence, has become complicit in systems of policing and harm due to their dependence on the state.  

This is precisely why, when building Peaks of Colour, I was conscious to avoid the non-profit industrial complex model for our organisational structure. I strive to hold on to the hope that one day our work will not be needed. That we will have built a society where gendered and racialised violence is eradicated and that across the world both people and planet are healing from their mutual traumas. In order to actualise this, we need funders to understand that our own abolition is the true mark of success. New possibilities for this work will grow when funders commit to support that spans decades, asking: How will you know when your work is no longer needed? How can we support you to get there? How do you envision your work to evolve over time? How do we navigate the inevitable ways funding must also shift in line with this evolution? And, who would you like to become, when you are not defined by this work?  

I strive to hold on to the hope that one day our work will not be needed. That we will have built a society where gendered and racialised violence is eradicated and that across the world both people and planet are healing from their mutual traumas.

Evie Muir is a nature writer and founder of Peaks of Colour – a Peak District-based nature for healing, grassroots community group, by and for people of colour – whose work sits on the intersections of gendered, racial and land justice. As a Northern writer and organiser based in Sheffield, Evie is interested in writing as a form of healing and resistance. Their debut book, ‘Radical Rest’, explores Black Feminist, Abolitionist and nature-allied approaches to activist burn out and was published by Elliot & Thompson in July 2024.