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Capital is a powerful force that shapes outcomes, relationships, and systems. Community- and movement-centred finance is attracting attention as a promising alternative framework that confronts the inequities of capital consolidation and reimagines finance as a tool for resilience, autonomy, and structural change.
Rather than reinforcing dependency, this emerging approach offers a pathway to reduce vulnerabilities and reclaim power. Two definitions illustrate the heart of this evolving field:
- Community-centred finance: An approach to finance that is aware of and accountable for dynamics of power and bias at all stages of the investment process. (Criterion Institute)
- Social movement investing: An approach to capital allocation and governance that seeks to build community power by aligning with social movement-led finance strategies. (Center for Economic Democracy)
A number of social movement activists, funders, and intermediaries are increasingly examining how capital can be used more effectively and fairly in addressing inequalities. Through the Equality Impact Investing Project, we have been working to create the conditions that allow greater and more suitable capital to flow to efforts with the potential to transform deep-seated inequalities. This piece shares early insights from an exploration undertaken in collaboration with colleagues at the Lankelly Chase Foundation, grounded in desk research and over 30 interviews with people developing community-led investment models across the UK, the US, and Europe.
Ultimately, we aim to understand what a more equitable and sustainable model of resourcing for communities and social movements might look like, one where capital is not just distributed differently, but stewarded and governed in fundamentally new ways.
Key learnings
The limitations of dominant funding models
Conventional grantmaking has become a barrier to systemic change. The drip-feed of small, short-term grants, entrenched power imbalances, and time-consuming application processes all undermine the long-term development of community-led models. In the UK, this has been compounded by a decade of austerity and deepening inequality, which have eroded the civic fabric and weakened the social sector.
The funding field also suffers from a lack of imagination and courage in rethinking how capital is deployed, too often reinforcing existing systems rather than enabling transformative alternatives. Similar limitations exist within impact investing.
Alternative models in action
Across the UK, US, and Europe, a growing number of initiatives are advancing new forms of capital ownership, governance, and accountability. A snapshot of these initiatives (and this is by no means comprehensive) are offered here.
In the UK, Shared Assets, the Community Land Trust Network, The Ubele Initiative, and Hastings Commons are among those who are moving land, buildings, and other assets into community ownership. Stir to Action champions democratically owned businesses and Decolonising Economics supports a solidarity economy led by and for marginalised communities of colour. The Baobab Foundation and Project Tallawah enable Global Majority communities to collectively steward and redistribute resources. In April 2025, CIVIC SQUARE in Birmingham announced the purchase of its first building, a community-led space for neighbourhood-scale transition.
Participatory decision-making of social investments is also evolving. Barking & Dagenham Giving uses a community-led steering group; Trust for London‘s Vested programme empowers young people to make investment decisions and the Growth Impact Fund and Pathway Fund embed lived experience and racially minoritised leadership into investment governance.
UK field-builders and funders like Ten Years’ Time, the Good Ancestor Movement, Dark Matter Labs, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and the Blagrave Trust are among those helping to sustain and grow this ecosystem.
In the US the Boston Impact Initiative, REAL People’s Fund, Kataly Foundation, and Justice Funders run community-governed funds. Common Future and Justice Funders offer guidance and tools for the broader ecosystem. Adasina Social Capital designs its financial products in partnership with movements.
Although few foundations use their endowments to drive systemic change, a growing vanguard is leading the way. Chorus Foundation, Heron Foundation, Compton Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Dreilinden Foundation, Equality Fund, and Karibu Foundation are deploying endowment capital in transformative ways- engaging grantees in investment decisions; using bonds, community investments, and guarantees to unlock capital; and linking grantmaking with shareholder activism. ShareAction and As You Sow support foundations in using shareholder advocacy to influence corporate behaviour. Some funders are questioning whether capital should be held in perpetuity—or even whether foundations should exist at all. “Spending-up,” as reframed by the Compton Foundation, is seen as a strategic choice to be made with the communities foundations exist to serve. As the Chorus Foundation notes, a spend down that fails to address urgent needs or improve grantees’ relationship to philanthropy is merely a personal decision, not a just one.
Rooted in vision: Community wealth stewardship as systems change
At the heart of these emerging models lies a bold political-economic analysis that reimagines the relationship between people, capital, and power. In acknowledging the harm caused by dominant financial and economic systems, community-based finance offers both reparative tools and pathways for building new forms of wealth and collective power. Capital becomes a means for sustaining life-affirming infrastructures (see Healing Justice London), such as dignified housing, food and energy sovereignty, community-controlled technology and data, care, healing, and culture.
Developing wealth on fundamentally different terms means prioritising autonomy, shared ownership, and value rooted in community-defined well-being. Relational approaches and trust-building form the bedrock of community capital stewardship, where inclusive forms of governance and decision-making are anchored in community accountability. These range from fully democratic structures (e.g. Boston Ujima Project) to representative decision-making (e.g. REAL People’s Fund, Just Transition Integrated Capital Fund). They deploy innovative, non-extractive capital (0–3 percent loans, guarantees, blended finance) often spanning a decade or more, that shifts risk to capital-holders rather than communities, through accessible processes.
Community members are supported to build skills in asset management and investment decision-making. Those with existing expertise in finance also need to build new understandings of risk, value, accountability, and decision-making as defined by communities, rather than importing the default frameworks and practices of the current system of finance.
The concept of transitional capital recognises community wealth stewardship as part of a long-term shift toward an economy centred on well-being. These models act as prototypes for a just, regenerative system, even as they rely on capital from the structures they seek to transform. Using philanthropic wealth as a bridge to a less extractive future is a necessary trade-off, requiring flexible, patient capital from foundations and other wealth-holders, since non-extractive models are rarely sustainable within current economic conditions.
Where next? Building the conditions for transformation
This emerging field of community- and movement-led capital stewardship holds great potential. For it to thrive, several conditions are essential:
- Community and movement groups leading new approaches to capital stewardship grounded in systemic change.
- A connected ecosystem where actors play distinct but complementary roles toward a shared vision of alternative resourcing.
- A pipeline of investees rooted in communities and movements, aligned with broader goals of liberation and just transition.
- Capacity building focused on non-extractive finance and investment practices.
- Intermediaries with both technical and non-extractive finance expertise, providing investment, legal, and infrastructure support.
- Enabling political, economic, cultural, and legal conditions—or at least the removal of barriers to these efforts.
- Capital providers (foundations, family offices, investors, public funds) willing to integrate long-term grant, investment, and endowment funding, and to redefine their relationship to capital and power.
These models offer not just fairer distribution of capital but a more effective route to equality. By putting capital in community hands and investing in the real economy, they build local wealth, housing, and dignified work, narrowing wealth gaps and strengthening resilience. Now is the time to back them.
With gratitude to all those who shared their insights throughout the course of this exploration.
Rana Zincir Celal works as a strategic advisor within the philanthropy sector, and as a director at Equality Impact Investing.