Annual Reviews

On the 5th of July 2025 we hosted our Annual General Meeting. This was an opportunity to launch our 2025 Annual report for the fiscal year running from the 1st of February 2024 to 21st January 2025. We also had the opportunity to discuss coming plans and receive feedback from our members.

We are sharing here the overview of the report, which you can download here. You can also find here a brief summary of the AGM. 

Overview

We at Edge Fund have continued our mission of supporting radical grassroots organisations that fall out of the scope of the traditional charity and philanthropic sector. We redistributed £40K to UK and Ireland based radical grassroots campaigns aiming to achieve systemic change and fight structural forms of injustice, and continued to involve our former grantees in a participatory model to ensure that our funds went to radical organising campaigns.

We started 2024/25 year closing the work related to our 2023 funding round FR15, providing feedback to unsuccessful groups and hosting debrief sessions to orient them on how to improve their applications. We hosted a Radical Sharing Forum on April 20, where grantees of the FR15 and previous funding rounds had the opportunity to meet and discuss different perspectives on the struggle for Palestinian liberation. We had the opportunity to hear from 3 of the 5 organisations that we supported in December 2023 with our emergency fund for Palestine. Let’s Talk Palestine, Parents for Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement (UK Chapter) shared their views on aspects of the resistance of Palestinian people that are not covered even by the left-wing press.

In Autumn of 2024 we ran our Funding Round 16 to distribute a total of £40K to grassroots organisations, passing more than £600,000 distributed in the 11 years we have been funding. We continued strengthening our internal structures to consolidate our position as an organisation that embraces radical political values at its core, as was initially intended when we were founded twelve years ago. This meant that the assessment of applications for the distribution of our funds was entirely carried out by past grantees with the coordination of our Regional Organiser and the Funding Working Group. We thus ensured that our participatory model continues to grow and be informed by the voices of our grantees-members. 

For a second year we only ran one funding round. This gave us space and time to improve both the planning and distribution of the funding, while we also strengthened our communications strategy, our internal structures and developed new initiatives for fundraising. Our Staff Working Group (SWG) continued supporting the work-planning of our regional organiser, temporary assistants and external service providers.  

Our policy in hiring staff is to take on part-time staff so they can also be activists. This also applies to Staffing Working Group members who are themselves grassroots organisers and are now also being compensated on an hourly basis for their work at the SWG (see report below). 

Other than making grants to small grassroots organisations, the Edge Fund has wider roles to play, including:

• Showing how grantmaking decisions can be made by grant-recipients, ie. those fighting injustices on their own behalf, and encouraging others to follow our example
• Growing a community of grassroots organisers to make our grantmaking decisions
• Nurturing a community of grassroots organisers to share experiences and learn from each other, especially through our “Radical Sharing Forum”.
• Providing information to grassroots organisations and movements on where to apply for grants other than from ourselves, primarily through our website resources page.
• Connecting with other funders and participatory grant-makers to consolidate a community of radical funders.
• Influencing the philanthropic and charity sectors by our example of radical participatory grantmaking. 

Read our full report with:

Updates from the Core Group and the Staffing Working Group, our Treasurer's report, and the Regional Organiser's summary of the Funding Round 16, as well as a report on our Crowdfunding efforts and the ongoing process of our fundraising strategy.  

On the 3rd of August 2024 we hosted our Annual General Meeting where we presented Edge Fund's annual report for the fiscal year running from the 1st of February 2023 to 21st January 2024. This was also an opportunity to discuss coming plans and receive feedback from our members. During the online meeting, we had the opportunity to reflect on past initiatives such as the emergency fund for Palestine and our Radical Sharing Forum dedicated to Palestinian liberation

We are sharing here the overview of the report, which you can download here.

Overview

In 2023-2024 Edge Fund continued with its mission of redistributing funds to UK and Ireland based radical grassroots campaigns aiming to achieve systemic change and fight structural forms of injustice. 

We started the year hosting a Radical Sharing Forum with the grantees of our 2022 Funding Round. It was an opportunity to learn from each other’s organising. 

In Autumn of 2023 we ran our Funding Round 15 to distribute a total of £597,000 in the 10 years we have been funding. This year we continued strengthening our internal structures to consolidate our position as an organisation that embraces radical political values at its core, as was initially intended when we were founded twelve years ago. 

In the earlier part of the year to the end of January 2024 Edge Fund paused funding in order to strengthen the structure of the organisation. We did this primarily through establishing a Staff Working Group (SWG) that supports the work of the two Regional Organisers in a clearer and more consistent way than what we were able to do in the past, still aiming to maintain a non-hierarchical approach in our own structures and working methods. See below for more details. 

Alongside that, we have increased our membership engagement in different Working Groups, particularly the Funding Working Group, which brings together diverse members to discuss and make decisions on how funds are distributed in each funding round. With the support of this group, we ran our funding round number 15 from October to December 2023, results are reported below. With a renewed Funding Working Group we are now in the process of preparing for our Funding Round 16 with the participation of grantees from our previous funding rounds.

In funding Round 15 we also allocated a special budget to support UK-based groups led by Palestinian people organising in solidarity with Palestine and against the genocidal practices ongoing in Gaza.

To ensure the future of Edge Fund we have plans to employ a third staff member to carry out fundraising and to maintain our financial records.

Our policy in hiring staff is to take on part-time staff so they can also be activists. This applies to Staffing Working Group members who are grassroots organisers and are now also being compensated on an hourly basis for their work at the SWG (see report below). 

Other than making grants to small grassroots organisations, the Edge Fund has wider roles to play, including:

• Showing how grantmaking decisions can be made by grant-recipients, ie. those fighting injustices on their own behalf, and encouraging others to follow our example.
• Growing a community of grassroots organisers to make our grantmaking decisions
• Nurturing a community of grassroots organisers to share experiences and learn from each other, especially through our “Radical Sharing Forum”.
• Providing information to grassroots organisations and movements on where to apply for grants other than from ourselves, primarily through our website resources page.
• Connecting with other funders and participatory grant-makers to consolidate a community of radical funders. Our Member Power Group supports this effort.
• Influencing the philanthropic and charity sectors by our example of radical participatory grantmaking.

Read the full report with:

The Core Group's updates

The Staffing Working Group' report

Summary of the Emergency Fund for Palestine

Treasurer's report

Our Regional Organiser's report on Funding Round 15

 

In 2022, we ran two funding round which granted £80,000 pounds to 80 groups. These grants continue to support the ongoing work that resists the systemic violence affecting communities. 

We also recruited a new Core Group with 4 new CG members joining the strategic team. 

Although we didn't conduct an in-person Radical Sharing Forum, we held virtual spaces for groups to meet, introduce themselves and collaborate

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In 2020 our society had to respond to the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic. We created the Covid-19 Emergency Fund and the Rapid Response Fund, adapting our funding methods to allow the grants to be paid quickly when they were most needed. We adapted to enable Edge to continue to carry out its objectives whilst working remotely. In 2020 and 2021 we continue our work strengthening our internal organisation, making the decision to work with an external facilitor to carry out an internal review in March 2021. At the end of the financial year the society made the decision to work with Pastel to overhaul and improve the website.

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In 2019 we continued our work funding grassroots groups, influencing other funding bodies and strengthening our internal organisation. We secured a large grant from the Lankelly Chase Foundation which helped us to reach our target of two funding rounds in the year. We continued to engage more members in the work of the Edge Fund through involving them in scoring applications and establishing more working groups.

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2018 was a year of consolidation and growth for Edge Fund, as we continued our work funding grassroots groups, influencing other funding bodies, and doing much needed internal development. We hit our target of two funding rounds in the year, and continued work on integrating our funding model more closely with the groups we fund, allowing them through inviting the to become members of Edge Fund. It was also a challenging year as we lost a Regional Organiser and were understaffed for four months. Despite this, we welcomed our new RO and some changes to the Facilitating Group as well as the energy of new members.

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This was a year of strategising for Edge Fund as we explored new proposals for how we give out grants (long-term and emergency) and reviewed our financial position and fundraising to take the organisation into a more sustainable place. We also reviewed our participatory grant giving model and looked for ways to ensure we are engaging activists and people working on the front lines of grassroots organising.

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