Small Movements, Big Change

Why this matters

Grassroots movements are filling critical gaps that formal charities and NGOs cannot - offering authentic community voice, political freedom, and a focus on systemic change over service delivery. Yet the funding system is structurally designed to exclude them. Understanding what movements do, why they form, and what gets in their way is essential for funders who want to support the kind of social change that mainstream philanthropy consistently misses.

What we found

Movements bring four capabilities that formal institutions struggle to replicate: leadership by those with lived experience of the issue; rapid responsiveness without bureaucratic approval processes; explicit political freedom unconstrained by charity regulations; and a focus on systemic change rather than service delivery. Despite these strengths, they face acute funding challenges - not just a lack of money, but exclusion from relationship-based systems that privilege existing social capital and Global North connections. Small teams managing multiple micro-grants fall into a ‘capacity trap’, while many rely on unpaid labour that leads to burnout. Case studies in the report include Patriotic Millionaires UK (which helped abolish non-dom tax status, raising over £2bn a year for the UK government), Autosafety Uganda (which trained 1,500 informal mechanics and shaped national road safety regulation), and Climate Justice Africa (which trained African youth spokespeople to influence UN climate negotiations on a budget of less than £25,000).

What it means for funders

Supporting movements requires funders to adapt in three concrete ways: prioritising relationship-first engagement over lengthy paperwork; providing long-term flexible funding rather than project grants; and trusting community leadership rather than imposing traditional accountability frameworks. The Movements Trust model - acting as fiscal sponsor and regranter - offers a practical route for funders who want to reach informal and unregistered groups without taking on direct legal or reputational risk. The report argues that with better-designed support, sustained over time, movements are positioned to achieve outsized impact relative to their size.