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Involving communities in making grant-making decisions using Civic Say

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Camden Giving is an independent charity working to end local poverty and inequality in Camden.

Use this Guide if you're looking for ways to improve your grant-making decisions. And if you want to give community members involved in these decisions access to better, and more nuanced, information. The Guide highlights the importance of being clear about what you need from a tool, and how to help people use it.

Jump to steps
Key software:
Civic Say
How they set it up:
Developers built or adapted it for us
Setup costs:
No upfront costs. Part of a pilot, so Camden Giving didn’t have to pay.
Ongoing costs:
£100 per month
Guide in use since:
March 2024

Steps to using Civic Say to help making funding decisions

Review the process you use to make decisions about who you award funding to, and include the tools that you use. List what could be improved.

It might help to make a journey map.

Questions to ask include:

  • do you have a sense of how staff and decision makers feel throughout the process?

  • how meaningful is the decision making time that everyone spends together?

  • are all the voices in the room being heard equally? (If there isn’t a tool supporting process some people can become overrepresented because they’re loudest)

  • is the order that applications are assessed impacting the outcome?

  • are there times when the level of consensus or decision-making lacks clarity?

  • how easy is it to report back on how a decision’s been made?

Camden Giving is a participatory funder based in the London Borough of Camden. It believes that local people who are impacted by how spending is allocated should decide how money is spent. So it prioritises shifting power to panels of local residents who then meet to make decisions about grant applications. This makes sure that people with lived experience are involved in deciding what projects are awarded funding.

In the past, Camden Giving used Slido and spreadsheets to help with grant-making decisions. But Slido wasn’t flexible enough – it didn’t show the nuances of people’s voting. And using a spreadsheet wasn’t ideal because:

  • the organisation got limited information from it

  • it wasn’t easy to hand the spreadsheet over to someone else

  • the numbers in it had to be checked and rechecked

  • when people needed to abstain from certain applications it would skew scores, so a different calculation was needed

Also, having to fill in the spreadsheet during funding panel meetings made it harder for staff to take part in conversations about applications.

Camden Giving also spotted recurring patterns that flagged up issues. For example, projects supporting women were routinely being underfunded.

It realised that its process was laborious and involved a lot of admin. This led it to wonder what a better version would look like.

You need to make sure that the tool you choose will work for the people you’re supporting, as well as for your organisation.

You can do this through user research. This includes:

  • carrying out interviews with staff and the people you support

  • sending out an online questionnaire or survey

  • observing how people use current tools (is there anything they struggle with?)

  • asking people to share feedback

  • noting questions and concerns that people share

Many panel members hadn’t been involved in decision-making processes before, especially funding decisions. So they tended to accept the existing process without questioning it.

As well as shifting power to panel members, Camden Giving wanted to make sure they had as much relevant and nuanced decision-making data, as possible. So it found out about their needs in a couple of different ways:

  • through its new panel member onboarding process. This includes asking questions about any additional needs and how best it can support panel members.
  • through observing and listening to panel members in funding meetings.

For example, panel members mentioned that they needed a way to capture their thoughts throughout meetings, not just at the end. And that they’d like to vote after reading each application, while information was fresh in their minds.

List what you need your tool to be able to do. Be clear about which of these things are essential, and which are nice to have.

Make sure that your accessibility, privacy and security needs are on your list too.

Draw up a list of tools that could meet your needs.

Find out what support is provided by the companies selling the tools. Is there a help desk to help you troubleshoot if things go wrong? Is there a list of frequently asked questions on its site that cover common issues and problems?

NCVO has a guide to choosing digital tools.

Camden Giving were looking for specific things in a tool. It wanted:

  • functionality that met panel members’ accessibility needs

  • features that helped panels to make decisions, instead of reducing their autonomy by making the decision for them

  • a scale of voting that graded panel members’ level of support for an application, rather than a binary yes or no

  • the ability to tag applications. Because it was keen to see trends in how much different types of applications were supported

  • real time results so there was no lag slowing down the process

It also wanted a way to record trends and biases in people’s voting. For example, are young people voting for projects focused on young people? Does who’s leading the project that’s applying for funding influence decisions? Can people living in northern areas of the borough empathise with the needs of people from the south? And vice versa.

Other considerations included ease of access for panel members without an email address, internet access and a phone. Because not everyone has easy or consistent access to them.

Civic Say was built for grant-making organisations like Camden Giving. It was an existing tool that addressed a need the team had that wasn’t being met by Slido. And it had most of the features that Camden Giving was looking for.

Other features that would have been useful to Camden Giving were connecting panellists' demographic data (for example, their age and gender) with their voting history. Civic Say doesn't do this, and there aren't other voting tools that do this either.

You’ll need to demo your tool to make sure everyone understands what it does. And how it works.

You might want to show:

  • how to navigate it

  • the instructions

  • any parts that might be unclear or confusing 

Camden Giving arranged a demo to show how Civic Say works. Everyone in their staff team who facilitates, or participates in, regular panel meetings took part. And staff who meet with former panellists took part too.

This meant the organisation got a better understanding of what using Civic Say would be like for panel members. And how easy it was for staff to access analytics and datasets.

During the demo staff came up with ideas for extra functionality. For example, having tags to help generate data about applications from different types of organisations.

After the demo, there was an onboarding call to get everyone that needed access set up on the platform.

Then there was another short demo with the person who would be using the platform during the panel meetings.

Being clear about exactly how and when the new tool is going to be used is important. This is because people have different levels of comfort and familiarity with tech.

For example, they may feel confident with digital tools and platforms that they’re used to. But intimidated by technology they haven’t used before. They may also feel nervous about privacy and how their data’s going to be used and stored.

You’ll also need to allocate time to help people to practise using the new tool.

Camden Giving allowed a lot of time to help panel members learn to navigate and use Civic Say. This included holding a mock session so that they could have a chance to try it out before using it in real decision making.

In the mock session Camden Giving’s Head of Grants read through examples of funding applications from previous years. The panel practiced assessing them and reviewing the budgets. They then voted on the applications. This gave them a chance to familiarise themselves with the voting tool.

Further information