Stories so far

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Enquiries

Central to how we work is listening to people and using those insights to inform what and how we frame things, how we invest and who we build relationships with.


Rebalancing Economies

For our first round of funding the focus was on the role that economies and financial markets have on delivering greater social equity and environmental sustainability. In partnership with Ten Years Time we embarked on an eight-month research process to better understand the space and the issues affecting it. Three key areas of interest emerged:

  • New models for accounting, governance and analysing risk.

  • New systems of value creation, wage redistribution and corporate and investor behaviour that encourage long-term thinking and fairness.

  • Responsible land use for agriculture and food production.

Following our call out, we received 70 nominations, and with the support of a community of funders and others working in the space, we agreed to partner with 10 organisations. 

This initial inquiry also led us to create the Leaders Fund, now called the Changemaker Trust Fund, to enable us to support three individuals working in the new economics space.

Interdependence Festival

During the summer of 2019, we explored what does a climate just future look like. This inquiry led us to host the Interdependence festival in November 2019, curated by Farzana Khan and Lena Mohamed. Over two days at Toynbee Hall in London, friends and colleagues were invited to come together to listen, learn, vision and action in “Climate Just” Futures. At the heart were the solutions and strategies of black, brown, lived-experience leaders, thinkers, innovators, activists, and artists working on Climate Justice from a systemic and frontline positioning.

Photo credit: Rider Shafique

Gloucestershire Place-based Initiative

Wanting to explore what impact could be achieved by concentrating funding, knowledge, and expertise in one location, the team spent nine months visiting Gloucestershire, to gain a better understanding of the needs of the different communities, building relationships and understanding how we were best placed to help.

Two key areas of interest emerged:

  • Supporting young people

  • Cultivating food security

Following the call out, we received 89 proposals and with the support of a community panel, who led the shortlisting process, we agreed to partner with 13 organisations and to support one Changemaker.

Reimagining Investments

Since December 2018, when Thirty Percy Foundation was founded, we had operated with a responsible investment policy that required investments to be made consistent with a just transition. However, during the Covid-19 pandemic, it was brought sharply into focus the failings of this approach. Whilst the world was gripped by a crisis that highlighted and exacerbated injustices and inequalities, our responsible investment portfolio increased in value by almost 30%. This higher return clearly demonstrated to us how our economic and financial systems have been constructed to purely serve the accumulation of capital, rather than the wellbeing of all people, communities, and our planet.

In early 2021, with guidance from the team at Ten Years’ Time, we set out to explore what it might mean to fundamentally reimagine ‘investment’. We spoke to 25 experts from around the globe, who generously shared their knowledge, wisdom and insights, delving into thought-provoking, exciting and hopeful ideas for a reimagined world. In 2022 we adopted a new investment policy, where we view ‘investment’ not through a financial lens, but, as in the words of Tim Parrique, “an act of future-making” liberating financial capital to create ripples in pursuit of justice, regeneration, balance, care, equity and solidarity. 

Changemaker
Trust Fund

We provide direct and unrestricted grants from £70k to £150k to individuals over 2-3 years funding period. These grants are aimed at individual changemakers at different stages of their lifecycle and leadership.

Our methodology

The Changemaker Fund was established in 2018 recognising the impact one person with vision and drive can make. Although not the main focus of our funding at the time, we supported individuals who were working to change our current systems for a fairer and just society.

From our experience, we acknowledged that we needed to be more intentional with how we supported individuals and refreshed our strategy in the autumn 2023, to make the Changemaker Fund our main funding strand. To create funding models that sustain changemakers who are doing meaningful work in support of their communities.

In Spring 2024 and in collaboration with elder changemakers, we developed The Honouring Fund to acknowledge and celebrate our elders and their lifelong commitment to social change, by providing meaningful support to this community of individuals.

Our most recent funding round we collaborated with our changemakers and others interested in organisational support, to develop the Infrastructure Changemaker Fund, a cohort of changemakers who are reimagining and building the infrastructure that enables systemic change for liberated futures.

“This resource allowed me to feel freer than society allows.”

“The Fund has provided me with various tools – emotional, practical, cyclical – to operate from a place of abundance and, through it, expand, deepen, challenge, and break the moulds and structures of my organising.”

We plan to expand our network of changemakers, with a focus on feminine leadership, with explicit support of women, trans people, and women of colour.

Collaborations

We’ve catalysed and been part of a number of collaborations over the last few years. They are as invigorating as they are frustrating. For them to be successful, we have learnt they require care and always take longer than you anticipate. We’ll be sharing more learning from our funder led collaborations in 2024. 

Forest of Dean Climate Action Partnership

Continuing our commitment to Gloucestershire, in the Forest of Dean we are working in partnership with Forest of Dean District Council, PCAN and others on the Climate Action Partnership, giving much needed focus to climate transitions and civic participation in a rural, place-based context.

Resourcing Racial Justice

We supported the creation of the Resourcing Racial Justice Fund. A coalition of people of colour innovators, change makers, activists, artists and social leaders dedicated to social change. It established a new UK wide-funding pool to support individuals and communities working towards racial justice. A summary of lessons learnt will be available in early 2024.

Neighbourhood Transitions

In partnership with Dark Matter Labs and Civic Square, we’ve invested in a collaboration aimed at demonstrating community-led, neighbourhood-scale transitions. This collaboration ties into thinking around a public-civic partnership, holistic visions for place-based change that is regenerative and redistributive by design. The most recent manifestation was the 2023 Retrofit Reimagined Festival. 

Doughnut Economics Action Lab

Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL) acts as a knowledge creation, sharing and peer-to-peer learning platform for communities in neighbourhoods, towns, cities, (bio)regions and countries to help put the principles of Doughnut Economics into practice. Having initially funded DEAL’s founder, Kate Raworth, as a change maker in 2019, we have been developing a collective approach to resourcing and supporting DEAL, along with the organisation’s other funders - Partners for a New Economy, Laudes Foundation, TNLCF, and ALV Stiftung. Together the funders have collectively determined the quality of relationships we want to have with the DEAL team, agreed to place minimal reporting and other burdens on DEAL, and designed in collective accountability. The funders are now looking at long-term funding to 2030 of DEAL, as well as co-designing an ‘ecosystem fund’ to get resources out to those pioneering Doughnut Economics in their community, city, region or country.

Butler Sloss v Charity Commission 

Putting charitable purposes at the heart of investment decisions.
Thirty Percy Foundation supported the Ashden and Mark Leonard Trusts to bring their case to the high court to seek confirmation that their trustee boards were not going beyond their legal rights and responsibilities by aligning the trusts’ investment policies with their charitable purposes. This case sets the legal presidents for other boards looking to align their investments and decision making with their values.

Photo credit: Robin Morgan

Spiral Investing

Emerging from the Reimaging Investment enquiry we’ve developed an alternative investment logic that we’re calling Spiral Investing.

Overview

Moving beyond current endowment and responsible investment practice - Next Frontiers conference panel session from Jul 2022

What started as an initial enquiry into a suitable Investment Policy for Thirty Percy evolved into the development of an alternative investment approach and policy known as Spiral Investing.

We’ve struggled to know where to situate Spiral Investing this - as charitable foundation not looking to make returns. So we have come to see Spiral Investing as an alternative investment approach for wealth holders committed to redistributing their wealth, shifting away from patterns of excess accumulation. We’ll be sharing Spiral Investing more widely with wealth holders and the financial advisory community more broadly in 2024. 

Alongside this we’re exploring ‘Project Haven’, prototyping the support and peer groups for wealth holders to access the emotion and technical support they need to practically organise and govern their money. This work will start in 2024.

What it has done for Thirty Percy though is:

  • led us to move and hold our money in different places, including high street banks that are non- or low-earning,

  • provided a framing logic towards 'spirals' as a way for us to understand change and impact,

  • influenced and shaped the development of our Changemaker Trust Fund , seeing that as a ‘spiral’.

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