BD Giving Notes #10 – What makes our Investment Policy different
The primary objective of the portfolio is to invest the Community Endowment Fund and any financial returns, using a total impact approach, achieving financial, social and environmental impact. Less than a week before the launch of Barking and Dagenham Giving’s new Community-led Investment Policy at the House of Commons on 20 June, I wanted to […]
BD Giving Notes #9 – Leadership
We’ve all been given a chance to work together, by donors, trustees, circumstances, and the reason we’re sticking with it is because we believe we can make a difference. BD Giving has no purpose or existence without the trusted relationships that it’s made of, without the local community, and I believe interactions between colleagues should […]
BD Giving Notes #8 – What is social infrastructure and how can it help to build a cohesive and economically vibrant community?
This week, I wanted to reflect on the concept of social infrastructure. It’s a less known aspect of our work but one I believe is crucially important. Social infrastructure is a concept that is both elusive and contested. It is notoriously difficult to define, yet most voices across academia, the charity sector and government agree that the […]
BD Giving Notes #7 – The 3 enabling characteristics for participatory impact investment
What is the point of hoarding money in the face of social and environmental breakdown? Shouldn’t we instead invest it to support solutions that can help people, create jobs and move society towards a more virtuous relationship with our planet? As we ebb closer to the adoption of an investment policy for our Community Endowment […]
BD Giving Notes #6 – The ups and downs of building a great team
A coach once told me that if you have a well-functioning team – by which he meant a group of individuals who not only excel at their job but also work really well together – you should make the most of it because they never last. While the stakes are definitely pretty high if you […]
BD Giving Notes #5 – Towards a participatory Investment Policy
Time and time again, we see the people involved in our participatory grant making (PGM) process rise to the challenge, ask the right questions and make great decisions. These past few months, we’ve been working hard with our Community Steering Group to decide how and where to invest BD Giving’s Community Endowment Fund. As most […]
BD Giving Notes #4 – Working in partnership
Our role is to hold a space for others to step in and work together, including funders and donors, and we do believe that our experience in delivering participatory processes can help with this. In my notes from last week, the joys and challenges of partnership working, and an exhibition that fills me with pride. […]
BD Giving Notes – #3 The global and the local
As I head back to work following a much anticipated break, I’m feeling grateful for the chance to properly switch off from the daily challenges of running BD Giving, knowing that the organisation was in good hands with my fantastic colleagues. I’m perhaps even more grateful as it had been a while since I was […]
BD Giving Notes – #2
Bit of a different flavour for this one, partly because I’m currently on annual leave in Italy. So I have dug out some thoughts that I previously wrote in response to why we do what we do, which I think also ties up nicely with our new Learning & Participation strategy. When people ask me about […]
BD Giving Notes – #1
A new commitment At BD Giving, we spend a lot of time reflecting about our values, what they mean in practice and how these values impact our work. And while we tend to explicitly talk about those values in our communication, values like collaboration, inclusivity, and adaptability, others are more implicit. Amongst those implicit values […]
