This post was first published in Alliance Magazine on 28 May 2025, written by Laurence Meyer, Nino Ugrekhelidze, Salmana Ahmed, élysse marcellin and Cassie Denbow.
In October 2024, Weaving Liberation convened 60+ people to participate in the first Digital Liberation Retreat.
The retreat took place against the backdrop of an intensification of systemic violences, with the authoritarian turn of governments globally and instrumentalisation of repressive legislations against social justice organising.
With the unfolding political shifts increasingly limiting possibilities to safely move money to grassroots movements, the retreat re-affirmed the urgency of feminist funding principles to go beyond money, and invest in holistic security, mutual aid systems and movement infrastructure.
The retreat helped us identify the acute need, for many groups present, to organise in consequence and in coordination. The space enabled a clearer mapping of needs and early solutions as well as planning for scenarios that may result from the ongoing political turbulence. We also reflected that the grant funding for this retreat, could have been put towards the costs of buying a permanent space to be used on an ongoing basis, by multiple groups, to cultivate similar experiences. We began to imagine a collectively owned and governed movement space – physical solidarity infrastructure – that transcends one-off grants. This conversation evolved over the course of our time at the retreat and the ‘Solidarity Infrastructures’ collective was born.
As an informal collective composed of intermediary funders, artists, researchers and activists, we aim to mobilise our different resources to challenge the dependency cycles we all, at different levels, find ourselves in. One key objective is to work towards the collective ownership of land in Europe and West Africa governed by local groups. We envision these places will become ‘refuges for affirmative visions’ in a context where refuges and visions for liberatory futures are both sorely needed. It is also an opportunity to bring to life what we are calling for now, ‘sibling city solidarity’, acknowledging the different freedom of movement dynamics for activists in Europe and Africa, and the need for more sustained approaches to solidarity building between regions.
While physical spaces are an indispensable resource at the foundation of all human rights and justice efforts – philanthropy rarely funds these.
Our collective understands its core role as building solidarity infrastructures. This means preparing for the worst-case scenarios – when moving money is close to impossible, when organisations are forced to wind-down, when people need to flee countries, or when people are sick or burnt-out etc.- while also building to enable and sustain liberatory futures. We know these are not new ideas and a priority for us is to connect and learn from others. The 2025 EDGE Conference presented a timely opportunity to bring this conversation to other intermediary funders, private foundations and movement partners – and so the idea for our session: ‘What do we leave behind when the grant ends? Building solidarity and breaking philanthropic dependency’ came to life.
Sustainable resourcing for movements: what do people know, want and need?
Co-facilitated by Weaving Liberation, Dalan Fund, Whose Knowledge? and Numun Fund, the session was designed to explore sustainable resourcing models and map examples and practices. It also intended to introduce people less familiar with the topic to what is being done, and what may be possible, as we collectively reimagine what resourcing movements needs to look like now and over the next 5-10 years. We reflected on questions including, what alternative resourcing models exist, what needs in our movements or portfolios are not being met, and what institutional assets (e.g., land, an endowment, technical expertise, integrated capital etc.) can be leveraged to meet those needs. Some of the high-level themes that emerged included:
- Resourcing is about enabling peer solidarity. Participants indicated that sharing of organisational infrastructures between groups such as finance and operations, communications, subscriptions and licenses would be useful. Peoples’ time, skills and expertise, supporting linguistic translations of knowledge, and care and mental health support were also identified as critical ways of supporting each other, especially when financial resources are scarce. People also discussed practices around capacity-building on budgeting, finance, planning, fiscal rules etc. as a means of building the autonomy of groups. A concrete example shared of peer solidarity was that of a marginalised feminist group in Eastern Europe using a grant to purchase an office space which they then shared with other feminist groups. Another example was the ‘fundo politico’, allocating a portion of funds to be shared between organisations to help when times were hard.
- Resourcing is about enabling income generation. An obvious way for organisations to break dependency with philanthropy and secure resilient financial and operational footing is to generate enough income to autonomously resource their activities. Shared examples include a human rights centre that set up a restaurant business to sustain their non-profit work, and of income-generating cooperatives in India facilitated by a private foundation supporting unions to support the administrative and legal aspects of the cooperatives. Several participants also shared the challenges of income generation, with many foundations unable to support income-generation, or legal restrictions that make it difficult or impossible to engage in income-generation while holding a non-profit purpose. People also shared that training on developing business models is often needed but rarely available and noted the lack of spaces sharing best practice and learnings from similar efforts.
- Resourcing is about supporting land justice. As one participant shared: ‘capital does not mean the same thing in Indigenous territories, where land, human capital, systems of values and principles are all resources essential to informing how people engage in enterprise.’ The just redistribution of resources means supporting the stewardship of land by Indigenous communities. While physical spaces are an indispensable resource at the foundation of all human rights and justice efforts – philanthropy rarely funds these. There was consensus in the room that groups being able to own property is actually a game-changer in enabling them to organise and advance their work.
Many more ideas and reflections were raised, and the conversations firmly indicated a shared sense of urgency in radically reimagining the role of philanthropy, and ways of partnering with movements that build the resilience of social justice organising beyond the end of grants. As we continue to advance our plans for collectively owned and governed community spaces, we want to connect with other groups and funders working on similar initiatives, so please reach out!
Laurence Meyer is a Black feminist based in Berlin. She is the co-director of Weaving Liberation, an entity dedicated to resourcing and supporting digital justice organising in Europe.
Nino Ugrekhelidze is a feminist resource justice advocate from Tbilisi, Georgia. She is the Lead of Dalan Fund, an activist-led fund that resources Central and Eastern Europe, Caucasus, and Central and North Asia.
Salmana Ahmed is a feminist resource justice advocate based in London, UK. She is co-director of Weaving Liberation, an entity dedicated to resourcing and supporting digital justice organising in Europe.
Cassie Denbow is a feminist resource mobilizer and reparations organizer from Cleveland, USA. She is the Resources & Reparations Co-Lead at Whose Knowledge?, a global campaign to centre the histories, knowledges, leadership, and imaginations of the minoritised majority of the world on the internet.
élysse marcellin is a Black, queer feminist based in Trinidad & Tobago. They are the Co-Lead of Resources and Reparations at Whose Knowledge?, where they co-conspire with allies to dream up more reparatively resourced futures.