Funder Safeguarding Collaborative (FSC) is a group of grant-making organisations with a commitment to building a world where organisational cultures and practices keep people safe from harm. We work with FSC members to strengthen support for the organisations they fund, but also to encourage funders to look inward at their own capacity, cultures, and ways of working.
Housed by Global Fund for Children, we bring together members from across the world, with different thematic funding areas, around a common challenge: strengthening practices that keep people safe.
Responding to a crisis
Although it officially launched in 2021, the motivation behind FSC dates further back. 2018 saw a series of incidents that created a safeguarding crisis, which resulted in an inquiry by the UK government’s International Development Committee (IDC). The IDC report warned that the failure to prioritise safeguarding was one of the main obstacles to progress, and was one of the first reports to critically examine the role of funders in keeping people safe.
In response to this crisis, we convened a group of funders to share learning and discuss what was needed to strengthen safeguarding. We recognised that focusing on compliance with policies and procedures was not enough to keep people safe from harm, and in some cases the approach taken by funders could actually expose people to greater risk of harm.
Yet all resources on safeguarding focused on organisations who were delivering services, not their funders. Having identified this lack of funder-tailored safeguarding resources, Comic Relief, Global Fund for Children, The National Lottery Community Fund, Oak Foundation and Porticus came together to articulate this need and figure out how best to address it
With support from Elevate Children Funders Group, we conducted a study to begin to understand the unique, inherent challenges funders faced, and what support they needed to help keep people safe. This study, and our three years of funder connection and conversation, resulted in the creation of FSC and defining our three key priorities:
- to connect funders to each other and to resources on safeguarding
- to support best practice through training and advice, and
- to invest in strengthening safeguarding globally.
People were really interested in learning about what their peers are doing and found it reassuring to know they’re not alone in certain struggles and challenges
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A global community of practice
The response to FSC's launch reaffirmed the need for this initiative. Interest from funders far exceeded our expectations. People were really interested in learning about what their peers are doing and found it reassuring to know they’re not alone in certain struggles and challenges. By creating FSC, we've provided a space for funders to “leapfrog” some of these challenges, by building on the knowledge, solutions, and successes of their peers, rather than reinventing the wheel or feeling as though they have to start from scratch.
We really want to create safe spaces where funders can ask questions and talk honestly about their difficulties, as well as accessing support to overcome these. We bring funders together through webinars, community conversations and peer learning circles, so that they can share knowledge and common experiences. For members who need it, we can offer additional, more bespoke consultancy support. We also act as a conduit for pooled investment from members who wish to contribute to investing in a specific area.
We collect and document our conversations to continually build the knowledge base for the funding community. Although we have a library of resources to help funders, we know that there are many gaps in existing knowledge. While we accept that we don’t need to have all the answers now, we are committed to generating knowledge and learning as we go. We recently identified a knowledge gap on safeguarding within participatory grant-making, so we ran a webinar on this topic and have begun developing resources to fill this need.
Acknowledging funders' different capacities and the varied contexts in which they operate is central to our approach. We are building a team of regional advisors around the world and who are able to provide contextually relevant advice on strengthening organisational safeguarding in cultures and contexts where the term 'safeguarding' is not well-understood, or is understood differently. For example, we are currently undertaking work to identify and quality-assure consultants in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, who we can then recommend to members who want to support their grantees in other regions.
For the founding members, who were already on a journey of learning and convinced of the importance of safeguarding, FSC has further reinforced their commitment. Being part of a bigger collaborative with other funders helps to promote 'whole organisation' commitment to safeguarding, rather than it being just one person’s responsibility. For those have joined since we launched the collaboration last year, FSC offers a space and community to learn from each other and strengthen their approach with the support and understanding of others.
Looking forward, we hope to continue to grow the network, with new members joining all the time. We are also working to increase engagement with grantee organisations and the communities funders serve, so that we make sure we are listening to the sector and really understand what changes are making a difference.
Inspired to collaborate?
Explore the Hub to find the collaboration opportunities that relate to your interests as a funder.
