Charities in the driving seat

‘Charities in the driving seat’ shares the story of our first accountability process for funders signed up to our Open and Trusting Grant-making initiative: a call for funders to adopt eight commitments for Open and Trusting Grant-making practices.

When we launched Open and Trusting Grant-making in February 2021, we wanted it to be more than a set of commitments that people signed up to, and then ignored. This paper shares how we have brought this aspiration to life, the experiences of those involved, and what we found through holding funders to account in a process that had charities’ needs and voices at its heart.

This report is for charities and funders – both those who have been involved in the accountability process, and those who haven’t but are interested in the Open and Trusting initiative. We hope that it provides a level of clarity about what it means to be an Open and Trusting Grantmaker, as we grow the movement and focus more of everyone’s attention on the communities and causes they care about. We at IVAR also want to live by the commitments we are helping others to put into practice – by opening up the process and our findings for comment and question, and being accountable to those we seek to serve.