In June 2026, we brought together funders, practitioners and community leaders for London Funders’ Festival of Learning. Over two weeks, the programme included panels, workshops, online sessions, place-based visits, a film screening and even an escape room. It was a chance to share learning, challenge assumptions and explore new ideas with colleagues from across the funding community.
This year’s Festival was organised around three questions that are shaping conversations across the sector:
- What does it take to strengthen justice, solidarity and social cohesion at a time of rising division, economic uncertainty and declining trust?
- How do we build genuine community wealth and power in a new age of devolution?
- How do we create a funding ecosystem that is more connected, data-driven and collectively responsive to what communities need?
This page brings together learning from across these three strands. You’ll find learning summaries capturing key insights, challenges and opportunities from each strand, as well as reflections from funders and changemakers who hosted Festival sessions.
Whether you joined us in June or are exploring the Festival for the first time, we hope these resources offer fresh perspectives, practical insights and inspiration for your work.
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“Having a funder, a partner, a relationship where you can go and ask for help—that’s really transformational.”
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"Investing in resilience before division [and] crisis is key"
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“Those who live in communities and experience issues first-hand should have a meaningful role in deciding how resources are used to create change.”
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"Funders need to become ecosystem builders, to build the environment that enables power and wealth to be fairly distributed."
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“Funders need to be flexible with their metrics for measuring change.”
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“We need to move away from just resourcing individual organisations to resourcing the relationships and the connective tissue that exists between organisations and movements.”