Guest article from Orla O'Connor,

Executive Director of St Stephen's Green Trust

When asked about recent funding of their work, one of our grantee partners said something that has stayed with me. Reflecting on what made their work possible, they put it simply: "All of our organisations, we have no clout. But what we have is people power." This is a concise description of what participatory democracy runs on - and a useful challenge to funders about what we are really being asked to support. There is no shortage of people in Ireland who want to engage in democracy, nor a shortage of organisations working hard to make engagement meaningful. However, we have learned that there is a shortage of funding and funders focused on strengthening democracy as an explicit goal, and the work that this entails for civil society. During 2023 and 2024, St Stephen's Green Trust (SSGT) ran a grant programme on Strengthening Democracy through Civic Engagement and Participation, supporting eight initiatives across the island. We worked with our colleagues in Social Change Initiative (SCI) to gather learning from the programme, and what we learned has shaped how we think about resourcing this work. Sharing these lessons may encourage other funders to think differently about what and how they fund.

Democracy funding needs to name itself

There is very little funding in Ireland specifically dedicated to participatory democracy. This includes work such as co-designing solutions that centre the experiences of marginalised communities, advocacy and civic education, community organising, and developing deliberative processes such as assemblies. Organisations working in this space - particularly in Northern Ireland, where democracy work is frequently folded into outdated peacebuilding frameworks - told us that having a funder explicitly name democratic participation as a goal was itself significant. It validated the work they were doing or wanted to do. It created permission to prioritise democracy strengthening alongside other social justice objectives, rather than treating it as a byproduct. This matters because the language we use shapes what gets funded and what gets left out. When democracy work gets absorbed into other funding streams, it tends to lose its political edge - the bit that asks who holds power and how that can change. Funders who care about democratic participation should say it out loud.

Trust takes longer than your timeline allows

Almost every project we supported told us some version of the same thing: genuine participation requires sustained relationship-building, and most funding timelines do not allow for it. One of our grantees spent 18 months in development before their network was ready to do the work we had originally funded. We recognise this as a design challenge that many funders - including us - have not always got right. When we ask organisations to reach communities who have traditionally been excluded, we are asking them to do something that cannot be rushed. A short pilot project may barely be sufficient to establish the relationships on which meaningful participation depends.

Resource the organisation, not just the project

When funders ask organisations to do something genuinely new to pilot an approach, test a model, reach a community they have not worked with before - the resource required is not just for delivery. It is for building the internal capacity, processes, and relationships that make delivery possible. Several projects in our programme were asked to do things that sat outside their usual way of working. In the cases where this went well, it was because the funding freed up staff time and organisational capacity, not only project costs. Without that investment in the organisation itself, we may be setting pilots up to underdeliver. That is a shared challenge for funders and grantees alike.

Small grants can do big things, if they fund the right work

One of the clearest findings from our programme was the multiplier effect of well-targeted seed funding. One grantee leveraged an initial grant into follow-on funding three times its size. Another used a small grant to establish a cross-border network that had simply never existed before, despite years of shared values and existing relationships between the organisations involved. Small grants can have outsized impact when they fund the work that traditional funding models may struggle to support: relationship-building, advocacy, network development, cross-border connection. Seed funding that creates space for this work - which does not tend to produce neat outputs on short timescales - can be the most strategic investment a funder can make.

What SSGT is committed to doing differently

These lessons are not abstract for us in SSGT. They are directly shaping our new Rooting Active Democracy Grant programme and our approach to supporting a vibrant and connected civil society. We are building in longer timelines to allow genuine relationship-building before delivery begins. We are funding organisational capacity, not just project costs. And we are maintaining an explicit focus on democratic participation as a goal in its own right. We are also trying to be honest about what funders owe to the organisations they ask to take risks. We do not think we have fully resolved the tension between what good democracy funding requires and what standard grant structures make easy. Questions about multi-year resourcing, evaluation that values relationship-building, and how to fund connectivity in the sector rather than individual projects - these are live questions for us, not settled ones.

The sector is not short of good practice. What it needs is sustained support and a genuine relationship with funders that can turn isolated successes into something more systemic. That shift will not happen without funders being willing to examine their own role - including the timelines they set, the costs they will cover, and whether what funders ask of grantees reflects a genuine understanding of how democracy work actually happens. SSGT welcomes connection with funders thinking about these same questions. The people power is already there. The funding infrastructure to support strengthening our democracy is still being built.

St Stephen's Green Trust is an all-island social justice grant maker, working to strengthen groups and communities effecting social change. To find out more visit: www.ssgt.ie