A great place to start is with NEON’s thoughtful and accessible Structure and operations toolkit. It walks you step by step through everything you need for the day-to-day running of your organisation, including legal, finance, policies and fundraising.
Practical tools
Movement Building
Training
Sustaining your organisation
Culture and care
Internal communication
Collaboration
Strategy and tactics
Lobbying and advocacy
Direct action
Community organising
Public campaigns
Digital campaigns
Working together (HR)
Rad HR is a UK organisation rewriting HR for social change organisations. They develop policies and processes on all the ‘nuts and bolts’ issues - anything from sickness policy to pay structures which challenge oppression and inequality.
The Resource Centre has compiled a set of policies and procedures on topics ranging from financial management to safeguarding.
An important skill for activists to master is dealing with conflict. The Commons Library’s Guide to cooperative conflict resolution will get you started. Governance
Governance is about how to organise decision-making to achieve your goals. Here are some resources to help cut through the jargon and create and maintain the structure that’s right for you.
A good place to start is The Resource Centre’s guide to getting a group started. They also outline the responsibilities of governing bodies and the different forms they might take.
My Community’s guide to governance is written with both charities and community groups in mind.
For a deep dive into rethinking traditional governance models. Beyond the Rules have put their thinking and research on new models for ‘many-to-many’ governance into the public domain. It’s great for provoking new thoughts once you’ve got your head round the basics. Legal
What legal form should your organisation take? Are you an informal membership group? A co-operative? A not-for-profit? An unincorporated association? If your answer is ‘I don’t know!’ then a good place to start is the Resource Centre’s Information on Legal Structures which lays out the options for community and voluntary groups. Their RouteMap walks you through a set of questions to guide you to the legal structure that is right for you.
Social Change Nest has supported hundreds of grassroots groups to access funding, infrastructure and admin support. You can contact them directly for bespoke support.
Simply Legal has free resources and guidance for cooperatives.
If your work might include protest, Liberty provides a useful guide to your rights to protest.
If you are in need of legal support, Law Works offers pro bono support to individuals and not-for-profit organisations.
Finance
Money can be a tricky and sensitive topic but it has to be faced!
Chapter 6 of the NEON toolkit is a great starting point. It explains key financial terms, has helpful prompts for thinking about pay structures and has plenty of practical tools - including templates for expense forms and invoices and a customisable spreadsheet for finance forecasting.
The civil society alliance Civicus has a collection of toolkits about financing. Two particularly useful ones deal with budgeting and developing a financial strategy. Funding and fundraising
Although fundraising can be time-consuming and difficult, having money can really power up your campaigning.
Chapter 7 of the NEON toolkit will get you off to a flying start thinking about how much money you might need and different places you might be able to get it. The Commons Library Fundraising starter guide is also a great introduction and has loads of pointers to other resources.
The UK Democracy Network and Civic Power Fund have put together a really useful open databse of funding organisations and grants that support a healthier UK democracy.
If you want to try to raise money from public donations then crowdfunding could be for you. The Centre for Social Innovation’s guide to crowdfunding is a really useful starting place. Once you’re ready to get going, you can use Chuffed is a fundraising platform. Or Action Funder can help you find business funding if you are working on a local community project.
The Civicus guide to writing a funding proposal is a comprehensive walkthrough of everything you should consider when applying for a grant and the Resource Centre’s guide to raising money is also full of practical tips.
Some funders prefer, for a range of reasons, to give through intermediaries. These are organisations which receive money from donors and redistribute it to groups on the ground. Intermediaries often also offer a range of direct support to organisers and activists.
This blog is a great introduction to funding intermediaries, what they are and how they work, though with a US focus. This blog from Social Change Agency highlights some of the issues grassroots groups face from funders closer to home.
JRCT Movement fund is a new fund that uses participatory grant-making approach. The fund supports grassroots movement groups working on transformative change.
There is also the option of raising money directly from individuals. This talk from TedX London focuses on citizen funding for climate activism.
Fiscal hosting
Sometimes social movement organisations do not want to or don’t have the capacity to register formally. In these cases, they sometimes use fiscal hosts - registered organisations who hold money on their behalf.;
Open Collective is an umbrella organisation for fiscal hosting, which means you can operate through their structure. Their help pages guide you through the process. They also host organisations that act as fiscal hosts close to where you are.
The Social Change Nest offers fiscal hosting to UK campaigners. As well as helping to take care of your financial arrangements, their sister organisation the Social Change Agency offers many other kinds of practical support for campaigning and movement building. Their guide for grassroots groups is a great place to see what support they can offer.
The Movements Trust also offer fiscal hosting, regranting, connections and other support to UK movements.