Long-term unrestricted funding isn’t the gap, it’s the long-term view

The charity sector continues to circle the same well-worn debate: how do we get more long-term, unrestricted funding? Despite countless meetings, reports and public pledges, truly transformative change still feels out of reach. And most so-called “long-term” grants mean just two or three years of breathing room, if you’re lucky. In a world facing complex social and environmental systemic challenges, this is nowhere near enough.

Yet, year after year, we return to the same question: why is genuine long-term funding so elusive?

Why are we still going around in circles?

Despite passionate conversations about trust, partnership, and system change, most of the funding remains locked into short-term, project-based cycles. Arguments about project versus core funding, trust-based approaches, or adopting ‘systems change’ language are all well-intentioned threads of this debate. Yet too often, they amount to new terminology for old practices, and fail to break the cycle that keeps charities reactively plugging gaps more than addressing systemic injustices and root causes.

If we don’t move beyond business-as-usual, we will continue patching symptoms while root causes compound. The casualties are the communities and the environment we claim to champion.

The limits of process orientated debate

One core reason for lack of progress is sector’s preoccupation with process. The most progressive debates often revolve around incremental process tweaks - being more trusting, more flexible - rather than daring to fundamentally change for genuine transformation. Charities and funders regularly expend valuable time exploring different funding mechanisms, all while being buffeted by political short-termism and an unpredictable external climate. In that context, how anyone finds time for progress on genuine ecosystem understanding or deep partnership-building is, frankly, a feat of charity sector magic.

We know that real solutions demand more time: to collaborate, reflect, plan, and experiment together and with the people most impacted. Systemic change isn’t possible without this breathing space, yet structures rarely permit it, and barely fund it. Whilst we're discussing process, we're not articulating clearly enough 'why' things need to change and what it will look like on the other side.

Regenerative Funding: will it transform or just rebrand?

Into this landscape, new language is emerging. Momentum is building around “regenerative funding”, in part inspired by ideas from Regenerative Finance (“ReFi”) and Doughnut Economics. These movements challenge us to integrate ecological and social healing, to expand decision-making power, nurture cultures of continuous learning and to draw wisdom from the cycles and interconnectedness of nature.

The regenerative funding movement is in its early days. No one has nailed a definition yet, but conversations repeatedly return to some core themes: long-term unrestricted funding, systems change, shifting power, participatory decision-making, and ongoing improvement. This time, with the addition of also learning from the natural world's ecosystems.

Yet, let’s be honest. Too often, transformative-sounding terms slip into becoming jargon. Language like ‘regenerative’ risks becoming the next ‘philanthropy-washing’ slogan unless it is followed by courageous, sustained action.

Despite years of advocacy for long-term, unrestricted and trust-based philanthropy, only around 1% of the UK’s 12,000 independent grantmaking trusts and foundations have signed the IVAR #FlexibleFunder pledge or the Funder Commitment on Climate Change. Although only indicative, the conclusion is inescapable - genuinely progressive funding remains the exception, not the norm. So, will ‘regenerative’ discussions break the cycle, or simply rename it?

There are, of course, some absolutely fabulous things happening across the sector, that show us what is possible. For example, the Regenerative Futures Fund, a ten-year community fund for Edinburgh that puts decision-making power into the hands of those who are most often excluded to improve the lives of people living in poverty and experiencing racism, and contribute towards a just green transition. However, such trailblazing remains rare.

The missing ingredient: 'long-view leadership'

We need a fundamental shift, not just in process, but in mindset. Real change demands that charities and funders alike dare to take the “long view.” When charity leaders must focus on scrabbling together scraps of project funding alongside responding to short-term political shenanigans, there’s virtually no space to understand larger ecosystems, intersecting crises, or to build a shared visions of the future across authentic cross-sector partnerships. For lasting societal and environmental impact we require strong relationships, bold vision, greater risk tolerance, and much longer term adaptive strategies. Imagine if, instead of firefighting, leaders and funders could invest in deep, deliberate transformation over a decades, with a clear and shared vision.

If we had more long-view leadership in the sector then, for starters, I imagine that UK trust and foundation environmental funding would no longer be less than Cancer Research UK’s annual turnover.

As the Elders remind us:

What might ‘long-view funding' look like?

Officially, there’s no such thing as long-view funding, I made it up to illustrate a point (please don't use it, we don't need more jargon!?!) but as a thought exercise we might borrow from the Elder’s principles of long-view leadership to summarise the practical leadership we need. Doing so might give us a glimpse of the ultimate destination for philanthropy (until philanthropy no longer exists of course). It might be a world in which we:

1. Think beyond short-term cycles and deliver solutions for both current and future generations.

2. Recognise that enduring answers require compromise and collaboration for the good of the whole world.

3. Show compassion for all people, designing approaches that are inclusive, equitable, rights based and agency building

4. Accept that durable solutions require patience, risk tolerance, uncertain outcomes, transparency and accountability.

5. Commit to a vision of hope in humanity’s shared future, not play to its divided past.

To varying degrees, that's in the rough space of what most people mean when they call for 'long-term unrestricted funding'. But it's not what we actually say. And not calling out what is needed with clarity, undoubtably limits the conversation. We need to stop focussing on process. With a shared and clearly articulated mindset, then funding processes would naturally fall from it (and yes, of course that would include long-term unrestricted funding).

It is time our conversations ceased to be about changes in the process of philanthropy, and more about our vision for the future, so that we can start to embody the change we want to see in the world. I for one do not want to talk about change through the lens of a 1,2 or 3 year horizon, and for me 10 years feels like the bare minimum when you consider the alternative '7 generations perspective' of less extractive cultures.

Such shift in mindset and in conversations would lay the foundations for us to co-create shared visions of the future. And that is the subject of another blog (watch this space!).

If we stopped focussing on tweaking processes and developed a shared future vision, then would we (at last) match our funding to the scale and complexity of the world’s most urgent challenges?

The legacy we leave will not be counted in blogs, reports, conferences, meetings, or incremental process improvements - but in the lasting change experienced by people and planet.

It's time to move past repetitive conversations about long-term unrestricted funding and take the long-view together.

Photo by Matt Foxx on Unsplash