The Real Work of Participatory Funding

Participatory grantmaking is often positioned as a values shift. In reality, it’s a systems redesign: who decides, who holds risk, what “evidence” counts, how accountability works, and what happens when things go wrong. This lab creates a structured space to surface those frictions honestly, hear directly from communities about what participation looks like in different settings, and pressure-test experimental approaches that don’t collapse back into business-as-usual.