Applying for Funding
We are open for applications! Have a look at our criteria below so you know you’re in the right place - we put money in the hands of capital light organisers and activists to help the working class survive capitalism and shift us towards a new and better system - or just crack on with our very short application form. We will be in touch once you’ve submitted the form but it is not a complicated process.
Step one is this short google form:
https://forms.gle/DeCkb9q1baZTRbWL9
Step two is a conversation with someone from Sheff Redistro, whether in person or remotely, to gather some context behind the application and get some details down if they have not been provided so far. This is intended to be informal and low stakes but informative for both parties. Timescales, decision making criteria, and any foreseen barriers or issues with the application will be provided by Sheff Redistro to applicants at this point to make sure they are aware.
There may be intermediate steps where Sheff Redistro or others provide support to the group to flesh out their proposal. The purpose of this is to strengthen their application (inevitably, in the event of a funding round being over-subscribed, decisions will be made on a competitive basis with reference to our criteria) but also to support the work that they want to undertake.
When the applicant group or individual is happy with what we have on record, we will file the application ready for the next decision making deadline.
Decison Making:
Decisions will be made according to published criteria, but with a lot of flexibility. If a project meets our criteria and there is money available to support it then we will redistribute money to it. The main criteria are:
Working class leadership; the purpose of this project is to shift resources to capital light organisers and communities through redistribution rather than charity, so money given should be directly in the hands of capital light people, or held in organisations where capital light folks hold power over where it is spent.
Anti-capitalist praxis; this money should support social change that seeks to move beyond the capitalist system, in how it operates itself (eg. mutual aid groups) and/or in what it works towards (eg. political organising towards liberation). We will always define this broadly and generously to include work without an explicit anti-capitalist label or doctrine that fulfills an identifiable anti-capitalist purpose.
We will prioritise work being done locally - projects within Sheffield that meet our criteria taking precedence over funding work done further afield, but not excluding the possibility. We will make decisions with an intention to support the growth of work aligned with the goals of Sheffield Redistribution in South Yorkshire and beyond.
We may also consider the track record of groups and individuals in organising, activism, and work, as well as the immediacy and importance of the work being proposed.
We will favour groups that are difficult to fund, at least from traditional philanthropic sources
In considering applications we will not consider the “quality” of the application itself, but judge things on their impact in the real world, as best as we can imagine that, against these criteria.
We will only make decisions once we’ve read all applications and decide how the pot gets split at that point. There’ll be no advantage to an application being read first, and no danger that there’ll be no money left by the time we get to the bottom of the pile