Liddy and Neha (TLF advisers), and Edd Fry (TLF Lead)
The Listening Fund’s 10 advisers (all recruited between the ages of 18-25) have been at the heart of the Fund’s grantmaking process for the second and third round of grants. Centring the advisers – who have a broad range of experiences and expertise from across England – in this work has brought invaluable challenge and insight into how to fulfill the Listening Fund’s mission: improving the youth sector’s accountability to young people.
The Fund’s advisers have been involved in the entire grantmaking process; from designing grantmaking programmes and callouts, to deciding which organisations should receive support.
Most recently, the advisers visited their chosen partners to better understand their listening work. In addition to learning more about each partner’s approach, and the circumstances in which they operate, the advisers also gained insights into listening practice, and making the most of partner visits. In June 2024, Liddy and Neha talked to Edd about their experiences. The following is a summary of their reflections.
- Safe spaces are particularly important for ALL young people to be able to speak up. The advisers realised that although they had decided to focus their grants more directly on youth leadership, safe spaces and genuine, diverse youth leadership go hand in hand: if you don’t have safe spaces, many young people will be unable to speak up, irrespective of the position they hold.
- Listening projects can have big ripple effects. The impact of a project isn’t just what you can see directly – it goes much further. Young people can use listening initiatives as a springboard, given the increased trust, skill, or confidence they might gain from being listened to.
- It’s important to be clear about the purpose of your visit to a partner. The clearer you are internally, and with the partner, about what you hope to understand from the visit, the more valuable the time can be for all involved. Moreover, the advisers felt that time preparing questions to send to the partner also helped them feel ready for the visit.
- In-person visits are invaluable for understanding an organisation. As much as you might read about how a partner works, and what they do, the advisers felt that the in-person visits gave them a much better sense of what the organisation was doing, the young people they worked with, and the impact the grant was having.
- Power structures can impact the way advisers and adult professionals interact. Even if the young person is a grantmaker, older adult staff members may habitually speak to the other older adults in the room. Equally, advisers might initially lack the confidence to speak with staff, and could feel more at home speaking to the young people who the organisation works with. Being flexible and adaptable to different colleagues’ strengths and needs is essential.
- Fostering an atmosphere in which partners can be honest is important. There is an inherent power dynamic between partners and funders, but establishing a relationship in which the partner can be really honest about what’s working and what isn’t is crucial for the visits to be as valuable as possible for all parties. However…
- It often takes time to build a good relationship with a partner. This can include a slightly awkward first visit, when it can be difficult to know who to speak to, what to ask, and the best format, space and time for a meeting. Letting the advisers know that this might happen helps everyone relax.
- It’s difficult to find the optimal time for visiting partners. The advisers felt that visiting at the ‘right’ time in each partner’s process was difficult – both in terms of logistics, and in terms of knowing when it would be fruitful for both partner and funder to check in. Visiting during the application process felt too extractive; too soon after receiving funding would mean it would be hard to understand impact; and there will always be competing pressures on partners’ time. Advisers therefore decided that the most important principle in relation to timing was that the visit should not be unnecessarily demanding for the organisation or young people.
- Young grantmakers can connect well to the young people a partner works with. Being in the same peer-group age wise, young grantmakers can have insightful conversations with the young people involved with the grantee, perhaps more easily than an older adult grantmaker.
- Visiting partners is valuable but it is only a small part of the listening process. Overall, advisers felt that the visits to partners were worthwhile in terms of learning more about the partners’ work and in relation to building long-term, trusting relationships. However, as with looking at research, engaging in discussions, taking questions from potential applications and reading grant proposals, no one way of listening was sufficient by itself, underlining the value of advisers working with the Fund over an extended period of time so they have had the opportunity to build a robust understanding of listening and accountability in the youth sector.