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What we learned from six months of building knowledge, connection, and courage with a global cohort of emerging PGM practitioners.
When we launched the Start Well programme in 2024, we were responding to something we had been hearing for years across the PGM Community of Practice: that practitioners entering participatory grantmaking often feel isolated, overwhelmed, and under-equipped; full of values and intention, but short on frameworks, examples, and peers who understand the specific tensions of this work.
Cohort 1 proved that structured, relational learning could meet that need. Cohort 2 pushed us to go further.
From July to December 2025, we welcomed 15 participants from 12 organisations across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe into the second Start Well cohort. Over six months, they engaged in expert-led workshops, two peer-to-peer sessions, practitioner speaker spotlights, and up to two 1:1 coaching sessions each. What we share here are reflections on what was learned, and what we’re carrying forward.
We received 139 expressions of interest for Cohort 2. Selecting 15 participants from that pool is never straightforward. We look for the full range of where people are in their PGM journeys, the diversity of contexts and geographies they bring, and the genuine intent to practice, not just to understand.
The cohort that came together was mostly at the beginning of their journey. Our pre-cohort survey told us:
This was exactly who Start Well was designed for. And what moved us most was why people came. Some participants were launching entirely new funds, Feminist Fund Türkiye had not yet begun grantmaking and wanted to build their model on participatory foundations from day one. Others were navigating funding cuts and institutional fragility while trying to keep participation alive. One participant had just been appointed to a programme management role and needed PGM fluency urgently to support their grantees responsibly. These were not abstract learning goals. They were real organisational pressures, carried by real people trying to do this work with integrity.
“I want to be challenged, to unlearn, and to grow in ways that help us redistribute power more effectively, both within our team and in the systems we work in.” Pre-cohort respondent
The Cohort covered the essential journey of implementing Participatory Grantmaking (PGM), beginning with a foundational understanding of its history, frameworks, and values. Participants then moved into the practical and political aspects of design, with one of the most helpful sessions focusing on how to establish participatory structures, including defining organizational boundaries (“Red Lines, Green Lines”), identifying “the community,” and setting up decision-making models. The program also directly addressed a key tension in the field: “how to evaluate a participatory process using a participatory lens” without reverting to extractive accountability frameworks. Throughout the learning arc, practitioners from organisations like Camden Giving, Red Umbrella Fund, and FRIDA Fund shared their lived experiences, which participants highly valued for providing real-world context on both the successes and challenges of PGM in practice.
We ask participants to rate themselves on several dimensions before and after the programme. The numbers below don’t capture everything but they point to real movement, particularly in the areas we most hoped to strengthen.
Confidence explaining PGM: from 3.2 to 4.3 out of 5
Confidence in practical tools: from 2.4 to 3.4 out of 5
Connected to peers doing PGM: from 2.5 to 3.6 out of 5
The confidence in practical tools score is both a win and a signal. Participants gained ground, but consistently named this as the area where they still hunger for more. This is an honest reflection of where participants are in their journey and what they most need as they move from understanding PGM to doing it.
The feedback from Cohort 2 gives us a clear and energising set of priorities. We are thinking about these not as fixes but as evolutions for future cohorts;
Seven of ten survey respondents said they would recommend Start Well to someone else. The other three said ‘maybe’. One participant put it simply at the end of the programme:
“I’m happy to have met my tribe. It was uplifting to see how much enthusiasm there was in the room during each session and feel part of a growing movement.”
That is what Start Well is for. Not to produce perfect PGM practitioners in six months but to make people feel less alone in this work, more equipped to keep going, and more connected to a community that is asking the same hard questions with the same genuine intent.
We are grateful to every participant who trusted us with their learnings. To our faculty; Kelley, Allistair, Katy, Hannah, Stephanie, Gloria, Natasha, and Danielle: thank you for bringing your expertise to this work! And to the funders who made access possible for participants who couldn’t otherwise have joined, thank you!
We’ll be sharing details about the next cohort.
Stay connected!