By the very nature of lived experience, the people closest to problems have the most relevant perspectives on solutions, yet often lack access to the power needed to make an impact. We’ve designed a tool to help funders explore what Participatory Investing could look like within their institution.

Participatory Investing Toolkit.

In March 2022, Common Future launched the Action Lab: Participatory Investing—a partnership with the World Education Services (WES) Mariam Assefa Fund—with 16 leaders from 8 participating institutions. During this year-long initiative, we learned about, experimented, and applied participatory strategies and principles through institutional projects and a collaborative fund.

Together with the Action Lab: Participatory Investing cohort and indispensable support from numerous advisors, we’ve aggregated our learnings, core principles, and some existing examples in this toolkit to make this work easier for other institutions and catalyze the field of Participatory Investing.