How do you make participatory grant making accessible?

While in Boston, I was able to spend time with the Disability Rights Fund, who have a clear overarching aim of ‘empowering persons with disabilities to advocate for equal rights and full participation in society’ that all their grants are working towards. As a participatory grant making (PGM) funder, this means their decision makers are disabled people from across the world. I had the privilege of spending time with Kerry Thompson who, as the Inclusion and Analytics Officer, leads on ensuring their processes and decision making are as accessible as possible.

Kerry highlighted that in order for the Disability Rights Fund to be accessible, they need to think about the whole rather than just a single day or event. This involves actively working to accommodate access requirements for:

• Internal staff;
• Grantees (proposals, website, reporting and monitoring);
• Governance (boards and decision making).

This is quite a lot to consider and therefore needs the foresight, planning and flexibility to make processes as accessible as possible. This is especially true as we know access requirements usually end up as an afterthought to a process, and often only when prompted by someone proactively pushing for an accommodation being made. It’s therefore vital to understand the barriers that models of PGM might cause to people. For example, the thought of pitching an idea to a group of people could be terrifying for some, while travelling to a venue might not be possible for others. Each model of PGM will have barriers, and it’s important to work to understand and remove these as much as possible. We need to always ask who isn’t in the room and why that is the case.

Here are some of the ways we can learn from the Disability Rights Fund to make PGM processes accessible:

Talk about access needs as early as possible: Embed this into the design of your approach and be mindful and flexible to accommodate them. Plan, plan, plan!

Model asking for what we need and/or build the relationships that allow people to ask: Often, disabled people are made to feel they should be grateful for crumbs and can therefore feel like highlighting their access requirements is a step too far. Creating an environment where people are able to speak up and share their requirements is therefore really important. Kerry says one of the ways she does this is through modelling this behaviour — being really honest about what she needs to support her to do her work can allow others to do the same. By developing relationships and working with an individual to build trust, as well as sharing examples of ways access requirements could be accommodated, can help an individual to share their own needs.

Outline the process and what is expected of a participant: For some disabled people, unless they know what is expected of them in a given situation, they might not be able to know what their access requirements might be. Being really clear about what involvement looks like can help someone ascertain whether they need adaptations.

You don’t need to ask what disability or impairment people have: This information isn’t helpful to you (and is just a bit nosy); what you need to know is what their access requirements are. This is the question that will give you the information you need in order for them to be able to engage.

Book a wheelchair accessible room from the outset: This should be one of the key criteria for any venue you are booking.

Set out the layout of the room with people in mind: Have space to move around. Remove chairs so people don’t have to wrestle to remove them before they can get to the table.

Utilise technology: Live streaming and video conferencing tools allow people to participate from their own spaces. However, it’s important to check with people that they have access to the required technology. If not, ask if there are more accessible alternatives.

Have a staff member who can support facilitators to understand access requirements: Prep for this before the day so that it is embedded in the planning and people aren’t put on the spot to understand, redesign or deliver in a way they aren’t prepared for or used to.

Summarise what is being said: This helps people to follow the conversation and understand that they have interpreted it correctly.

Share information and the agenda well in advance of a meeting: This helps people to prepare and know what to expect on the day.

Find a way for people to voice that something is stopping them engaging: This could be a card they can hold up, raising a hand or making a noise that allows the facilitator to recognise that something is unclear, the conversation is moving too fast or the sound isn’t working. Explain to everyone they can do this and model it.

Set the guidelines and ways of working at the beginning: This enables people to understand and buy into ways of working that make meetings more accessible.

Use a variety of different formats to share information: Things like video, summaries and easy-read options can support people to be able to understand information presented.

Continuously seek and act on feedback: Ask what we could have done better, and what we need to change for next time.

Seek recommendations (without putting the responsibility of meeting their access needs on them): If you know someone has a specific access requirement, ask them what can be done to best support them. They may also have recommendations for rooms to hire, facilitators and interpreters to use, and technology that works for them.

We should all be making proactive efforts to be as inclusive as possible and that means thinking about, acting on and embedding access requirements right from the start of designing a PGM approach. By being proactive in our approaches to include diverse groups of people in PGM we can ensure we have the budgets, spaces and ways of working in advance rather than scrambling to try and achieve this as an afterthought.