Building the new: Reimagining civil society resourcing in times of global transformation

This report is based on a virtual session held on 30 October 2025 — a year that laid bare the fragility of the global funding ecosystem as we have known it. Yet this moment is not entirely new. For years, traditional funding models and NGO structures have proven inadequate, extractive and disconnected from grassroots realities. In response, organizations and movements across the world working in pursuit of more just, equitable and peaceful societies have been reimagining how social change is resourced — shifting the focus from money alone to questions of power, voice and agency. Many of us are looking within communities, drawing on creativity and long-held traditions of solidarity to understand how we endure, resist and thrive in a time of profound global challenge.

The session “Building the New: Reimagining Civil Society Resourcing in Times of Global Transformation” was created as a space to explore these alternatives — to listen deeply to activists, grassroots foundations and community organizers who are already reshaping civil society in fundamental ways. Rather than looking to international systems for legitimacy or rescue, their work is instead grounded in community sovereignty, collective agency and everyday acts of solidarity.

Published by: Bridging Dialogues (UK), Dalia Association (Palestine), GFCF (UK / South Africa), Indonesia for Humanity (Indonesia), Ministry of Space (Serbia) and Navsarjan (India)

Published: May 2026

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