Movements Win. Then What? Building the Infrastructure That Keeps Change Alive
About the session
Movements change the world.
They also burn out, fragment, lose funding, and disappear.
The history of social change is full of campaigns that won a battle and then dissolved, coalitions that collapsed when funding ended, organizations that lost years of institutional memory when key leaders left, and communities of practice that never quite became the infrastructure they could have been.
We know a great deal about how to launch movements.
We talk less about what keeps them alive.
The infrastructure required to sustain collective action is different from the infrastructure that creates initial momentum. It includes network weaving and peer learning that keep people connected across organizations and geographies. Intermediaries and backbone organizations that hold a field together without controlling it. Communities of practice that turn individual experience into shared knowledge. Participatory grantmaking that gives communities meaningful control over resources. And venture studios, accelerators, and ecosystem builders that deliberately cultivate new leaders and organizations rather than waiting for them to emerge.
Much of this work is difficult to fund precisely because its value is relational.
Grants tend to flow toward programs, projects, and measurable deliverables rather than the connective tissue that allows movements to survive between funding cycles. The result can be fields full of organizations doing important work in isolation, movements dependent on a small number of exhausted individuals, and networks forced to rebuild relationships and knowledge every time resources disappear.
That challenge becomes more urgent as funding contracts. Mergers, closures, and consolidation may sometimes be necessary, but they can also destroy relationships, institutional memory, and connective infrastructure that took years to build.
At the same time, alternatives are emerging. Participatory grantmaking is shifting decisions closer to communities. Networks are experimenting with turning convening into collective resourcing. New ecosystem-building models are intentionally creating and supporting new actors. Intermediaries are finding ways to strengthen collective action without controlling the communities they exist to serve.
This session will ask what it actually takes to build movements that last.
What infrastructure is missing? Who pays for it? And if funders want durable movements, what do they need to fund differently?
Discussion Group Leaders
Angela Okune is Head of Strategy at Climate Sensitive Infectious Disease Network, strengthening research infrastructure and communities of practice to address infectious diseases intensified by climate change.
Elvis Ayesiga is Program Officer, Grantmaking at UHAI EASHRI, advancing participatory philanthropy, human rights, and community-led health and social justice for LGBTQI+ communities and sex workers across East Africa.
Laure de Dainville is Program Lead International at Article Group Organization - AGO, advancing human rights and social impact through legal expertise, strategic partnerships, and international programs.
Becky Schutt is Advisor at The Phillips Foundation, fostering cross-sector partnerships and communities that connect philanthropy, social impact, arts, and inclusive opportunities.
What to expect
A candid, practitioner-led conversation grounded in experience from human rights, climate, LGBTQI+ rights, community-led development, social entrepreneurship, and other movement ecosystems.
Participants will examine the structural and relational dimensions of durable collective action: what keeps people connected, how knowledge survives leadership transitions, which institutions can hold a field together, and how resources can move without concentrating control.
The room will also explore a question that becomes particularly important during periods of funding contraction: when organizations disappear or consolidate, what needs to survive even if the organization itself does not?
Participants will be encouraged to bring examples of infrastructure that has held movements together, as well as moments when its absence caused important work to fragment.
Who this is for
This session is for movement builders, intermediaries, funders, network weavers, community organizers, field builders, ecosystem architects, and anyone who has watched important work struggle because the infrastructure needed to sustain it was never properly built or funded.
What you will get out of it
A framework for distinguishing the infrastructure that launches movements from the infrastructure that sustains them
Perspectives on network weaving, participatory grantmaking, communities of practice, and intermediaries as movement infrastructure
A sharper understanding of what can be lost when funding contraction leads to organizational closure or consolidation
Examples of emerging models for cultivating new leaders, organizations, networks, and collective capacity
Practical questions for funders and field builders about what they need to finance differently if they want movements to still be strong ten years from now