Resourcing radical hope

Sometimes news travels slowly. On February 27, 2025, Sophia Parker wrote a piece for the Joseph Roundtree Foundation blog called Surviving on breadcrumbs: resourcing radical hope.

The essay “looks at new research on the scale and nature of efforts across the UK to build alternative futures”. It asks how “wealth holders” such as the Joseph Roundtree Foundation can “do more to better support and shield this essential work”.

She poses three questions.

1. Looking at your funding decisions, what is the balance between supporting efforts that ‘optimise the system’, and efforts that build alternatives beyond the system? Consider the risks of your choices.

2. To what extent does each pound of your endowment support your mission? Explain your rationale if any of your pounds do not directly contribute to your mission.

3. What ecosystems and fields need support to realise your mission? What is your contribution to their healthy evolution?

She addresses these questions rather than answers them, but she does raise interesting issues about the foundation’s own programmes. She finishes by noting that “I see the ways in which developments in science, psychology and ecology are inviting us to see our relationship with each other and the planet differently, which in turn reveals the risks of our current economic models and underlines the need to reimagine things. I see a growing network of wealth holders recognising that how money flows, and where it flows to, can and must change if our children are to have a future”.

It still seems possible to avoid overt cynicism and defeatism. That alone seems worth the price of admission.