Enabling a Thriving Civic Life: Trialling Distributed Grant Making With the Wellbeing Protocol
Regen Melbourne is publishing a series of reports that summarise our initial work in New Urban Governance. The aim is to explore how we’ve been experimenting with the central question: “How can a stronger relationship between communities and democratic systems enable a thriving civic life for all?”
In the first of this series, RM’s Collaboration and Investment Lead, Joshua Devine, reports back on our experiments with the participatory grant-making app Hum.
Strengthening the relationship between communities and democratic systems requires shifts across core themes: Governance and Capital Mechanisms; New Narratives of Community; and Emerging Community Leadership. In 2024, we formulated these themes into focused experiments. This piece dives into the Governance and Capital Mechanisms theme, including the experimentation and insights gathered to-date and next steps for the work
We know our current systems and governance models are not fit-for-purpose, given the urgency and scale of decisions that need to be made as a society. Communities want to have their voices heard and to feel empowered to enact change in their lives and places. Yet our existing governance and funding systems are under-serving this aspiration, hindered by bureaucratic inefficiencies, scarcity-driven short-termism and deep inequity in how resources are distributed. Communities need more diverse and adaptable modes of participation that can respond to current and future needs, particularly when it comes to hyper-local, collective decision-making and the flow of resources aligned with local priorities.
The Hum Experiment
The Hum Community tool (Hum), developed by The Wellbeing Protocol, is one of these democratic innovations, a participatory grant-making app designed to empower communities to collectively allocate resources, while also allowing funders to deploy high-trust funding in an efficient, outcomes-oriented and scalable way.
Through the support of the Menzies Foundation, we had the unique opportunity to work with The Wellbeing Protocol to trial the use of Hum. As a delivery partner acting as an intermediary, we worked with the Wellbeing Protocol team to develop the service model while testing the app across select sites in Greater Melbourne.
Our experiment with Hum included pilots with three community groups across Greater Melbourne, selected from among existing partners in our Regen Streets Earthshot. While each of the pilot sites appeared ready to adopt Hum up-front, only one pilot, with Village Zero, progressed to completion with positive feedback expressed from all stakeholder groups involved.
A deep dive into the Village Zero Case study can be found in the report below.
Key Lessons
Drawing on our experience with these community pilots, we identified six lessons that begin to highlight key enablers for democratic decision-making interventions and innovation methods:
Responsiveness to context, conditions and capabilities: New mechanisms must meet community groups at a point in their work where it is most useful and consider their adaptability to diverse user needs to avoid being static or prescriptive.
Distribution of decisions and transparent action, backed by data: Funders and communities expressed their desire for support in shifting to democratic decision making and increased transparency in reporting.
Importance of relational groundwork: Trust and relationships are catalytic components to introducing any innovation – technical solutions can't operate without this foundation.
Pathways to unlocking funding: Community organisations must be better equipped to capitalise on funders' readiness to explore new forms of giving.
Understanding barriers to change mindsets and behaviours at scale: Change can be confronting, often making us sceptical and requiring tailored education and support.
Importance of intermediaries: There is a continued need to provide catalytic funding to intermediaries to support community organisations to navigate complexity, contextualise emerging tools like Hum, and create the conditions for uptake.
Although modest in scale, as the first experiment within the Systems Lab’s New Urban Governance stream, the Hum pilots marked an important step toward implementing new mechanisms for democratic involvement and collective action. The lessons and feedback gathered from this work will shape the continued roll-out and testing of Hum to strengthen our foundational knowledge in the field as we explore future governance and capital innovations.
Looking Ahead: The Second Series of Pilots
Building on the momentum created, we're extending our experimentation with Hum into a second series of pilots, while continuing to explore additional mechanisms for experimentation. Our current objectives for this work will focus on:
Building community confidence and capability to strategically use Hum for achieving organisational goals and attracting funding, establishing the foundation for Hum’s long-term adoption as a governance and funding tool beyond the pilots.
Expanding the evidence base and insights on the enablers of Hum and other democratic innovations to deepen community engagement and increase community-led capital allocation to local priorities.
Convening a community-focused funding ecosystem to support future pathways for localised capital distribution.
Utilising the new features of the Hum software that have evolved since the initial pilot and explore features that weren't used in the initial trials.
Supporting the Wellbeing Protocol in the continuous improvement and adaptability of the Hum platform through feedback and learnings throughout the pilot series.
Defining whether there is a clear pathway for scaling Hum’s use across communities in Melbourne, and what would be required for this to succeed.
Exploring new governance and capital mechanisms for future piloting, with the emphasis on enabling democratic involvement and collective action.
Through doing so, we hope to answer fundamental questions about equipping communities with effective governance capabilities, redesigning funding ecosystems, fostering deeper connections to place, and identifying the conditions that accelerate democratic transformation.
Launching the Next Phase
We are energised by what lies ahead as we prepare to launch this second series of pilots. The pilot series embeds the lessons to-date as we seek to expand engagement with communities across Greater Melbourne and cultivate a broader funding ecosystem to support the work.
Key aspects of this next phase include:
Expanding pilot sites: We are seeking to launch additional pilots with diverse community organisations across Greater Melbourne, aiming to conduct pilots with ten community organisations in total.
Supporting community leaders: We will be gathering the participating community leaders from the pilot organisation periodically to connect, share resources and learn from each other.
Growing the local funding ecosystem: We will be convening a local funding ecosystem that aspires to sustain neighbourhood-level action and innovation.
Sharing learning: We will be running a series of online webinars focused on topics related to community governance and grassroots fundraising.
If you are a community organisation, a funder or a community member that believes this will be useful for you, we invite you to follow our progress, join the conversation and reach out as we continue this important exploration at the intersection of community-led decision-making, resource allocation and regeneration of place.
How to get involved
Before we launch the next series of pilots, we’re hosting a free online webinar for community groups on Thu 29th May 2025, 12:00 pm AEST. This session will provide an overview of Hum and outline what to expect from the second pilot series. You can find the Humanitix event link here.
If you're a funding organisation interested in how this work could extend the impact of your capital in community settings, we’d love to connect. Please get in touch at: josh@regen.melbourne
We're also continuing to explore new approaches to urban governance and capital mechanisms. If you're developing a governance tool or system that aligns with this direction, we invite you to reach out and explore opportunities for collaboration at: josh@regen.melbourne
And finally, if you're a community organisation or funder interested in participating in the upcoming pilot, please complete our expression of interest form here.