February 27, 2025

Gabriela Lipska, District Manager Westmorland and Furness, looks at how using consensus-based decision making has helped Furness Funders Forum flourish, as part of our Beyond the Edge – Inspiration and Innovation series:

The Furness Funders Forum is a group of local, regional, and national funders interested in supporting community initiatives. Established a few years ago, it continued to operate in a fairly informal way. However, it became clear that the group needed fresh energy, greater clarity of purpose, and a stronger focus on impact. We also recognised shifts in the external landscape, particularly with the Team Barrow investment, highlighting the need for change. The group was open to the idea of a refresh, which led to the first workshop in July 2024.

Appreciative Inquiry: Reflecting and Looking Ahead

We began the workshop with an appreciative inquiry, taking time to reflect on the group’s achievements, celebrate the relationships built, and acknowledge the positive outcomes. This shared reflection helped us bridge the past with our vision for the future, clarify our purpose, and begin shaping our plans.

Through this activity, we recognised the strong foundation of trust that had developed over time, strengthened by personal connections and a collective commitment to supporting local communities. This created the perfect conditions to introduce authentic co-production, a more participatory approach, and consensus-based decision-making.

A New Way of Working

The group embraced the idea of a full-day facilitated workshop as an effective way forward, agreeing to meet in this format quarterly. Every meeting now follows a consent-based decision-making process, which ensures that:

• Everyone has an opportunity to contribute their ideas.
• The focus is on understanding different perspectives and building common ground.
• Instead of creating counter-proposals, we refine and improve existing suggestions.

This allows us to work incrementally and iteratively, ensuring all versions are recorded, saved, and reviewed as needed. We make use of flipchart paper and drafts, photographing them to document changes. After a set period, we revisit decisions to ensure they still make sense or adjust them if needed.

Creating Space for Thoughtful Decision-Making

This process encourages us to slow down, make space for discussion, and work together to find the best way forward. It ensures that everyone’s voice is heard, helping us build up ideas step by step until there are no objections.

A key feature of this approach is its built-in appreciation. It is constructive and generative, allowing for friendly amendments and small adjustments that enhance proposals. Crucially, the process also welcomes objections and provides a structured way to work through them. It feels like running small-scale experiments, refining our ideas through each round of discussion.

This way of working fosters a sense of belonging and respect, leading to greater commitment, better-quality decisions, stronger collaboration, and deeper trust among members. We work in rounds, ensuring clarity at each stage—reflecting, questioning, proposing alternatives, and refining ideas. My role as a facilitator is to enhance interaction between group members, helping improve communication and understanding.

This process follows a fractal pattern—each meeting includes structured steps, and each meeting itself is a step in the broader journey of the forum’s development.

Progress So Far

So far, we have used this method to clarify our purpose and Terms of Reference (TOR) and are now working on developing our Theory of Change (TOC). While this approach takes time, it ensures that everyone has the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns, resulting in decisions that are widely supported. This also reduces the need for endless email edits and comments, increasing both commitment and ownership of the group’s work.

The beauty of this approach is that it allows us to remain curious rather than right, fostering a culture of listening and understanding. It moves away from debate and persuasion towards shared exploration and gradual agreement. Instead of one idea winning over another, we focus on finding common ground and building from there.

By embracing consensus-based decision-making, the Furness Funders Forum seeks common ground and builds from there, ensuring that no single idea wins over another – everyone involved walks away with more than they came in with… and often more than they expected.

 

You can read other articles from our Beyond the Edge – Inspiration and Innovation series here