Degrowth Events Fund 2025

In March 2025, the International Degrowth Network received a 7,500 euro budget from the Degrowth Conference Support Group to be split between organisations that plan regional/thematic degrowth events, festivals, conferences, etc. In 2024, seven local events received support.

This time, the IDN’s Events Circle was given the responsibility to handle this distribution in the spirit of increased transparency, democracy, and participation. In the end, with help from the Support Group and Steady State Manchester we managed to raise and distribute over 13,000 euros to 15 groups out of 54 who applied from almost 30 different countries!

Below you can find the resources we used to guide and document the 2025 Events Fund process, so our decisions and priorities remain transparent and open to the community.

To share how we approached the 2025 Events Fund, we’ve made our guidelines and process document (external link) available, which walks through who could apply, timelines, how decisions were made, and what we asked from organisers after their events. We’ve also published the criteria (external link) we used - a living set of priorities shaped collectively within the Events Circle - to help ensure the funds were shared fairly, reached underrepresented regions/people, and supported events that truly reflect degrowth values. 

We hope this openness invites feedback and inspires future collaborations.

Once applications closed, we put out a call for volunteers to join the review process — and 12 of us came together to go through all 54 submissions. Using the criteria (external link) as our guide, we worked from a shared spreadsheet (external link) to give each event a quantitative score while also adding written notes and a qualitative score to capture aspects that numbers can’t fully reflect. You can explore the full spreadsheet (external link) of applications (we've removed any personal data), scores, and reviewers, as well as our compiled notes (external link) from the first brainstorming session before the fund started to the final deliberations.

We then ranked the applications by score and, in two long group calls (with as many reviewers as could join), discussed each proposal in depth to make our final decisions and allocate the available funds.

After the decisions were made, we reached out to all applicants, confirming funding with successful organisers, offering non-monetary support to those we couldn’t fund, and inviting everyone to join the International Degrowth Network to stay connected and collaborate in the future. Once confirmed, we made the transfers and wrapped up the 2025 funding cycle.

Some of the events are still underway. Once all have been completed, we will be compiling some photos and sharings from each event so you can all benefit from their learnings, challenges, and convivial moments :) 

We believe that openness strengthens trust and helps others build on our work. Below, you'll find all the key documents from this funding round - from our guidelines and criteria to reviewer scores, notes, and final decisions - so that anyone can see how the process unfolded, learn from it, and help us improve in the future.