Dalan Fund`s Theory of Transformation Our Story of Collective Motion
Our Theory of Transformation articulates how we at Dalan Fund understand and contribute to transformative change in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central and North Asia (CEECCNA regions). It embodies reflections and reckoning of our shared past of oppression and interconnected injustices, analysis of the current moment of political turbulence, and visions of a liberatory future for people from the regions.
Our Theory of Transformation is rooted in a deep awareness of how systemic and historic oppression operate across the CEECCNA regions: through lived experiences of colonization, authoritarianism, nationalism, militarism, and the erasure of voices of descent. It recognizes that systemic transformation calls for bold political imagination, redistribution of power and resources, and coordinated and consistent actions.
It positions Dalan Fund´s unique role as a regional participatory fund, and serves us as a north star to move towards as we move resources towards social justice movements in sixteen countries and geographies in the regions.
It took us nearly three years, countless community consultations and collective visioning, strategic pause and reflections, and co-crafting to get our Theory of Transformation out in the world. Some of the key points of coming together and the co-creation journey were as follows:
In November, we convened a ground-testing gathering in Barcelona, bringing together fifteen dedicated activists from across the CEECCNA regions. Over the course of three immersive days, we created a space for deep reflection, imagination, and expansive thinking. Together, we explored a bold and urgent question: What would a regionally-rooted participatory fund look like, if we had one?
We challenged ourselves to think critically about the status quo in philanthropy. How could it repair and redistribute, rather than reinforce extractive and transactional models of giving? The convening marked a powerful moment of collective inception and reimagining what funding could look like when it is grounded in resource justice, regional knowledge, mutual accountability, and transformative solidarity. And most importantly, we started envisioning the impact the Fund would have on chronically underfunded movements from the CEECCNA regions. This meeting gave us the courage to start building the Dalan Fund and laid out a foundation for our Theory of Transformation.
Dalan Fund (known in its early days as the CEECCNA Collaborative Fund) was seeded early in the year. From the outset, we envisioned the Fund not only as a grantmaker but as something more ambitious: a firestarter in philanthropy, sparking new ways of resourcing the regions, and a firetender for organizing, centering movement sustainability, resilience, and collective power. This dual role became central to how we began to imagine our position in the ecosystem: catalyzing change while staying grounded in interdependence and long-term movement building.
Later in 2023, we convened eleven members of our Founding Advisory Group in Bishkek: a pivotal gathering that allowed us to ground ourselves in the complex realities of the polycrisis unfolding across CEECCNA. Together, we did collective horizon scanning, scenario planning, and expansive imagining of what might be possible. Between deep sighs and deep belly laughs, the space became one of clarity and connection, where we articulated the distinct role the Dalan Fund could play in bridging critical funding gaps, expanding the regional funding ecosystem, and strategically supporting the resilience and sustainability of local organizing.
We made a strategic decision to pause and focus on learning from our evolving grantmaking practice, observing who, how, and where we were funding, and making sense of the frameworks we had been developing. We also took time to witness our community of advisors and movement partners grow.
This year became one of clarification, distillation, and validation: a time to test what had been written, and to see whether our strategy could stand the test of time in the rapidly and dramatically changing world. It did. We concluded the process with a major writing push in Barcelona, the place where this journey first began. In many ways, this marked a full-circle moment, anchoring the work in both continuity and growth.
As we launch our Theory of Transformation, we are grateful to over 250 activists, funders, advisors, former and current team members, collaborators, and co-conspirators who supported us through this journey and have offered their generosity of wisdom to build our collective north star together.
