Gower Street
Amplifying climate impact through capacity building
Since 2023, Gower Street has partnered with Lightful to support climate-focused nonprofits through BRIDGE
- Client name
- Gower Street
- Client type
- Foundation
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Website
- Visit site
The challenge
Gower Street identified a crucial need among its grantees: many had powerful missions but lacked the digital tools and confidence to amplify their work online, engage supporters, or measure their impact effectively. This gap posed a barrier to their long-term sustainability and scaling efforts, particularly as digital communication plays a critical role in climate advocacy.
Partnering with Lightful, Gower Street saw an opportunity to close that gap by supporting their grantees to build their digital storytelling, campaigning and fundraising skills through the BRIDGE (Building Resilience in Digital Growth and Engagement) programme. Lightful tailored the BRIDGE curriculum to meet the needs of Gower Street grantees including topics like climate storytelling, the environmental considerations of AI and green design best practices.
Gower Street funded five grassroots organisations through Lightful's Climate BRIDGE programme in 2023, and building on that commitment, they are currently supporting nine more organisations in the 2025 programme.
What the BRIDGE programme delivers
Outcomes
The 2023 Climate BRIDGE cohort, supported by Gower Street, saw strong engagement and clear evidence of growth in digital confidence and capability:
95% of organisations started planning digital content in advance plus, 63% updated their website as a result of BRIDGE
94% of survey respondents felt the programme enhanced their ability to create more compelling digital campaigns, signalling long-term resilience
92% of participants reported BRIDGE helped them communicate and advocate more effectively for climate and environmental issues
73% of organisations created or updated their digital strategy
Early results from this year’s Climate BRIDGE programme, currently supported by Gower Street, are already showing promising signs of progress. Although we’re only halfway through the programme, participants are actively engaging and reporting meaningful improvements in digital confidence and strategic clarity. Highlights so far include:
Digital strategy adoption rose from 67% to 89% by the programme’s midpoint, showing strong progress in strategic planning
76% increase in participant confidence planning and running digital campaigns
Strategy development is essential for organisational resilience and a core focus of BRIDGE, so it’s encouraging to see such a significant increase in strategy adoption within just the first few months of the programme.
Ongoing collaboration
In addition to programme delivery, Gower Street and Lightful continue to collaborate on sector-wide learning. Gower Street’s team has joined Lightful on live webinars and panels to discuss the importance of capacity building, trust-based philanthropy, and climate-focused digital transformation - contributions that have amplified key sector conversations on equitable and sustainable grantmaking.
Tessa DurhamCo-Director of Gower Street FoundationRather than only giving short term grants to one organisation, strategic funder plus activities and partnerships might allow 10 grantees to feel the impact, and learnings last in the long term after the grant has ended. We supported our grantees to take part in BRIDGE because we recognised the need for more than just one-off training. BRIDGE offered a pathway to long-term digital resilience, helping participants strengthen their digital foundations, build confidence using AI, and see digital not just as a tool but as a strategic enabler to future-proof their work. The result? Better engagement, stronger fundraising, and greater impact across the board.
Abdul-Mumin Yussif (current BRIDGE participant)Executive Director, United Force for Development InternationalBRIDGE has been a valuable experience, especially in helping us strengthen our communication and visibility. The sessions on digital storytelling and strategy were particularly effective, they gave us practical tools we could apply immediately. The peer learning environment also created a sense of solidarity and inspired new ideas.
Thank you for your commitment to supporting grassroots organisations like ours. This kind of support makes a real difference and means a lot to us.
We are confident that the knowledge, skills, and networks we gain through the BRIDGE programme will enable us to make a more meaningful and lasting difference in the lives of the communities we serve.
Through BRIDGE, Gower Street has made meaningful progress toward grantee goals: strengthening grantee relationships, deepening trust-based practices, and supporting more strategic, long-term capacity building. The programme has proven especially valuable for grassroots climate organisations, equipping them with the digital skills, confidence, and strategic clarity needed to drive local impact and access funding more effectively. BRIDGE continues to be a powerful enabler of long-term resilience.
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