Co-design — the practice of designing programmes, services, and policies with the people who will use them — has become an important approach in philanthropy. Rather than designing grant programmes in funder offices and asking communities to apply, co-design brings community members into the design process from the beginning. Done well, co-design produces better-targeted programmes, stronger community ownership, and more effective outcomes.
Co-design (also called human-centred design, participatory design, or community-led design) is an approach where:
- Those affected by a problem are actively involved in designing solutions
- Community knowledge and experience is treated as expert knowledge
- The design process is iterative — ideas are tested, refined, and tested again with community
- Power over design decisions is genuinely shared — not just consultation
In grantmaking, co-design can operate at different levels:
- Programme co-design: community involved in designing the grant programme itself
- Criteria co-design: community involved in setting what gets funded and how
- Assessment co-design: community members involved in assessing applications
- Project co-design: individual grantees required to co-design their own projects with beneficiaries
Better programme design
Communities have knowledge that funders don't — about what the real problems are, what has and hasn't worked before, what barriers exist to participation, and what solutions are likely to be trusted. Co-design incorporates this knowledge into programme design.
More appropriate criteria
Funder-designed grant criteria can inadvertently exclude the organisations best placed to address community needs — requiring governance structures, reporting capabilities, or programme approaches that don't reflect community realities. Co-design surfaces these mismatches before they exclude good applicants.
Community ownership
Programmes co-designed with community have greater legitimacy — "this is our programme" rather than "this is a programme from the funder." Ownership improves participation and sustainability.
Trust
Co-design builds trust between funders and communities — demonstrating that the funder genuinely wants to listen, not just fund its own predetermined agenda.
Alignment with equity goals
If a funder is committed to equity — funding communities that are systematically excluded from mainstream philanthropy — co-design is essential. You cannot design an equitable programme for a community without involving that community.
Community listening
The foundation of co-design is genuine listening — going to communities, meeting people where they are, asking questions and genuinely hearing the answers.
Methods:
- Community meetings and hui
- Focus groups with specific community segments (youth, elders, women)
- One-on-one interviews with community members and leaders
- Surveys (with care for accessibility and language)
- Observation — spending time in community settings
Design workshops
Structured workshops bring community members together to explore problems and generate solutions:
- Problem identification: what are the real issues?
- Aspiration mapping: what does good look like?
- Solution generation: what approaches might work?
- Priority setting: what should be funded?
Prototyping and testing
Rather than designing a complete programme before launch, co-design often involves small-scale testing:
- Pilot rounds with limited funding to test assumptions
- Community feedback on pilot outcomes
- Programme refinement before full roll-out
Narrative and story
Some communities express knowledge better through story, art, and narrative than through formal problem-analysis. Co-design that makes space for different ways of knowing — including whakapapa, oral tradition, and creative expression — is more inclusive.
Who represents the community?
Community is not monolithic — within any community are different experiences, perspectives, and needs. Co-design processes must grapple with:
- Who participates? (Dominant voices may not represent the whole community)
- Are the most marginalised voices included? (Often the hardest to reach)
- How are conflicting community views handled?
Avoiding elite capture
Community leadership can be captured by educated, English-speaking, well-connected community members — not always those facing the greatest disadvantage. Deliberate design is needed to include harder-to-reach voices.
Paid participation
Community members' time is valuable. Authentic co-design compensates participants — koha, honoraria, or payment for time. Expecting community expertise for free replicates the extractive dynamics that co-design is trying to address.
Tikanga-based co-design
In Aotearoa New Zealand, genuine co-design with Māori communities requires:
- Starting with whakapapa — understanding the history and relationships that shape the context
- Operating within tikanga Māori frameworks (not imposing Western design processes)
- Working through whānau, hapū, and iwi structures rather than individualised participation
- Recognising kaumātua and rangatira authority in setting directions
- Using te reo Māori as a language of participation, not just translation
Pacific co-design
Pacific communities are diverse — Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Niuean, and others have distinct languages, cultures, and protocols. Co-design with Pacific communities:
- Works through churches and community leaders (the central institutions of Pacific community life)
- Respects collective decision-making and consultation processes
- Provides adequate time — Pacific community decision-making is not rushed
- Uses Pacific languages alongside English
Time
Genuine co-design takes time — often months before a programme is designed. This creates tension with funding timelines and funder eagerness to start.
Power differential
The funder always has more structural power than the community. Even with the best intentions, co-design can become consultation theatre — where the funder has already decided and is seeking community endorsement.
Capacity
Not all community members have capacity to participate in structured design processes — particularly those facing the greatest disadvantage.
Outcomes aren't always what funders expected
Community co-design may produce priorities and approaches that funders didn't anticipate — and may not align with the funder's own strategic preferences. Funders must be genuinely open to outcomes that challenge their assumptions.
Questions to assess whether co-design is genuine:
- Were affected communities involved from the beginning, or only brought in for validation?
- Were co-designers compensated for their time?
- Were diverse voices — not just community leaders — included?
- Did the community have actual decision-making power, or only advisory input?
- Did the programme change meaningfully as a result of community input?
- Would the community describe the process as genuine?
Tahua's grants management platform supports funders implementing co-design approaches — with community input capture, iterative programme design tools, diverse stakeholder engagement tracking, and the flexible programme configuration that allows grant programmes to evolve based on community feedback.