Civic Space Is Infrastructure: What This Moment Asks of All of Us

Over the past few weeks, Cooperation Canada has been part of two important gatherings of the philanthropic community: Philanthropic Foundations Canada’s conference in Winnipeg, on Treaty 1 territory, and WINGSForum in Montréal/Tiohtià, on the unceded and unsurrendered traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá (Mohawk) Nation.

Across both gatherings, the conversations kept returning to questions that are central to our work at Cooperation Canada: What does it take to sustain strong, resilient civil society in a period of profound global change? How do we protect the civic space that makes democracy possible? And how can civil society, philanthropy, governments and others work together differently in response?

These are not questions for any one sector. They are questions about democracy itself.

Civic Space is Infrastructure

This is a framing we have been carrying with us since the inaugural Ottawa Civic Space Summit earlier this year.

In his closing reflections, Maiwand Rahyab, Founder and CEO of Resilient Societies, raised a simple but powerful idea: civic space is infrastructure.

We readily understand why societies invest in physical infrastructure. Roads, energy grids and communications networks make it possible for communities and economies to function. Civic infrastructure is no less essential.

It is the organizations, networks, relationships, institutions and spaces that enable people to come together, access information, participate in decisions, exercise freedom of association, hold power accountable and care for their communities. Democracy is not simply something delivered through institutions or exercised at the ballot box. It is a practice, built and sustained by and for communities.

And, like other infrastructure, it requires investment.

The inaugural Ottawa Civic Space Summit brought together more than 350 people from civil society, philanthropy, governments, media, academia and other sectors around precisely this challenge: how to defend, reclaim and reimagine civic space at a time of growing democratic strain. One of the messages emerging from that gathering was that this work is a collective responsibility. Strong civic space depends on organizations being adequately resourced and protected, participation being inclusive, relationships being equitable and accountable, and civic actors being able to operate freely and safely.

The conversations at the PFC Conference and the WINGSForum offered an opportunity to keep testing what that means in practice.

Building Resilience Before We Need It

At PFC, an opening conversation on democracy looked at lessons emerging from the United States while also asking what they might mean in the Canadian context.

One of the ideas that stayed with me was the importance of networks and civic infrastructure during moments of crisis.

Systems and relationships developed for one challenge can become essential when circumstances change. Community networks strengthened during COVID-19, for example, built connections, information-sharing mechanisms and capacities that could later be reactivated when communities faced new threats and injustice.

The lesson is bigger than any one crisis: resilience cannot be built on demand.

My colleague Melissa Hammell, Co-Founder of Bridge Building Group, often reminds us of the teaching that relationships are built over “100 cups of tea.”

The idea is simple but important. Relationship-building takes patience, commitment, listening and learning. Trust develops over time.

And that matters precisely because we do not know when we will need those relationships.

When a crisis hits, there is rarely time to begin introducing ourselves, figuring out who can be trusted, learning where knowledge sits or building the networks required to respond. Communities’ ability to mobilize, share information, protect one another and respond to injustice depends in part on relationships that already exist.

That takes time.

And it takes resources — on all sides.

Investing in relationships and networks can be difficult to quantify. It may not fit neatly within a one-year project cycle or produce an easily attributable outcome.

But it is infrastructure.

And when that infrastructure is needed, its value becomes unmistakable.

That is why, on the sidelines of WINGSForum, we partnered with Comuá Network, PIPA Initiative and Resilient Societies to host an informal gathering on civic space, civil society and philanthropy — bringing together philanthropic leaders, civil society actors and advocates to connect across regions, share emerging strategies and explore how we can strengthen democratic resilience and sustain locally led solutions.

Who Can Act — and How Quickly?

At WINGSForum, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa offered a stark analysis of the intersection between technology, information and concentrated political and economic power.

She described changes that reach deeply into how we relate to the world around us: social media competing for our attention, increasingly intimate technologies shaping how we relate to one another, and artificial intelligence raising new questions about human agency.

She also mapped the mutually reinforcing relationship between political strongmen and technology oligarchies. They need not be part of some coordinated conspiracy. Their incentives can simply align: technology provides reach and scale; political power can provide protection or weaponize institutions and law; and information chaos can benefit both.

There was an important challenge embedded in her message for everyone working to protect rights, democratic participation and civic space.

Those seeking to consolidate power are not waiting for perfect strategies, perfectly designed funding programs or certainty about every risk.

They move.

They collaborate.

They invest.

They use the tools and influence available to them.

The question for the rest of us is whether our systems allow us to do the same when civic space comes under threat.

Can resources get where they are needed quickly? Do the relationships already exist to understand what is happening? Whose knowledge informs the response? Where are systems of resilience already operating? And what can different actors contribute to helping those systems survive and thrive?

Different Actors Bring Different Forms of Power

Money matters enormously in this conversation.

Civil society organizations around the world are operating under immense financial pressure at precisely the moment when their role is becoming more important. Flexible, predictable and sustained resources matter. And when civic actors or communities face immediate threats, the ability to move money quickly can be decisive.

But money is not the whole relationship.

Communities, movements and civil society organizations bring knowledge. They bring legitimacy, trust, lived experience, organizing capacity and relationships built over time.

They are often closest to the challenges we are trying to address. They know where resilience already exists. They see where systems are breaking down. And they are frequently the ones already developing and implementing solutions.

Philanthropic organizations bring financial resources, but also relationships, convening power, influence and voice — should they choose to use it — as well as flexibility and often a greater capacity to take risks.

Governments bring different responsibilities, resources and forms of power.

The opportunity is not to pretend those actors occupy identical positions. They do not.

It is to recognize that responding to the challenges we face requires more than a transaction in which resources move from one actor to another.

It requires collaboration.

It requires connection.

And it requires taking seriously whose knowledge we value, who defines the problem, who participates in decisions, who can move quickly, who carries risk and whose institutions and systems of resilience ultimately become stronger.

From Principles to Tactics

Both PFC and WINGSForum also pushed conversations beyond broad commitments and toward tactics.

That matters.

There is no shortage of agreement across our sectors about the importance of trust, partnership, locally led approaches, shifting power or flexible funding.

The harder question is what we are willing to change.

Sometimes the starting point can sound remarkably simple.

At WINGSForum, one suggestion was: retire the one-year grant.

We might go further.

What if five years became the minimum rather than the exception?

Longer-term, flexible funding creates space for organizations to retain people and knowledge, invest in relationships, adapt when circumstances change and build the infrastructure required for resilience.

But even a seemingly straightforward change like that quickly exposes the harder work.

It may require changing organizational policies.

It may require conversations with boards.

It may require revisiting risk frameworks, approval processes, reporting requirements or expectations around attribution and control.

Moving resources quickly in response to injustice may require accepting that normal processes are simply too slow.

Valuing community knowledge may require changing what counts as evidence.

Sharing power may require changing who gets to participate in decisions.

There is still a significant distance between many of the principles our sectors increasingly embrace and the systems through which we actually operate.

Closing that distance requires more than good intentions.

It requires institutional change — and some willingness to be brave enough to make it.

Connection is Part of the Work

For Cooperation Canada, there is another thread running through all of these conversations.

Our role as a network is fundamentally about connection.

And connection is not ancillary to the work of protecting civic space. It is part of the infrastructure that makes collective action possible.

The “100 cups of tea” matter.

Relationships between organizations matter.

Spaces in which philanthropy, civil society, governments, communities, researchers and others encounter one another matter.

These connections allow knowledge to travel. They allow people to recognize common challenges across sectors and geographies. They make collaboration possible. And they create relationships that can be activated when circumstances demand it.

This is also why the Ottawa Civic Space Summit was never intended to be simply a conference.

The inaugural Summit was an invitation to deepen partnerships and move from dialogue toward action — and part of a longer effort to build the relationships, alliances and collective capacity needed to defend, reclaim and reimagine civic space. We framed that work as a collective responsibility for the health of our democracies and the resilience of our communities.

That work continues.

From May 4–6, 2027, Resilient Societies will convene the next Ottawa Civic Space Summit, with Cooperation Canada support among other partners, bringing together actors from across civil society, philanthropy, governments and other sectors to continue this work.

At its heart is a proposition that feels increasingly urgent: civic space is critical infrastructure for democracy.

If we believe that, then our practices and investments need to reflect it — by sustaining the organizations, relationships and networks that allow communities to organize, respond and shape their futures, and by building institutions capable of acting when those spaces come under pressure.

PFC and WINGSForum reinforced how much opportunity there is for greater connection and collective action. They also reinforced how much work remains to turn shared principles into practice.

That is work none of us can do alone.