Building a generation-shifting movement for justice: with thanks to the Benefact Trust
By 2040, Just Love could have 5,000 to 10,000 people in its Alumni Network. As it lays foundations and sets spiritual culture, Just Love has received a three-year movement-building grant from Benefact Trust (£40k). This transformational grant enables the charity to leverage serious social impact now, strategically mobilising people around key justice issues, while also preparing the ground for decades to come. Just Love wants to see a generation-shifting Jesus and justice movement in every corner of the UK.
Already, Just Love alumni have been selected to stand for Parliament, established social enterprises and helped pioneer churches in marginalised areas. Just Love began with a handful of students, but as it turns ten this year over 1,000 people have now come through Just Love and entered the next stages of life. The Just Love Alumni Network exists to turn this potential into impact.
Tim Lornie, Alumni Network Coordinator at Just Love, said: "At Just Love we want to see thousands of alumni giving radically, consuming ethically and transforming the industries in which they work. We want a wave of servant leaders committing to communities on the margins; a wave of political innovators working for dialogue, integrity, and long-term change at the heart of public life; a wave of holy intercessors quietly breaking ground for God's justice in every nation on earth. We are seeing the beginnings, but just think what is possible in 10 to 20 years’ time when thousands of Just Love graduates are living as "salt and light" across British (and indeed global) society. We urgently need reform across teaching, law, childcare, housing policy, the arts and beyond - Just Love has a part to play."
Over the next 18 months, a central focus for the Just Love Alumni Network is radical financial stewardship. What if Jesus' teaching on money became a reality among Just Love graduates? Just Love wants to see people give radically above the norm, leveraging wealth for enormous social impact. Right now, its Alumni Network has 650 members: assuming a median UK graduate salary (£36k), this community earns £23.4mn/yr. If the Alumni Network averages at 15% giving - toward the lower end of our ambition - this community will give £3.51mn/yr. Over a 40-year timescale, this is £140.4mn donated to churches, charities and justice movements. Every extra 1% of giving mobilised among this community represents a huge boost to effective charities worldwide; these numbers will rise and rise as the network expands year on year.
Reflecting on how the Just Love Alumni Network has shaped her stewardship practices, one graduate reflects: "The [Generosity] Conference has had a long-term impact… I have started giving regularly to charities and I think often about the portion of my disposable income that is right for me to give. I often come back to… the idea that my money is not my own - whilst it is my earnings from my job, it should not end with me... I did not realise how much the ideas I was introduced to at the Alumni Network 'Generosity’ Conference would influence my work and the way I spend my time today, as well as my money."
Financial stewardship is just one part of Just Love's vision to make an impact in society. This grant is liberating time and energy to invest deeply in the practical and spiritual foundations of the Alumni Network, where its impact will be multiplied for decades.
The Just Love Alumni Network is partly supported by the Benefact Trust.
Benefact Trust is one of the UK’s largest grant-making charities. The Trust’s grants further its charitable objectives of promoting the Christian faith and other charitable causes. Benefact Trust’s purpose is to make a positive difference to people’s lives by funding, guiding and celebrating the work of churches and charities; empowering the most vulnerable and giving people, communities and places a renewed opportunity to flourish.