Created in late 2015, Help Refugees (now known as Choose Love) is the largest refugee focused movement in the UK and now the largest distributor of aid to refugee camps in Europe.

Impressed by its effectiveness and meteoric rise, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation commissioned research to help it and other agencies learn from its success.

Using the framework of the movement building canvas, we interviewed Help Refugees staff, volunteers and funders, alongside comms and social media analysis and network development in order capture the lessons and experiences underlying their success.

This included details on how this passionate movement grew and how the organisation formed, recruited volunteers and scaled up its activities, as well as the challenges it faced and the solutions it found to those challenges.

We used the information gathered to draw out lessons from Help Refugees experience, to help them and other organisations achieve these levels of success in the future. In particular we evaluated and made recommendations for funders and philanthropists looking to support networked responses to humanitarian crisis.

We created reports for Help Refugees itself and summary reports for similar humanitarian aid groups and funders, to disseminate the insights for the benefit of the sector as a whole.

Insights into funding approaches for volunteer responses in times of crisis →

Insights for existing and future grassroots groups responding to times of crisis →

What makes an effective volunteer
response in times of crisis? →