Action Resource: This is How We Build Power
A resource for funders, community organizers, and all those interested in creating new philanthropic models that support true community self-determination.
Building Power That’s Enduring, Not Episodic: Learnings From the Culture & Community Power Fund
How do marginalized communities build systemic power that is enduring rather than merely episodic? For many grassroots organizers, the answer is deeply rooted in culture.
Moving to Offense in a Time of Collapse: A Scenario Framework for the Future of Equity-Centered Philanthropy
This report explores four plausible futures for equity-centered philanthropy over the next decade, offering philanthropic leaders a way to navigate profound uncertainty without losing sight of long-term equity goals.
Learning-Oriented Accountability: How the Ford Foundation Navigates Impact & Social Justice
This teaching case features The Ford Foundation and its Natural Resources and Climate Change International Strategy.
Learning: The Infrastructure Philanthropy Can’t Afford to Lose
When philanthropy abandons learning, it loses more than insight—it loses orientation. Learn why protecting and strengthening learning infrastructure is essential to philanthropy’s ability to act with both urgency and wisdom in moments of crisis.
Building Power Through Birth Justice
Lessons from RWJF’s efforts in advancing health equity by centering BIPOC-led birth justice organizations
Building Power Through Local Base Building
Lessons from RWJF’s Investment in Multi-Issue Organizing for Racial and Health Equity
A Framework for Embedding Learning in Systems Change
This five-step framework, developed and tested by a foundation, embeds learning in emergent systems change strategies. It prioritizes the testing of hypotheses and assumptions, uses learning questions, and calls for examining both confirming and disconfirming evidence.
Making Visible Philanthropy’s Hidden and Conflicting Mental Models for Systems Change
When we don’t make our mental models visible, we risk undermining our efforts. We see two mental models for systems change being used in philanthropic sector—the systems dynamics mental model and the systems emergence mental model.
Learning Habits for Equity
A complement to a previous CEI resource on five essential learning habits, this brief shows how these learning habits (making thinking visible, asking powerful questions, combating biases, attending to causal inference, answering the now what question) can be used to help advance equity.