Resources

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.

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A Leadership Transition Message from CEI’s Board of Directors

Where we've been, where we are, and where we're going

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

Emergent Learning Can Make Your Systems Mapping More Robust and Equitable—Here’s How.

Emergent Learning principles, when applied to the systems mapping process, can support more equitable and robust systems mapping, strategizing, and learning, and thus a more accurate representation of the system you’re working in.

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.

Announcing CEI’s next Executive Director: Dr. Hanh Cao Yu

CEI is thrilled to announce our incoming Executive Director: Dr. Hanh Cao Yu! Effective October 1, 2024, Hanh will lead all aspects of CEI’s efforts in partnering with philanthropy to provide changemakers the space and resources needed to advance racial justice and create an equitable future.

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.
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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.
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