Free Resources
Welcome to your toolkit for cultivating a joyful and reflective learning philanthropy! These free resources are designed to help you and your team have deep and honest conversations, celebrate strengths and progress, and grow your learning practice together.
How to Show—and Tell—Leaders Why Learning Matters
If you work in organizational learning, you probably don’t need convincing that it matters or that philanthropies should invest more in it. But making that case to leadership can be another story—and understandably so.
The Path Most Traveled: How Foundations Are Becoming Learning Philanthropies
Where do foundations begin when they want to become learning philanthropies? Drawing on early insights from foundations’ “becoming” stories, this blog explores a common path from leadership commitment to structure, practice, culture—and back to leadership again.
Why Every Learning Philanthropy Needs Six Learning Roles
One of the biggest misconceptions we see in philanthropy is that organizational learning belongs to one person. Hire a Chief Learning Officer. Problem solved. Except...learning was never one person's job.
How the Learning Philanthropy Project Began
The Learning Philanthropy Framework began with a question we kept encountering in our work at The Convive Collective: What does it actually mean to be a learning philanthropy?
Which of These Eight Learning Philanthropy Archetypes Is Your Foundation?
The 10-minute Learning Philanthropy Archetype Quiz reveals how learning tends to happen inside your foundation—how it is structured, encouraged, rewarded, and talked about—and offers a practical starting point for strengthening it.
The Learning Philanthropy Framework
The Learning Philanthropy Framework gives your team a shared language to understand how learning works today, identify where it could be stronger, and chart a path forward—together.
The Learning Philanthropy Facilitator's Playbook
Ready to take the Self-Assessment? The Facilitator’s Playbook provides the guidance and practical tools you need to lead the process with your team—or across your entire foundation.
The Learning Philanthropy Maturity Cards
The Maturity Cards are the companion tool for the Self-Assessment. You’ll need these with you for that experience. We recommend printing them out to elevate the “card game” feeling of the self-assessment process (trust us, it’s more fun than you think!).
The 3Cs Playbook: Checking In, Celebrating & Course Correcting
Once you’ve completed the Self-Assessment, the 3Cs Playbook helps your team maintain momentum by reflecting on progress, celebrating what’s working, and course-correcting where needed as you continue your journey toward becoming a learning philanthropy.
Spoiler: It’s packed with some of our favorite learning activities and facilitation exercises.
Learning Philanthropy Archetype Quiz
Take this 10-minute Learning Philanthropy Archetype Quiz to discover your foundation’s learning strengths and areas for growth. You’ll find out which archetype best reflects your foundation—and how your learning practices stack up against the Learning Philanthropy Framework. No judgment, we promise.
Primer on Why Learning Matters for Philanthropic Effectiveness
Learning isn't a luxury. It's a core strategic capability. A primer on why learning powers philanthropic effectiveness—and how foundations can strengthen it.
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Questions? We love them.
After all, curiosity is at the heart of learning philanthropy. If there's something we haven't covered here, please get in touch.
We recommend starting by exploring the Learning Philanthropy Framework to get a feel for the different components. Then, use the Self-Assessment Tool with your team to explore one or two of the components in more depth. Start small. Focus on the learning areas that matter most to your foundation right now, and build from there.
No. Whether you are a team of two or two hundred, these resources are designed to meet you where you are. Learning isn't limited by the size of our budgets or teams; it’s about a mindset of curiosity and continuous evolution.
The self-assessment can be completed individually, but the real value comes from discussing it together. The Facilitator’s Playbook includes options for 1-hour, 2-hour, and 3.5-hour sessions, so your team can choose the format that works best.
That’s a gift. When people disagree, it’s time to get curious. What experiences or assumptions are leading them to see things differently? Those conversations can often be more valuable than reaching quick agreement.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Some teams check in every six months, while others align it with work planning or the end of a grant cycle. The important thing is to create regular moments to reflect on what you're learning and where you'd like to go next.
Yes! We are deeply committed to helping philanthropy become a more reflective, learning-centered sector. That's why we've made these open-source tools freely available to the community. We believe that when foundations learn and adapt together, our collective impact multiplies.
Start a Conversation
The Learning Philanthropy Framework was developed by The Convive Collective through years of field research, practitioner interviews, and co-design with six pioneering philanthropies. If you'd like to explore how it could work for your organization, drop us a line—we’d love to hear from you.
