About this issue
We hope that this Journal inspires you to discover some new practices in your learning journey and to join PEAK colleagues in our shared spaces. Together, we will live our Learn, Share, Evolve Principle as we drive equity and transform philanthropy.
The complete edition of our latest Journal is exclusively available to PEAK members as a PDF or online. Select articles are open to the community.
Download This Issue Members OnlyWhat's Inside
Letter from the Editors
How we learn—as individuals, teams, organizations, and a sector—is key to becoming more effective, equitable grantmakers.
Throughout this edition, we look at the practice of emergent learning, advocating for an approach that is adaptive, inclusive, transparent, and curious. In the development of this issue, our formative conversations with guest editors Melanie Matthews and Shantelice White resonated with urgent themes regarding the processes and mindsets that allow learning to thrive. We talked about the constructive messiness of idea generation and iteration, reframing “failure” as a necessary part of learning and growth, and making space for all voices—both inside and outside our organizations, including our grantee partners and the communities we all serve.
In this Journal, we hear from numerous grants professionals about what being an emergent learner means to them and what it looks like in practice. Further, we highlight PEAK’s own learning journey to operationalize this playbook, both to guide our growth as an organization and to create convenings, resources, and insights that best support our members. We hope that it inspires you to discover some new practices in your learning journey and to join PEAK colleagues in our shared spaces. Together, we will live our Learn, Share, Evolve Principle as we drive equity and transform philanthropy.
Chantias Ford and Betsy Reid
Coeditors, PEAK Grantmaking Journal
We partnered with Laura Chow Reeve, founder of Radical Roadmaps, to illustrate this edition, bringing her dual skills as an artist and graphic recorder to create a playbook that visualizes emergent learning concepts. Throughout the Journal, Reeve uses marginalia—a fancy term for the notes and sudden ideas you might jot on the sides of your note paper—to show you how a little generative messiness can inspire your own emergent learning journey.
FROM OUR CEO
Satonya Fair shares her vision for an emergent learning community of philanthropy professionals that will revolutionize the sector: “If the future of grantmaking is adaptive, equitable, and truly effective, then emergent learning is the engine that will get us there. Together, we will harness all the ways we can disrupt this-is-the-way-we’ve-always-done-it thinking to forge the path forward.”
Transforming Philanthropy Through Emergent Learning
Coeditor Chantias Ford and guest editors Melanie Matthews and Shantelice White define the concepts, qualities, and practices of emergent learning, and how they envision operationalizing it throughout the sector.
Creating Spaces Where Emergent Learners Can Thrive
Emergent learning urges new ways of thinking. It encourages experimentation, embraces missteps, and values all voices as essential steps in the journey toward transformative impact.
But of course, it also challenges the status quo—meaning it can be an uncomfortable approach for any organization that’s relied on traditional learning structures.
So how do we reenvision the workplace to make it a safe, nurturing, and vibrant learning environment? In this section of our emergent learning playbook, we’ve distilled answers to that question from across the PEAK community. Alongside, you’ll find contributions from your peers, each sharing a page from their own playbooks for making the change to a new and more impactful model of learning.
We hope their insights will equip and inspire you to champion this critical shift in your organizational culture. Because once we open ourselves to the power of emergent learning, who knows what transformative practices we might discover?
CULTURE SHIFT
When All Are Welcome, We Can Do Great Things Together
Traci Johnson writes that centering humanity and including all voices at the table is critical to elevating and valuing all perspectives.
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COMMUNITY VOICES
What qualities define an organizational culture that sees mistakes as an integral part of learning and growth?
CULTURE SHIFT
Making Space for Emergent Learning
The impact you can have happens at the speed of your learning, Ericka Novotny observes. But are you primed to adapt to the times?
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COMMUNITY VOICES
What organizational shifts are needed to foster better learning environments?
CULTURE SHIFT
How Do You De-Silo Learning?
For Abigail Osei, organizational growth depends on sharing both failure and success stories.
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CULTURE SHIFT
Learning Cultures Are Built on Trust
Ben Liadsky and Andrew Taylor explain how creating the right environment for honest dialogue can make you a better partner to the nonprofits you support.
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CULTURE SHIFT
How to Enable a Sustainable Emergent Learning Culture
“When we begin to feel responsible for the well-being and success of one another,” Shantelice White says, “we develop profound connections that propel our learning.”
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CULTURE SHIFT
How Surdna Centers Trust and Learns With Grantee Partners
Surdna Foundation has centered its nonprofit partners in its continuous learning journey over the past several years. Jonathan Goldberg shares how implementing trust-based practices is resulting in more resilient organizations.
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CEO:CEO
PEAK’s Satonya Fair and Candid’s Ann Mei Chang discuss the connection between emergent learning and rebalancing power dynamics between funders and grantees—and how puting adaptive learning practices in place can revolutionize philanthropy.
Unlearning and Relearning to Leverage New Grantmaking Models
Three grants leaders—Tiauna George, Kelly Hayashi, and Hannah Kahn—talk to guest editor Melanie Matthews about how new entities helped them to think—and work—outside the 501(c)(3) private foundation box.
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Roundtable
Volunteer leaders supporting PEAK’s chapters, peer groups, and board share how these peer networks are leveraging emergent learning practices to activate our member community of changemakers.
Emergent Learning in Practice: The cocreation of PEAK’s peer groups
Sara Sanders recounts the creation of PEAK’s peer groups and how developing new member-engagement spaces was at times messy and uncomfortable. But it was also a fun process that resulted in powerful support networks.
PEAK Community
PEAK Community
The qualities of emergent learning reflect how PEAK and our community have always operated, and so much of what we do day in and day out. Here, we share all of the ways we’ve been convening, connecting, sharing, and learning together in 2022, celebrate our growing network and our members’ career trajectories, and give you a sneak peek of what’s coming next.
Make Your Plans for PEAK2023
Join us in Baltimore from May 7–10 to reunite with your peers in person and take deep dives into our Learn, Share, Evolve Principle. We’ll embark on an emergent learning journey together and, over the course of three days, see how we can each activate ourselves as changemakers and create a more equitable sector.
