JEFFERSON E FUNDERS FORUM as a Learning Community

In 2003, Dr. Mary Ellen Fleeger, Trustee of the Carpenter Foundation, offered her perspective and experience on Learning Communities as a methodology or practice:

1. Learning Communities are:

• A group of people having common interests.
• Groups of people engaged in intellectual interaction for the purpose of learning.
• One way to build the commonalities & connections essential to our education and our society.
• The integration of work and learning creating the capacity to think BIG.

2. Components of Learning Communities:

• Purpose with goals and objectives
• Issues & topics to address
• Affiliated participants
• Meetings and activities
• Scholarly process for learning
• Community connections, partnerships and engagement
• Assessment/evaluation of activities & projects

3. Why Learning Communities?

• Philosophical: They fit into a changing philosophy of knowledge.
• Research based: Fit with research that tells us about learning.
• Pragmatic: Learning Communities work. They allow you to continue a collective learning process across many organizations.

4. New Thinking and Learning Communities:

• Focus on community changes
• Imagine the difference if the starting point for foundations was not what they do best or like best, but what the community needs most.
• Learning communities provide people the time and opportunity for interaction and talk about ideas, one’s work, and the larger community.

5. The Jefferson e Funders Forum as a learning community offers the opportunity to notice and learn that ….

• Each organization will see how universal their deepest problems are.
• Inevitable setbacks and crisis occur for everyone and you can help the community from derailing.
• When facing challenges of profound change, there is no substitute for collaboration: people coming together out of common purpose, willing to support one another so an entire community benefits.

6. The Learning Community Approach offers a New Opportunity for Foundations: To Move From Fix It Approach to Create It Approach

• Fix It Approach

a. Focus on correction & analysis of problems
b. Little margin of error
c. Focus on what’s wrong
d. Problems stronger than vision of collaboration

• Create It Approach

a. Create something new that we want
b. Expect error, tolerance for chaos
c. Focus on what we want to accomplish
d. Vision stronger than problems

7. A Potential New Paradigm for Foundations Now:

• Moving from fragmentation to integration
• Creating community networks
• Understanding that all members are tied together in some fashion
• Facilitating decisions by the network in concert with the community
• Creating a seamless giving community will bring economies of scale, greater efficiency, and reduced duplication.

8. Fixing Financial Incentives:

• When financial incentives change, behavior changes
• A shift in incentives translates into concrete decisions & actions.

9. Who’s in charge?

• Community accountability is most elusive, but is an important characteristic of a learning community.
• If it’s best to close some services/agencies, merge others, or reduce certain ones, then the members must do that.
• A learning community is accountable to the broader geographic community.
• Consumer satisfaction is one criteria by which you will be judged