Our approach
We believe that by building a strong learning culture across our membership, we can help create a more equitable and effective funding system.
For us, learning is about using the insights we gather from our work with funders and civil society to take action on what matters to our city and communities.
We create opportunities for learning across all our strands of work, providing space for our members to reflect and take action together. This might be capturing and using what we learn from how funders respond in both times of crisis- like our work during the covid-19 pandemic- as well as how we can create long-term change in funding systems. It is also about how we bring members together to share what works (and doesn’t); and collaborating with equity-led organisations to understand how we can better support London’s communities. As a London Funders member, you can access our learning programme of workshops, events and resources, which you can read more about here.
Learning principles
The principles that guide our approach to learning include:
- Learning takes time – we prioritise and protect the time and resources it takes to create a strong learning culture
- Learning is collaborative – we work with funders, civil society and communities to share, build on, and take action based on what we learn
- Learning isn’t always perfectly formed – we are comfortable working in an uncertain and changing context where we don’t always have neatly packaged answers to complex questions. Instead, we work to constantly make sense of the context we work in and test and adopt new approaches based on what we’re learning
- We approach learning with an equity lens – this means we work to ensure that the insights, work and reflections informing our work are made up of a diverse range of voices, experiences and perspectives
- Learning never stops – there is always more to learn and we approach it with openness, humility and honesty.