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Leveraging PurposePhil for Organizational Learning

Two people stand in front of a fireplace with bunting-like string hanging from one side of the mantel to the other, and use clothes pegs to hang note cards with their hand written ideas about barriers to and enablers of learning.

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Get an overview of the resources available through this website and create an your own action plan for organizational learning.
Staff stand in front of large posters holding dot stickers which they are using to place themselves along a series of spectrums on the poster.
What's Available on the PurposePhil Site?

PurposePhil is designed to support action learning, and specifically a pedagogical method called collaborative inquiry. You can learn more about collaborative inquiry in Learning in Complex Systems.


Ways to engage with PurposePhil

Resources

What they Offer

Use Case Ideas

Introduction to a Theme blog posts
Each theme features an introductory blog that spells out the intents & purposes behind the theme, the questions that guided its creators, a summary of its content, and information about the podcast episode for that theme 
Find connections between the theme and your own context and interests; get an overview of resources that you might add to a board package or newsletter
Core Concepts blog posts
Access big ideas about contemporary issues in and beyond philanthropy. These posts provide helpful framing, definitions, and shared language.
Find content to start a different kind of conversation with donors, board, staff, or grantees after reading a short post; reframe stuck conversations
Case Studies
True stories about how other organizations have journeyed through a given theme
Open up a sense of possibility; demonstrate the application of big ideas to audiences with a pragmatic orientation
Generative Prompts
Downloadable activities designed to help make connections to one's own context and reflect on content
Facilitate staff & board engagement with content; apply your learning to your own work
Provocations
In design method, a provocation advances learning when we focus on our reactions to it. Podcasts can be treated as provocations.
Follow interactions with a provocation by mapping emotions on an emotions wheel, highlighting the information that we felt most strongly about, and/or small group conversations to investigate what our emotions are telling us about our own values & beliefs
Podcast Episodes
Curated to each theme, podcasts bring content alive through storytelling and interviews with leading thinkers and practitioners
Switch up the pace: send your team on a walk with a podcast, followed by open discussion and/or generative prompts from that theme
Reflection Prompts
On each blog, there are starting points to connect what you are reading with your own experience, note reactions, and begin to identify how you might action learning
When working through content as a team, mix up solitary, paired, and small group reflection activities, writing, discussing, and drawing, using these prompts
Key Points
A bullet point summary of each blog
A great resource for communicating content with brevity

A group of event participants stand or squat in a semi-circle as they arrange cards on the floor.

Participants start their day with a game to get into a playful and generative headspace.
How Will You Use These Resources?

You can navigate and engage with this site on your own, of course, but there may come a time when you would like to engage others on your learning journey. How might you do that?

There is a lot of merit in starting with an existing curiosity or interest, and asking, 'who might also want to explore this?' Peruse the site to find resources and imagine how you might come together to dedicate some time to shared inquiry.

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Action Learning Plan

First page of the Action Learning Plan with columns titled What, Who, and How.
Spend as much time with PurposePhil as you like before setting to the task of wondering how you might want to action your learning. Specifically, we recommend youcheck out the Learning and Narrative themes to get an overview of the PurposePhil approach to learning about philanthropic systems.
Use the purposePhil Action Learning Plan to think through what it might look like to do action learning and identify your motivations, curiosities.
Tip: Print this PurposePhil Action Learning Plan tool double-sided on tabloid.
Print your Action Learning Plan
Key Points
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    Action Learning
    PurposePhil is designed to support action learning: moving in a loop from personal inquiry, to experimentation, to active reflection
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    Ownership Over Learning
    PurposePhil is not about passively receiving information, but rather, about getting in touch with your own curiosity and imagination, and connecting with others to pursue shared inquiry
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    Resources for Sharing
    The site resources can be used in many ways to spark new conversations and re-frame old ones.
Reflection Prompts

Experiences & Observations

Think of a time when you felt very driven to learn more about something broadly in order to satisfy your own curiosity: what did your learning process look like? Who did you involve?

Reactions & Impressions

How do you respond to the argument that learning is a form of action?

Questions & Hunches to test

What organizational values are in tension with an open learning process that doesn't follow a linear process? How might you test this?

Glossary

Action Learning

A cycle of "doing" and "reflecting" stages. In most forms of action learning, a coach is included and responsible for promoting and facilitating learning, as well as encouraging the team to be self-managing.
The Action Learning process includes:
  • An important and often complex problem
  • A diverse problem-solving team
  • An environment that promotes curiosity, inquiry, and reflection,
  • A requirement that talk be converted into action and, ultimately, a solution,
  • A collective commitment to learning.

Resources

1

Wikipedia Contributors, “Action Learning,” Wikipedia (Wikimedia Foundation, May 17, 2019), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_learning.

What to read next

A statue on the left, a group of people standing in circle next to it. Market stands on the right.
Theme: LearningType: Core concepts

Learning in Complex Systems

Understand what it means to be working in the realm of complexity. Learn about collaborative inquiry, a process that can help us build alternative perspectives on systems that we are part of.

A group of Vancouver Foundation staff sit on benches around a fire pit, roasting marshmallows.
Theme: LearningType: Case study

Vancouver Foundation's PurposePhil Journey

Learn about Vancouver Foundation's PurposePhil journey. From surfacing values logics to grappling with purpose. Come along on VF's very own learning journey.

An Asian man sitting and smiling, holding up a pink and orange paper while a White woman with long hair and black long sleeve sits next to him smiling
Theme: LearningType: Introductory

Introduction to Learning Stories

Philanthropy offers a feel-good story about improving quality of life. But, to what extent is that intention ever realized? PurposePhil helps us learn within complex systems.

See all themes

Narrative

Origin

Money

Purpose

Boundaries

Intergenerational

Decisions

Learning

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A collaboration between

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About us

Our history
Our team

Explore

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Contact us

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