Organisational Development Community of Practice

The Organisational Development (OD) Community of Practice is a community of foundations that are either providing a form of OD and capacity-building support or are considering developing this as an explicit support to their grantees. This includes various kinds of support, including stand-alone OD grants, as a complement to other types of grants and in-kind contributions from foundation staff, amongst other forms of support.

Objectives

This community offers a safe space where philanthropy professionals can learn and explore the challenges of providing Organisational Development support in an effective, measurable manner; and where they can discuss challenges internal to their own organisations. In this way, we continue to aim to advance the practice of organisational development in the philanthropic sector more broadly.

Focus areas

To bring visibility in recognising OD support as a key part of the foundation toolbox for enabling transformation
Compare, explore and contrast different approaches and understandings of OD support
Gain a deep understanding of the different key areas of OD support, such as Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) and financial capacity
Share challenges and collectively explore evolving grantmaker-grantee relations

Activities

Webinars that zoom into a specific area or theme of OD support, that incorporate a variety of formats and methodologies
An annual in-person meeting
Knowledge products

Background

This initiative has its roots in an informal peer-learning group set up by five foundations Laudes Foundation, MAVA Foundation, Stiftung Mercator Switzerland, Oak Foundation and PeaceNexus.

Their exchanges were captured in the report: Funding Organisational Development: A smart investment to multiply impact. Based on the interest generated by these previous discussions and the resulting report and wishing to extend the learning opportunities to a larger group of organisations, the five foundations decided to formalise their dialogue and embed it within the Philea network.

Since then, the group has expanded to other foundations from other countries and works hand in hand with Philea in organising a wide variety of peer learning events and fostering the community which is now truly international. We invite other foundations to join us on our learning journey.

Knowledge products