Our learning experiences will help you build collaborative capacity and make greater impact.
Build your capacity to work better together to address our region’s complex problems and create community assets for all. Learn to use systems practice, a process to understand the system you’re working in and identify leverage points for change, and explore a suite of skills and mindsets to help you create the conditions for meaningful collaboration. Filter the list of upcoming learning experiences by the impact areas below, find the path that is right for you and take the next step in strengthening your organization, network and community.
Ready to learn? Let us help! The Learning Fund provides financial support to help local changemakers cover tuition and conference fees for virtual learning experiences offered from partners across the globe.
Upcoming Learning Experiences
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, this 2-part workshop will explore the mindset needed to create a successful Collective Impact Initiative that's intentionally designed to drive systems change and how to incorporate programmatic and systems change strategies into your Collective Impact implementation plans. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by ZingTrain, explore how to recognize and better handle interpersonal workplace conflict and learn tools to engage effectively in a Courageous Conversation. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by Leadership Learning Community, connect with others who are navigating through organizational transition(s) and explore resources from the group. No cost associated.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, learn how nonprofits are turning the tide and get proven ways to inspire and connect with a broad pool of donors. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by Volunteer Fairfax, learn how to recruit, retain and recognize volunteers with the lens of leading the different age group, no matter where you fall in the generational breakdown. No cost associated.
Time: 10:00 am
Offered by the School of System Change, this 3-part series will explore four different systemic worldviews and why they are important to systems change work, gain an understanding in systemic capabilities and practices to help you clarify the role you play in change, and how to take a multi-method approach in your unique change-making work. Register by September 22. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 6:15 am
Offered by Circle Generation, this 8-week series will explore useful tools and frameworks to amplify engagement while collectively exploring ways to apply their learnings in their networks, teams, organizations, and with other practitioners and will be broken into 3 modules: Network Mindset & Emergence, Participant Engagement, and Network Coordination. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 11:00 am
Offered by LifeLabs Learning, explore how to create productive vulnerability, diagnose common trust blockers and identify solutions to fix them faster, and increase team learning behaviors to more effectively learn from mistakes. No cost associated.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by ZingTrain, explore the impact your beliefs can have on both your willingness to give and receive feedback, barriers that get in the way of giving and receiving feedback, and tips for giving and receiving effective and productive feedback. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 11:00 am
Offered by Ideo U, this 5 week self-paced, online cohort course will explore how to look at problems through different perspectives, develop actionable and innovative solutions, learn how to de-risk and experiment to build resilient strategies, and balance creative thinking and rigor to get to breakthrough ideas and sustainable solutions. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Creative Leadership, understand the differences between horizontal and vertical development practices, identify internalized assumptions that serve as belief barriers holding back leadership capacity, and recognize polarities and shift to a both / and mindset to approach them. No cost associated.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by Ideo U, this 5-week, self-paced cohort course will explore techniques for mapping complex systems and identifying the root causes, establish a shared view of the system, and reframe problems from different perspectives to uncover new solutions. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 4:00 pm
Offered by IDEO U, this 5 week, self-paced cohort course how to use data to inspire new ideas, opportunities, and directions, frame your question and determine the types of data you need, discover insights in your data and effectively communicate why they matter, turn insights from the data into compelling stories and visualizations, and take a human-centered approach to data analysis. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Collective Impact Forum, the second session in the 4-part Essentials for Collective Impact Series will introduce a framework for concretely thinking about the different components and strategies for systems change from FSG’s publication: The Water of Systems Change and support participants in assessing system change opportunities within their own work. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, learn how to identify signs and symptoms of burnout in yourself and others, explore personal burnout risk factors and how to self-advocate, and create your own self-care plan. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by ZingTrain, explore the benefits of building an inclusive workplace where everyone thrives, the key qualities and traits of an inclusive leader, and how to evaluate your current systems and practices to find opportunities for greater equity and inclusion. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 5:00 pm
Offered by the School of Systems Change, this 5-week course will explore group dynamics and energies, power, process design, leadership and understanding your self as an instrument for change. Deadline to apply is October 2. The course starts on October 20. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 10:00 am
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, learn how to build emotional awareness and active listening, explore how empathy drives trust and inclusion, and learn how to navigate difficult conversations with care and clarity. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, learn the importance of staff retention and building trust on your team, how to create flow and start talking about burnout with your teams, and the importance of the balance of challenges vs resources. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Interactive Institute for Social Change, this 7-part series will explore key practices that make it easier for principled, self-empowered collaborators to communicate, decide, and act together including designing and facilitating meetings, discovering shared meaning, designing shared visions, and building collaborative change. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, gain an understanding the importance of community and power in place, build the knowledge and competence to think about policy change, and build a foundation and next steps for change. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by CompassPoint, in this 2-part series you will explore the distinction between change (an event or situation) and transition (a process) and recognize the impacts on people in your organization, gain an understanding of the Margin to Center framework as a way to identify solutions to challenges, and learn to distinguish between adaptive challenges and technical fixes and how they apply to a change occurring in your organization. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by CompassPoint, in this 2-part series you will learn how to use the “purpose, outcome, and process” (P.O.P) format to design a meeting, how to center marginalized voices in meetings, and strategies for interrupting oppressive power dynamics in meetings. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by Candid Learning, learn practical strategies for creating a board that will move your organization forward, including the board’s role, and what your organization needs from its board members, ways to find the right board members to serve your nonprofit at its current stage, how to create positive relationships with and within the board, and how to navigate the common challenges that arise with boards. No cost associated.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, learn how to identify workplace burnout risk factors and how to regulate leadership and supporting your team during anxious times. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 10:00 am
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, explore proven strategies and tools for recruiting volunteers in today's world and look at your recruitment strategy from a different perspective and find ways to include others in your recruitment efforts. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, the first session of this 4-part workshop will explore the importance of community and land acknowledgement, strategies to co-create shared agreements, and key concepts and reflection on DEIB and reconciliation and how bias, privilege, and power shape experiences and communities. This series can be attended as a whole or a la carte. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Collective Impact Forum, the third session in the 4-part Essentials for Collective Impact Series will explore building trust and strengthening relationships across participations, keeping partners engaged and aligned toward a common agenda, raising broader awareness and visibility of the initiative, and shifting narratives that hold challenges in place. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, gain an understanding of the benefits of a legacy society and what it takes to create and maintain one to ensure your organization's sustainability. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 8:00 am
Offered by CoCreative, this 4-part series will explore an integrative approach to leading and facilitating collaboration through a blend of mini-lectures and applied facilitation, and will allow you to engage in meeting facilitation scenarios, addressing actual challenges faced by participants and learn practices to navigate conflicts, work across diverse perspectives, and build trust within your collaboration. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Creative Leadership, embrace a relational view of leadership that moves beyond individual goals to focus on collective outcomes, help leaders assess and adapt to today’s challenges and the unknowns of the future, learn how development builds capabilities and a shared understanding of leadership as a social process, and understand the importance of working across organizational boundaries for systemic solutions to disruption. No cost associated.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, learn practical tips to improve volunteer retention in their programs and explore how recruiting, recognition and retention of volunteers are interconnected and what steps you can take now to put a successful volunteer retention plan in place. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, the second session of this 4-part workshop will explore accessibility and neurodiversity through the lens of equity and design, barriers faced by disabled and neurodivergent communities and how ableism shows up in physical spaces, policies, and attitudes, and ways to design environments, events, and learning spaces that are accessible, inclusive, and responsive to diverse needs This series can be attended as a whole or a la carte. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Collective Impact Forum, the fourth session in the 4-part Essentials for Collective Impact Series will practice creating an Actor Map and an Ecocycle Map for your initiative, learn about additional collaborative engagement and planning tools, and discuss how you might apply these tools in your own work. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by Candid Learning, learn practical strategies for better engaging your board in fundraising, including boards’ typical fundraising responsibilities, why some board members may be reluctant to fundraise, and new ways your board members can participate in fundraising activities. No cost associated.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by Nonprofit Quarterly, explore a proven framework for mission-centered branding, along with practical tools to help you identify what aspects of your brand need to evolve, center your community and mission in your branding process, and shape your identity and story in more inclusive, resonant ways. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, the third session of this 4-part workshop will explore the distinctions between sex, gender, and sexuality, learn how colonization has shaped narratives around queerness, examine real-world examples of trans-inclusive policies, discuss pronoun awareness, and learn tools for advocacy, language, and community support, This series can be attended as a whole or a la carte. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by Evaluation Cafe at Western Michigan University, explore how everyday evaluative skills can strengthen relationships and address diverse community needs, learn how storytelling methodologies like photovoice and journey mapping, which center community voices and lived experiences, and highlight evaluation's role in strengthening collective ties and empowering community members as active agents. No cost associated.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, in this 2-part workshop you will explore seven essential facilitation practices, learn and apply practical tools, and actionable facilitation strategies, and practice your skills in small groups and receive specific coaching. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 11:00 am
Offered by Ideo U, this 5 week self-paced, online cohort course will explore how to look at problems through different perspectives, develop actionable and innovative solutions, learn how to de-risk and experiment to build resilient strategies, and balance creative thinking and rigor to get to breakthrough ideas and sustainable solutions. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:30 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, the last session of this 4-part workshop will engage in scenario-based group activities to apply what they’ve learned to real-life challenges, including inclusive event planning, equitable decision-making, and conflict resolution, and explore how to move from symbolic gestures to systemic change by embedding DEIB into workplace culture, governance, and team practices. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by Ideo U, this 5-week, self-paced cohort course will explore techniques for mapping complex systems and identifying the root causes, establish a shared view of the system, and reframe problems from different perspectives to uncover new solutions. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 4:00 pm
Offered by IDEO U, this 5 week, self-paced cohort course how to use data to inspire new ideas, opportunities, and directions, frame your question and determine the types of data you need, discover insights in your data and effectively communicate why they matter, turn insights from the data into compelling stories and visualizations, and take a human-centered approach to data analysis. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 12:00 pm
Offered by CoCreative, identify common dynamics in collaborative work, apply strategies to expand creative possibilities, utilize reflective and iterative processes to ensure shared alignment, transform differing perspectives and conflicting ideas into opportunities, and implement structured problem-solving and human-centered design techniques to enhance collaboration. No cost associated.
Time: 10:00 am
Offered by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, develop skills to navigate challenging dialogues with empathy, curiosity, and respect and foster meaningful conversations across diverse perspectives. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, learn smart ways to strengthen ties with midlevel supporters, whether you have fundraisers dedicated to this level of giving or not. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by ZingTrain, explore how to recognize and better handle interpersonal workplace conflict and learn tools to engage effectively in a Courageous Conversation. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, explore how to shift your mindset and practices around conflict engagement, strengthen your ability to sit with tension, listen across difference, and navigate uncertainty, and build personal and collective practices that center safety, dignity, and accountability. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by the Tamarack Institute, discover practical tools and prompts to help to use insights your past experiences to inform your future plans, explore what rest means to you and identify ways to integrate rest into your daily life, develop strategies to maintain momentum, and discover how to shift your mindset towards embracing challenges and viewing failures as opportunities for learning and growth. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 2:00 pm
Offered by Bolder Advocacy, learn the different roles of 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, unions, and political organizations, federal tax rules affecting how these organizations can work together, the legal separations necessary between affiliated organizations, such as funding and fundraising constraints, and permissible joint activities of different types of nonprofits, including election-year activities. Cost associated. Eligible for support through Rotary Charities Learning Fund.
Time: 1:00 pm
Offered by Propel Nonprofit, gain clarify on roles and responsibilities of board and staff with governance and management to be the collaborative partners you need to be to achieve your mission. No cost associated.