Global Engagement Lab
(GEL)
WHAT IS GEL?
The Global Engagement Lab is a 9-month training program for progressive funders and grant makers who have an interest in deepening their understanding of systemic change and systemic alternatives in grantmaking, as well as embarking on a journey of personal transformation with a cohort of others on a similar journey. The program focuses on three key areas so far:
– deepening knowledge of systemic crises
– fostering personal transformation
– exploring what it means to be a “funder organizer.”
WHAT ARE THE GOALS
OF THE GEL
Deepen knowledge of the contours of systemic crises and explore movement responses to these crises.
Foster personal transformation and co-create tailored strategies to leverage shifts in participants’ organizations.
Explore what it means to be a “funder organizer” and advance systemic change across the field.
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ABOUT GEL 6
Organizing Funders Toward
Systemic Change
SEPTEMBER 2026 – JUNE 2027
There is a growing tension inside philanthropy.
Many of us speak about justice, systems change, and solidarity, yet when conversations turn to power, capital, and risk, the ground becomes less steady. We sense the limits of traditional grantmaking, but changing institutional practice feels complex, political, and often personal. GEL 6 is for funders who recognize that tension and want to work through it collectively.
The Global Engagement Lab 6 is a nine-month learning journey for progressive funders and grantmakers who want to move beyond values alignment and toward organized strategic action. This is not a technical training on improving grant processes. It is a space to examine philanthropy itself as a site of power and to explore what it would mean to organize from within it.
SPECIFICALLY, GEL 6
AIMS TO :
Support funders to reimagine their role as active agents of change within philanthropy, capable of organizing internally and collectively to shift institutional and sectoral practices.
Build the knowledge, skills, and political clarity needed to engage with power, capital, and narrative as central terrains of systems change.
Strengthen participants’ ability to apply organizing principles at the personal, organizational, and systemic levels, recognizing the interconnectedness of individuals and communities across global contexts.
Move beyond values alignment and technical grantmaking toward sustained, strategic practices
that link values to action and support long-term movement-led change.
WHAT YOU WILL EXPLORE
GEL 6 is designed as a cohort journey grounded in four interconnected areas of inquiry.
Personal Thresholds and Political Clarity
We begin with the individual, not for introspection alone, but because institutional change is shaped by personal thresholds. Participants reflect on their relationship to power, their motivations, and the tensions they navigate within their institutions, considering what they are willing to risk, what feels non-negotiable, and how comfort, fear, or loyalty influence decision-making. This reflection is grounded in political context and connected to practice.In this way, the personal becomes a site of clarity and action, strengthening participants’ ability to navigate complexity and organize within their institutions.
Funder Organizing
Rather than seeing ourselves only as supporters of movements, we explore what it means to act as organizers within philanthropy. Participants engage organizing principles such as base building, shared analysis, collective strategy, and long term power building, and consider how these practices might be applied inside foundations and across networks. Participants will listen and learn from invited speakers as well as their peers. They will get to experiment with how to apply new tools and tactics to their own work.
Systems Change, Capital and Narrative
GEL 6 will examine money and narrative as terrains of struggle, drawing from movement campaigns and strategies to better understand how capital can be organized, not simply distributed. Participants will touch on divestment strategies as an organizing approach to align values with practice. Participants will explore what is possible within their individual institutions and spend time thinking of the short, medium and long term.
Time, Discipline and Resilience
This program will not romanticize organizing or claim that within 9-months participants will come out with a sector-wide campaign that will topple the section…we are much humbler than that!
Participants will be invited to reflect on endurance and the ebbs and flows of organizing. There will be room to reflect on long term strategy, institutional memory, leadership development, and collective care; recognizing that transformation requires discipline over time
PEDAGOCICAL
APPROACH
GEL 6 is built on the understanding that personal, collective, and systemic transformation are interconnected and mutually reinforcing.
Reflective practice is embedded throughout the program, alongside applied systems and power analysis. Participants are supported to integrate learning across levels, develop strategies responsive
to real-world constraints, and work through challenges collectively.
The GEL cohort functions as a supportive and rigorous learning space where participants are expected to engage deeply, share experiences, and learn from one another, as well as from movement practitioners. This collective inquiry is central to developing the clarity, discipline, and solidarity required for long-term systemic change.
IN RELATIONSHIP
WITH OTHERS
GEL exists within a broader ecosystem of funder organizing and political education spaces. We are not alone in this work, and we do not see it as a marketplace of competition. There are programs such as the Justice Funders Funder Organizing Institute and the Thousand Currents Academy that also support funders in deepening political alignment and accountability to movements. We respect and learn from these efforts.
Rather than competing, we see these spaces as complementary. Participants often benefit from engaging in more than one political education space
over the course of their careers. We encourage funders to find the space that resonates most with their context and readiness.