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We are so thrilled to have launched our new PGM programming for the community in June, 2024. This journey has been marked with curiosity, learning, embracing, pausing, relearning and everything that comes with doing things differently.
The new programming was informed through reflections and feedback we have received from the community over the years, especially around ensuring that members and organizations new to PGM models are not left behind, while also deepening Participatory Grantmaking (PGM) practice and safeguarding against PGM washing.
With this new programming, we intend to continue cultivating a network of philanthropy professionals who will be intentional about supporting each other and participatory grantmaking as it continues to gain momentum over the next decade and beyond. We also imagine this network will serve as a powerful force for advocacy across the philanthropic sector, sharing their expertise and igniting enthusiasm for power shifting within the sector.
As the PGM interest grew and our membership expanded to 2000+ members spanning across 73 countries, we noticed that some of our members were at different levels in their PGM journey. While a great number had experience with PGM practices, others were just starting out. It was important for us to have customized learning cohorts to cater to the different journeys with intentionality..
We visioned Start Well, as a learning cohort for those just starting out with less than 5 years experience and Deepening Practice for those with 5+ years of experience. We just launched these as our first pilot cohorts to start in the Q4–2024 until the Q1–2025.
Over 95 people from across all continents have expressed interest to join the cohorts. This has further opened our eyes to the fact that, more and more, people are interested in doing philanthropy and grantmaking differently through PGM. We are being more deliberate on fundraising in the coming months once we have hired a development consultant who will support us with this. Our aim is that once we have the resources, we will expand the cohorts to support more people in the coming years.
We are grateful to all our community members and funders for journeying with us until now.
What started in 2020 as a small group of practitioners convened by Hannah Paterson, gathered to discuss shared learning across the field and her report on PGM, over the next few months the group grew larger. A small steering committee was formed and the decision was made to create monthly peer sessions. We held complimentary new member introductory calls to ground new members into the community. Through this activity, people got information on how they were joining the community. The calls took place monthly/quarterly via zoom. Along the months, for an easier onboarding process, we moved this to our current google group which centralized the Community’s onboarding process for new members and eased knowledge exchange.
The community then grew to Monthly Peer Sessions. The peer sessions were a flagship of the PGM Community which took place in the form of clubs particularly on Tuesdays and Thursdays, across two time zones and were hosted by volunteers via zoom. These learning clubs offered a platform for practitioners to have peer to peer conversations, using breakout sessions to exchange knowledge and have deeper conversations on issues they are grappling with around PGM . This was especially impactful considering that we were right in the middle of the pandemic.
We later held Monthly Deep Dives and Virtual events which were also held on zoom, covering diverse topics which were determined by the volunteers’ capacity to organize. We have since held 11 deep dives and 32 virtual events. One of the most well attended webinars was, “The Intersection of PGM and trust-based philanthropy” attracting close to 500 people. We will continue to offer public webinars, and we plan to limit them to 3 times a year, both for capacity reasons, and to offer more interactive and accessibility elements.
In the same year, PMG undertook a Peer-to-Peer Coaching (Buddy Program) which led to successful pairings and learning from each other. About 20 peer support sessions were held. The PGM Community volunteers matched pairs for the first round of buddying, and later collaborated with Koreo for the second round which also offered 3 virtual training sessions on coaching skills.
Finally, in 2022 we held our first In-Person Meet Ups. There were five meetups sporadically spread across cities in London, Brussels, New York, Glasgow and San Francisco for community members who were excited to finally connect in real life and put a face to the name/email. Our dream, as we continue to grow, is to hold a physical meeting where all our members will gather to connect.
What next?
Over the past year, we have worked with our Accountability Circle, and through feedback from the community, to adapt our programming in a way that meets the community’s needs while also being sustainable to the organisation. We also wanted to streamline our programming and custom make learning for our community members at different levels of PGM hence the newly launched learning cohorts. We have worked to build our internal capacity and fundraise to offer ongoing quality programming to the community, while also keeping an eye on long-term sustainability for both people and the organisation.
We have since then paused some programs and condensed many of them into the newly launched PGM cohorts. We will continue to offer thought leadership on PGM and shifting power in philanthropy through our blog and collaborating with other thought leaders. We are still maintaining the free, publically available bi-annual events, the community listserv, quarterly newsletters, slack channels, and resource guide.
We are excited for this new direction!