Learning that drives action
When learning, evidence and insight flow freely, our shared work improves as a result and communities are better able to achieve the change they need.
That flow of learning requires infrastructure: spaces where funders can think openly and critically together, pathways that carry insight from one community or place to another, and the connections that ensure what is learned actually shapes what happens next. Building that infrastructure – bringing funders and communities together, and helping insight lead to action – is central to what Funders Together is here for.
A sector with more to share
The funding sector generates an extraordinary amount of insight: from evaluations, learning reports, funder forums and the experiences of community organisations doing the work. The opportunity is to connect that insight so it builds a fuller, shared picture of what's happening and to put this information to work where it matters most.
Ideas and opportunities are voiced by funders and civil society alike: the need for longer funding cycles, better mechanisms for sharing across organisations, and a deeper commitment to acting on what is already known. When funders and communities learn and act together, practice shifts. Communities experience funding that is more trusting, more responsive and better connected to what they actually need.
"Participation is about building collective power, not just extracting insights."
Generating learning we can act on
We're proud of the learning culture we're building with our partners. The network supports a set of active learning areas that connect funders over time and around shared challenges: living bodies of work, developed with and for the funding community, that reflect some of the most significant opportunities for change.
What does it take to fund systems change? How do funders genuinely share power with communities? What does it mean to practise participation rather than perform it? How should funders think about risk, and whose risk is being managed? These issues have been explored in depth through the network, generating insights and frameworks that are already shaping funding practice.
London Funders' Annual Conference and Festival of Learning are among the sector's most important spaces for collective reflection and exchange. Built around the challenges organisations are actively grappling with, they draw as much on the experience of practitioners and communities as on research and policy.
The 2026 Festival was structured around three themes that have emerged repeatedly through this work: how to strengthen justice, solidarity and social cohesion in a time of growing division; how to build community wealth and power in a new era of devolution; and how to create a funding ecosystem that is more connected, data-informed and responsive to community need.
These themes are grounded in the realities facing communities today and the challenges funders are being asked to address. Our aim is to create space for serious exploration, bringing together those closest to the issues with those best placed to act.
"Sometimes the biggest challenges around co-design are the actual systems and structures that prevent us from doing this work as equitably as we should."
Learning that travels: place-based giving and beyond
Place-based giving is another example of learning in action. Through sustained peer learning and knowledge-sharing, a model that began in a handful of London boroughs has grown to more than half of London's boroughs and is now informing practice across the UK and beyond. The Centre for Place-Based Giving, established through Funders Together, is carrying this learning forward and making it available to practitioners and partners everywhere. The model can travel because the learning has been documented, shared and tested across different contexts.
And as part of Collaboration Circle, we are creating new opportunities for collective learning and exchange around equitable grant making. Drawing on international practice as well as work much closer to home, we're not just learning from what's already being tested, but helping to develop and apply this in our own future practice.
A growing body of shared knowledge
UKGrantmaking analysis, produced by 360Giving and now part of Funders Together's, makes the picture of UK grantmaking visible. Over 14,000 grant makers, over £24 billion in grants, mapped and analysed so that patterns, opportunities and areas for collective action become visible to everyone. This is learning infrastructure at scale.
Taken together, these and the other learning insights being generated across our networks represent a growing body of shared knowledge that no single funder could generate alone. This work becomes stronger the more people and organisations contribute to it and act on it. We are building this infrastructure for the whole sector, and in conversation with our partners internationally.
What this means for funders
The learning we hold and connect is directly relevant to every funder trying to understand whether their investment is reaching the right people, whether their practice is as strong as it could be, and how to work more effectively alongside communities.
Everything in our learning offer is available openly to the Funders Together community and beyond. The ambition is a funding sector that learns continuously, openly and through genuine, trusted relationships with the people and places it exists to serve.
Explore the work
- Festival of Learning 2025: insights and learning summaries
- What does it take to fund systems change?
- Practising participation
- Reconsidering risk
- Sharing power: what does it actually mean for funders?
- Learning from our collaborations
- A year of giving: learning from London's place-based giving network
- Looking beyond London: UK and international perspectives on place
- Equity and justice infrastructure mapping
- UKGrantmaking: the comprehensive analysis of UK grantmaking
