October 2026 GLC Monthly Learning Call Brief
Redefining resources, decentring donors and building the movement to outlast the funding
Key Learning Points from our October Calls:
Funding has been shrinking for a long time, but that doesn’t mean we are left without resources. We probably have more than we realize.
Resources are everything that keeps our work and our people going. This includes money, time, skills, knowledge, relationships, spaces, networks, care and trust.
If resources only means money, donors and the Global North always hold the power. Sophie called this framing colonial, because the things we don't count as resources are mostly what the Global Majority is rich in.
Movements have often forgotten the richness of their original resources. Often movements begin and grow without access to money. We forget how much can be done with so little.
How we share (or don't) reflects our values.
Introduction
Discussing resources, or the lack thereof, is nothing new to our sector. But the October Monthly Learning Call took what could be just another talk about money into a completely new place.
Led by GLC members Chris Ash and Sophie Otiende, founders and directors of Collective Threads Initiative (CTI), this call was very interactive and discussion based with Chris and Sophie posing questions aimed at helping call attendees think more creatively about the resources that we have that we might never have thought about before. From there the conversation moved into questions about how we share, what we don’t share and why, and how we can see the movement as much bigger than ourselves and our organizations and become champions for one another.
The calls were rich and warm and full of useful ideas. We walked away with plans for follow up conversations, sharing new resources, and taking a true inventory of what our resources really are. It was encouraging to say the least!
What we learned on the call
The call began with the acknowledgement that financial resources feel hard to come by right now. But that is precisely why it is necessary to reconsider the definition of resources beyond money. The time and skills of volunteers and community members, physical resources, relationships, trust, networks, and knowledge are all resources that significantly contribute to the success of our organizations and programs. Recognizing these resources is the first step to building sustainable movements which always begin with simple mobilization of a community, often with very little financial support. It might require an adjustment from how we’ve done things, often so isolated and funder focused, but can we continue to build capacity and sustainability from the assets we already have?
After we named the varied resources that we actually have, the next thing we considered was what we do with them. Are we generous with our resources for the sake of the greatest impact on the movement or are we caught up in a scarcity mentality and the desire to make our organizations and projects seem indispensable? We noted that there is often competition in our sector which is to the detriment of the movement as a whole. However, viewing the successes of other colleagues and organizations as collective achievements to the movement can create pathways to building stronger, more collaborative movements. This means not only sharing resources, making introductions to collaborators (including donors), offering care, and vetting for one another, but also ensuring that we give credit where it is owed, noting when we are using the idea or resource that came from someone else.
The way forward is through collective effort, but true collaboration requires authentic solidarity. We defined solidarity as an active commitment that goes beyond public statements or social media posts to include concrete actions. It means sharing privilege, accepting personal or professional risk, drawing boundaries to protect others, or acting quietly within existing systems. It also means seeing one another as human beings and recognizing that care, staff support, and burnout prevention are core resources essential for movement sustainability.
Chis and Sophie shared that Collective Threads Initiative is developing an ecosystem of resources framework that curates funding, organizational development support, consultants, and other assets around groups of organizations. This model aims to facilitate collaborative resource sharing from the point of view that resources and relationships are collective movement assets rather than proprietary organizational possessions.
Overview of the Discussions
While there was quite a bit of overlap in the East and West calls, the conversations were distinct with call attendees offering different perspectives on how to think of resources differently and how to better share them with one another.
Those on the Eastern call noted that networking is a powerful resource that enlarges one’s access to knowledge, funding, and partnerships. Our Western call attendees added that burnout support is a resource that has long and wide reaching impacts.
Both calls noted that it is rare to see organizations sharing donors and potential funding information as if they are worried that if someone else “wins the grant,” they will be left without, completely missing that a win for our colleagues is a win for the movement and thus for our own organizations. Several practical ideas were shared on each call, including exercises to evaluate resources beyond money, creating intern-led projects, and ways to honor the contributions of others and highlighting their inputs. Both calls challenged attendees not just to consider what their resources really were, but also to ask themselves, “What am I not sharing?” We’d add that asking ourselves “why not?” might lead to valuable self-reflection.
Citing Octavia Butler and Adrienne Maree Brown as originators, Chris ended off the Western Call saying “all movement organising is science fiction, because we are imagining a future we haven’t yet seen.” This summarises the almost impossible to imagine way forward into an unknown future and the need to ‘Rethink Resources’ as we are forced off the well-worn path of how we did things before and into terrain where there is only a faint untrodden path.
Implications for the GLC
The GLC seems like the perfect place for this kind of evaluative conversation. In the safe space of trusted relationships, we are able to really reflect on how guarded we are with our resources and what it is that makes us so. Because there are genuine friendships that have developed among GLC community members, practicing generosity with one another feels much more natural. The attitude “when you succeed, I succeed, and the movement succeeds” is what we must continue to cultivate.
Practically speaking, ways we can be resources for one another include:
Recommending one another to donors
Sharing grants
Citing the contributions of other individuals and organizations
Collaborating on projects
Generously sharing resources
Offering care and emotional support
Mentoring others in new skills
Networking and making introductions
Being advocates of the work that others are doing
Hosting others when they are in our area to save on hotels/conference room rentals
Tools Mentioned
Sign in to the Members Area to watch the October call recordings. If you are not yet a member of the GLC and are interested in the calls or joining, email the Secretariat Team at team@globallearning.community, or read more about membership at globallearningcommunity.org/joinus.