Collaborative learning is transformative.

 

We witness its results every day.

Learning groups strengthen personal skills and grow capacity for entire organizations and networks. Strong connections turn members into resources and advisors that support, mentor and coach each other, often beyond the end of a project. Confidence, courage, leadership and initiative emerge as people learn to share their ideas and experience and listen to others’ stories.

Learning group members develop capabilities for collaboration, creative thinking and innovation take root and take them back to their organizations. Through reflective practices, critique and analysis, members surface new knowledge and apply it to their work. Learning is shared across the cohort, increasing success rates and improving practices throughout the initiative.

Results — learning groups, clients, capabilities, resources — cooperative to collaborative

The outcomes of our learning groups are, by design, connected to the objectives of our clients. And they come along with a set of lasting capabilities, resources, processes and skills that help organizations shift from cooperative to collaborative.

What our clients are saying

Community Experience Project (CEP)-4

COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE PARTNERSHIP (CEP)
an initiative of The Atlantic Philanthropies

[Presenting our work as the host of a site visit] causes us to take more out of it than we otherwise would. We have to think, ‘What are our lessons learned? And what is this project about?’ We don’t always have this opportunity to figure out the lessons learned.

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Community Experience Project (CEP)-2

COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE PARTNERSHIP (CEP)
an initiative of The Atlantic Philanthropies

This completely shaped the way I do all of my work. I’ve learned so much professionally. I learned about the topic that I’m working on, but even beyond that. It’s expanded into my understanding of how to engage communities. It impacted the way I work with my colleagues at work…. It made me the person I am today.

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Community Experience Project (CEP)-3

COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE PARTNERSHIP (CEP)
an initiative of The Atlantic Philanthropies

When we went to the site visit in Los Angeles, I thought, ‘Their project has nothing to do with mine. But someone’s paying, I should go, I’ve never been to L.A.’ Then [on the site visit], suddenly, I found myself taking notes, notes, notes. There’s so much that’s translatable to other projects.

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Diana Doyle

Director

Diana leads Socius Group in designing, facilitating and managing collaborative communities and grantmaking programs on behalf of our clients. She is a choreographer of strategy, people and content. She is inspired and driven by the transformation she has seen in the effectiveness of people and organizations when they shift into collaborative modes of learning and working.  

Diana’s experiences as a consultant to funders, a community foundation program officer, and founder and executive director of nonprofit organizations ground her work in the needs of both funders and nonprofit practitioners. She holds a master’s degree in interpersonal and organizational communication from Purdue University and a master of fine arts in dance from Florida State University.

James Gillis

senior consultant

James is an engagement leader, strategist, detail wrangler and coach, helping Socius Group clients maximize their investments and impact by bringing collaborative learning networks to their programming. He is motivated by the power of collaboration and knowledge, and is a passionate advocate and guide for organizations making this profound transition.

James draws on more than 15 years of experience in nonprofit consulting, programming, evaluation and learning for a wide variety of community-based organizations from Boston to San Francisco. He earned a bachelor of science degree in kinesiology (the study of human movement) from San Francisco State University.

Caron Castagnetta

operations manager

Caron is the go-to organizer and logistics whiz, smoothing the way for Socius Group clients and projects. She runs the day-to-day operations of Socius Group and supports project logistics, keeping all the moving parts in working order, on time, and in the right place.

Caron draws on her experiences managing logistics and operations for a number of collaboration-oriented projects and organizations. Her steady hand and organization make the convenings, events, contracting, and management of all those details look easy. Her skill, talent and dedication are fundamental to taking a learning group plan from concept to reality. Caron holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.