What is the Action Learning Program?

The Action Learning Program (ALP) is a pioneering organizational development (OD) initiative of Growald. It is designed not only to service the needs of Growald grantees but also as a highly scalable public good for supporting grantees of all ALFIE members. It offers customized access to a curated and diverse pool of high-quality OD experts, coaches and resources for organizations and their leaders working to fight climate change.  

As its name goes, the ALP is built to support organizations both learn and execute on OD with optimal flexibility and cadence. The ALP strives to be adaptable and customizable with a variety of formats for accessing OD support, from light-touch consultations with experts to solve specific problems to longer organizational transformation projects. Furthermore, it is global in its scope, servicing organizations worldwide by connecting them to each other and to experts and resources that resonate with unique linguistic, geographic, and cultural needs. 

ALP 2.0- Same goals, new services, new delivery design

The second iteration of the ALP (ALP 2.0) is a refinement of the original design based on feedback from grantees and funders on the highly successful first iteration (ALP 1.0) we launched in 2021. 

ALP 1.0 delivered high quality and impactful OD services to 25 grantees spread across 4 ALFIE member foundations (including Growald).

 

The design of ALP 2.0 has been reworked into a ‘Levels of Service’ model. Instead of providing uniform OD support to all grantees, the new design offers two levels of support.  The first level of support is offered to all grantees, and a second level, with more intensive consulting support is offered to those grantees who demonstrate a strong motivation, and actively seek out additional OD resources.

In ALP 1.0, we experimented with a formula which assumed that all participating grantees were at the stage of growth and understanding where they had similar OD motivation. Hence, we provided each grantee with the same wrap-around services (incl. needs assessment and onboarding interview) and a significant OD budget of $10,000/organization for consulting services.

In practice, the grantees used the ALP services in different ways

Another learning from the ALP 1.0 design was that it had limited scaling potential due to the intensiveness of support for all grantees regardless of their motivation. Moreover, it had limited cost and time efficiency since the per grantee pricing for onboarding was $3500 and it took at least 2 months to onboard 25 grantees onto the Program. 

 

This led us to make the following design changes for ALP 2.0

ALP 2.0 incorporates these changes via a two-level model:

 

First level of support:

The first level also includes a light-touch accompaniment that can be scaled to the whole portfolio

Second level of support:

*Guided projects involve an expert consultant dedicated to supporting the organization addressing a specific OD need, e.g., developing a fundraising strategy or communications and branding strategy.

**Grantees get to interview consultants before choosing the one most suitable

 

 

Why is the ALP 2.0 a better design?

 The sponsoring foundation however still has the option to include hard OD goals as part of its grantmaking discussion with the grantee, and then point the grantee towards the ALP to get the necessary support to realize these goals.

Cost proposal 

The programme combines fixed and variable costs, the latter being consumption-based. 

Each foundation is free to adapt the budget below to what it wishes to invest in the development of its grantees. This can be done by adapting the variable costs, meaning the consulting budget for its grantees (item 3), which will also change the administrative fees.

The budget we have below is based on the estimated needs of a total portfolio of 40-50 grantees, for which we have foreseen a total consulting budget of $50’000. We assume that 20% of them are likely to be super-achievers (they will complete ambitious transformation projects), a further 60% of them will participate moderately (they will only solve pressing problems) and a final 20% will make lesser use of the program (attend seminars).

It can also be suitable for a smaller cohort of 10 grantees pre-selected by their foundation for a likely interest in the program (meaning they are likely to be super-achievers).