Lessons in Trust & Collective Action from the Skoll Community of Social Innovators

At Skoll Foundation, we believe that communities – people who build trust with each other and share a sense of purpose – can unlock the support, sharing, and collaboration needed for ongoing collective action and transformational social change.

Since the first Skoll Award in 2005, we’ve supported the work of social innovators and created spaces to connect and collaborate. Over the past four years, we have aspired to accelerate progress by regularly convening more than 200 Skoll Awardees and grantee partners, a diverse community of social innovators driving large-scale change in their communities and regions.

What We Mean When We Talk About Community

We knew April’s in-person gathering of the Skoll Community at the Skoll World Forum would have a heightened sense of energy after three years of virtual meetings. It was also the first time we’ve gathered the Skoll Community since evolving our strategy in 2020 to include grantee partners driving impact in our strategic priority areas alongside Skoll Awardees.

While planning for this milestone, we asked ourselves big questions about cultivating a healthy, purpose-driven community. Why is community so crucial to the work of social change? How do we create belonging and resolve conflict? How do we earn trust and share power?

We turned to leaders from the Skoll Community for their experiences and perspectives. This film is a culmination of their wisdom on the nature and function of community.

The Hard Way: A Worthwhile Investment

During our time together with the Skoll Community in Oxford, the benefits and challenges of community building were also summarized by Marla Blow, President and COO: “By doing it the hard way you get this. We get to come together, we get to build this community.”

Being in a community is hard. It takes time to listen. Collaboration can be messy. But we can’t achieve meaningful progress on our own. And the resulting collective action, camaraderie, and joy is a worthwhile investment of time and resources.

Our team received so much wisdom from the Skoll Community while filming that we couldn’t fit it all into one video. Catch the entire series here and the individual interviews below.