Funding Community Resilience in a Polycrisis: Exploring a Human Learning Systems (+)-Based Approach

The authors explore how the polycrisis requires a rethinking of funding mechanisms to build community resilience. They argue that traditional, risk-averse, outcome-based models are ill-suited to address interconnected crises, and propose the Human Learning Systems (+) model—an approach that enables funders and grantees to consider system-scale elements such as local economic drivers and political conditions, alongside community-led insights, in determining strategies, metrics, and practices for resilience-building initiatives. The authors conclude that addressing community resilience in a polycrisis context requires a fundamental shift in funding methodologies, moving beyond rigid, preselected, metric-driven approaches toward more adaptive, learning-based models.