For Robusteciendo la Justicia Social (RJS), Filantropía Puerto Rico created its first cohort, or community of practice, with the intention of enabling the field-changing impact that organizations working on individual projects in isolation are unlikely to have. This cohort is supported by over $2.62 million in grants and designed to engage these seven organizations and their teams with a shared mission through a process of collective learning.

We believe these organizations have complimentary traits that can nurture the cohort as each entity evolves its operations towards sustainability.

According to Wenger (1998), communities of practice provide five critical functions:

• Educate by collecting and sharing information related to questions and issues of practice
• Support by organizing interactions and collaboration among members
• Cultivate by assisting groups to start and sustain their learning
• Encourage by promoting the work of members through discussion and sharing
• Integrate by encouraging members to use their new knowledge for real change in their own work.

Following this line, RJS’ cohort aims to:

• Connect people and organizations
• Enable dialogue
• Stimulate learning
• Capture and share existing knowledge
• Kickstart collaborative processes, and
• Generate new knowledge that strengthens high-influence organizations and leads to widespread adoption of just recovery practices across the third sector.

Ultimately, we want to build the nonprofit sector’s capacity to have meaningful impact on social justice in Puerto Rico.