Rockwood Leadership Institute

The purpose of the Rockwood Leadership Institute is to provide social change leaders across the globe with tools and skills to change themselves, their communities, and the world.

Rockwood is the nation’s largest provider of multi-day, transformative leadership training for social change and philanthropic organizations. Since 2000, Rockwood has trained over 8,000 leaders—of which 60% are people of color, 76% women or nonbinary, and 28% LGBTQ-identified—in transformational social change practices. Several of the Compton Foundation’s staff, all our Board members, and many of our grantee partners have participated in Rockwood trainings.

In a time of chaos and immense challenge, Rockwood’s training programs and offerings provide leaders with concrete tools and skills to meet those challenges and step into their full brilliance, power, and resilience when doing social change work. By training individuals, Rockwood infuses its tools and practices into the culture of their organizations, and eventually into the culture of the movement.

One example is Rockwood’s ongoing Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Fellowship, which has run every year since 2015. Spearheaded by the Funders for Reproductive Equity (and co-funded early on by the Compton Foundation), each fellowship cohort brought together two dozen leaders from across the reproductive rights, health, and justice fields for three week-long retreats. With Rockwood’s facilitators, leaders had the chance to refuel and to dive deep together into their joint vision for gender justice across the movement’s schisms.

Recent grant history