How the James Irvine Foundation Turned Sensemaking into an Investigation (And Why Their Staff Loved It)
Written by: Katherine Haugh, The Convive Collective
"What if your annual learning session felt less like a meeting... and more like solving a mystery?"
When organizations gather to make sense of data, something predictable often happens. Someone presents a deck. People politely nod. A few insights surface. Then everyone returns to work.
The James Irvine Foundation wondered: What if sensemaking could feel like a challenging and fun game?
So together, we tried something a little different. Instead of inviting staff into another "learning session," we invited them into an investigation.
Welcome to The S-Files
Inspired by detective stories and investigative journalism, we transformed the learning experience into an immersive investigation.
Participants became investigators.
The data became evidence.
Questions became leads.
Patterns became discoveries.
Working in small investigation teams, staff explored multiple forms of evidence—including grant outcomes, stakeholder perspectives, environmental signals, and emerging patterns—to answer one central question: What story is this evidence trying to tell us?
Rather than simply reviewing information, teams were tasked with uncovering: three patterns, two questions, and one immediate action.
The entire experience was designed around curiosity rather than compliance.
Why This Worked
Many foundations think their biggest learning challenge is having enough data. In our experience, that's rarely the problem. The challenge is creating enough curiosity. The S-Files reframed analysis as investigation. Instead of asking, "what does the dashboard say?" people naturally began asking, “is this actually the pattern–or just the loudest signal?” Those are very different conversations. And they produce very different learning.
The Investigation Process In A Nutshell
Case File: The Inland Empire
Program staff at the James Irvine Foundation had a case of their own. Across separate strategic initiatives, they were each funding work in the same geographies, but no one had a shared read on what that work added up to. The question worth investigating: What would it take for Irvine to support a strong local economy in the Inland Empire, one that works for all its residents?
Forty-five staff, working in teams, got a top-secret mission: Develop a hypothesis for change in the Inland Empire and declare a next action. Their evidence file included:
Data Intelligence: Regional demographic information and context on the Inland Empire
Mission Impact: Funding snapshots across the four strategic initiatives
Eyewitness Testimonies: Live accounts from a grantee panel
Ask an Asset: A chance to lift up questions to program leadership mid-way through the investigation
Magazines, yarn, report excerpts, and tri-fold cardboard displays turned into full case boards. Patterns emerged. Assumptions got challenged. And when it was time to present, a representative from each team donned a costume piece (monocle optional, confidence required) to declare: An observed challenge, a hypothesis for who should be engaged, how (and toward what outcome), and a next action naming who at Irvine would explore what, and by when.
After the investigation team cheers and jeers died down, the real work began: Naming the patterns that showed up across multiple teams, the evidence that felt most compelling, and the surprises no one saw coming. Alongside some of the harder tensions raised by grantees, investigators observed real signals of momentum, too: Growing youth leadership, rising regional awareness, and coalition-building across labor, community, and public institutions. No one left the room until the group had named its shared open questions, its immediate next steps, and who would hold whom accountable for the follow-up conversations everyone agreed they needed to have.
That accountability turned out to be more than a nice idea. Directors left wanting to keep the case open, with plans for smaller working sessions to carry the Inland Empire work forward in greater collaboration.
The result looked nothing like a series of initiative updates. Instead, grantmakers and staff from communications, grants administration, strategy, learning and program leadership all got a primer on the region, heard directly from grantees, and left having actually practiced building hypotheses together, not just hearing someone else's.
Lessons We Took Away
One of our biggest learnings wasn't actually about facilitation. It was about human nature. People are naturally wired to solve mysteries. When learning feels like compliance, participation drops.
When learning feels like discovery, curiosity takes over.
That simple shift—from asking people to review information to inviting them to investigate evidence—completely changes the energy in the room.
Want to Make Sensemaking More Playful?
The S-Files is one of many immersive learning experiences Convive has designed to help philanthropy move beyond presentations and into genuine collective learning.
If your team is swimming in reports, dashboards, and stakeholder feedback but struggling to turn it into meaningful action, we'd love to help. Because the goal isn't to collect more evidence. It's to uncover the story that's been hiding in plain sight (and have fun while doing it!)