Archive for the 'Resources' Category

This post has been co-authored by Bonnie Koenig and Alyssa Smaldino

Last year we wrote about the importance of multi-generational dialogue.  We noted a number of considerations to help make these exchanges effective including: two-way dialogue; ensuring that the approach is inclusive and intersectional; strong facilitation; and all participants make a genuine commitment to listen and understand.

Recently we facilitated a workshop for nonprofit leaders to delve further into the practicalities of engaging across generations, and integrating these approaches into organizational practices and cultures.

Some of what we discussed included:

• The concept of a ‘generation’ has become fluid and often

Introduction

The Civil Society and Testing Change project (CS&TC) is an initiative to develop and test new ways for civil society organizations and their partners to operate.  The project’s model is for global, multi-stakeholder working groups to focus on areas where operational changes may have the most effect on impact, and to have a lead group test these ideas and theories over a multi-year period.  An introductory blog post can be found here. Our target group are NGOs and civil society organizations that are 10+ years old, interested in considering operational changes to remain effective and relevant, and with …

Earlier this year I wrote about the state of impact assessment. Under the auspices of the Civil Society and Testing Change project, I recently helped convene and facilitate a discussion to further exchange learning on this topic, and brainstorm how we can make our ideas more actionable. Some of the ideas shared at this roundtable are below.

Some key variables to consider:

• It is important to stipulate how you are defining impact, and whether your purpose is to validate your impact and/or to improve it. Find ways to keep your focus on impact, however a group defines it.
• Building

The youth engagement working group is the first group that is part of the Civil Society and Testing Change project, a global project to develop and test some operational changes intended to help keep civil society organizations relevant.  The group is co-led by CIVICUS and the CS&TC project with eight members – four from the CIVICUS Youth Action Team and four from a larger global peer group. Using a virtual, design thinking process, the group generated ideas for CIVICUS with the intention that CIVICUS would choose 1-2 to test over the next two years (aligning with its new strategic plan). …

Why Impact?

As I wrote in the introduction to my book “International Engagement for Impact in a Changing World”:

“We’ve become complacent about outcomes as things we can measure – how many of this or that? We need to push ourselves forward to look at impact as how are lives being changed in positive ways through our efforts?  We need to struggle individually and within our organizations and networks with the concept of impact and what it means to us.  Why do we do what we do?  It’s in the grappling with concepts that we begin to understand their …