How we see the world matters. Narratives, which are the underlying themes that hold together the stories we tell to make sense of our worlds, shape what possibilities are possible. According to the Narrative Initiative, narrative change strategy is everything from articulating both the new narrative you’re working to shift to and the existing, dominant one you’re trying …
Author Archives: Kyle Brost
Spark Policy Institute is now Spark Insight Partners!
Learn more about Spark’s name change, our Learning Catalyst System, our Action Builder Series, and upcoming plans for 2020.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ip6wwVJFrRUVisit our new website www.sparkinsight.com and learn more about how we can help you Do Good Even Better™ today!
Strengthening Partnerships for Education Through Collaborative Community Action and Collective Impact
Current systems are not working to meet different community’s needs across the Denver Metro area, especially when it comes to our educational systems, such as the early identification of young learners’ needs to the persistence of equity gaps in educational attainment and completion. In Colorado less than half of Colorado children receive developmental screenings to identify potential …
Join Us at AEA 2019!
With the American Evaluation Association (AEA) coming up November 11-16 in Minneapolis, M.N., our team has been thinking about the theme of the conference “Paths to the Future of Evaluation.” We constantly challenge ourselves to ensure our values are present in our work; our practices produce actionable learning; and that we share our experiences to …
Case Study: Emergent Philanthropy
A new article in the Foundation Review describes the tools we used in partnership with Harder+Company and The Civic Canopy to support an adaptable design for The Colorado Health Foundation’s (TCHF) Creating Healthy Schools funding strategy. The article dives deep into the principles of emergent philanthropy, and how TCHF worked to co-create their strategy, funding …
The Core Elements of Advancing an Emergent Strategy Toward Systems Change, Part 2
This is the second part of a two-part blog that looks at the core elements of emergent strategies and how focusing on these elements allows us to manage and even benefit from the ambiguity and conflict that naturally emerge when solving complex problems. Our last blog looked at the four core elements of advancing an …
Continue reading “The Core Elements of Advancing an Emergent Strategy Toward Systems Change, Part 2”
The Core Elements of Advancing an Emergent Strategy toward Systems Change
This is the first of a two-part blog that looks at the core elements of emergent strategies and how focusing on these elements allows us to manage and even benefit from the ambiguity and conflict that naturally emerge when solving complex problems. Fifteen years into designing, facilitating and evaluating emergent strategies intended to effect systems …
Continue reading “The Core Elements of Advancing an Emergent Strategy toward Systems Change”
Evaluators’ Varied Roles in Collective Impact
Over the next few months, we’ll be releasing a series of blogs on topics we’ll be presenting on at the American Evaluation Association’s (AEA) annual meeting, which will be in Atlanta, GA October 24-29. You can learn more about the meeting, including how to register here. Google “Collective Impact” and you’ll get roughly 1.8 million hits …
Continue reading “Evaluators’ Varied Roles in Collective Impact”
June Spark News: Changing the World, One System at a Time
This month, we’re looking at how organizations can support large-scale systems change, either as a backbone, partner, evaluator, fiscal intermediary, or through many other roles. But we would be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to talk about what happened in Orlando. Earlier in June, we witnessed the worst mass shooting in our country’s …
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May SparkNews: Transforming Health
All of the rapid change in the health landscape allows for exciting opportunities to engage stakeholders and, therefore, create solutions that are as equitable as they are innovative. However, engaging these voices effectively requires a commitment to the process to ensure they aren’t just token representation, and that their perspectives and lived experiences truly inform the process. This …