Exploring Deep Narratives: How three Colorado organizations are changing the narrative

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 …

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 …

Our Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Update

We are committed to being open and transparent throughout our process of implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Spark. We have a lot of progress to share this month and hope it will be helpful to our staff, local community, peers, clients, and the people most affected by our work. After announcing our DEI commitment and sharing …

Addressing Health Disparities Linked to Climate Issues

In April, I had the pleasure of facilitating the Alliance of Nurses for Health Environments (ANHE) two-day strategic planning retreat. The goal was to chart a path forward that incorporated equity into their work, and we conducted interviews with members of the nursing community who were familiar with ANHE to understand how ANHE could best do this …

Community Navigator Work

This last month, in partnership with the Denver Foundation’s M. Julie Patiño, Barclay Jones, and LaDawn Sullivan; Joby Schaffer wrote an article featured in The Foundation Review. The article, Community Navigation as a Field of Practice: Reframing Service Delivery to Meet the Needs of Communities’ Marginalized Populations, calls out lessons learned through the Basic Human Needs Navigator …

Three Tips for Making Network Analysis Actionable for Your Social Impact Project

Many of our partners have adopted what Jed Miller and Rob Stuart called “Network-Centric Thinking.” They recognize that long-term sustainable progress on today’s social problems rarely comes from the efforts of a single organization. Rather, progress requires a strategy involving networks of organizations with the aim of producing network effects. However, the strategist and evaluator’s …

Summer Spark News: Making the Commitment

Our mission at Spark has long been to develop innovative and research-based solutions to society’s complex problems. After a summer that has seen devastating violence and expressions of xenophobia and hate across the country – as well as outpourings of generosity and stories of strength – we see more than ever the need to address …

Our Commitment to Addressing Inequity

Complex problems are just that: complex. They stem from complicated interactions among multiple actors, against the backdrop of history, systems, and institutions. Within these interactions, we cannot overlook the way race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, country of origin, religion, economic status – all the things that make us unique, and the “isms” they engender …

Redefining Rigor: Describing quality evaluation in complex, adaptive settings

This blog is co-authored by Dr. Jewlya Lynn, Spark Policy Institute, and Hallie Preskill, FSG. The blog is also posted on FSG’s website: www.fsg.org  Traditionally, evaluation has focused on understanding whether a program is making progress against pre-determined indicators. In this context, the quality of the evaluation is often measured in part by the “rigor” …

Working in Fields

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how different it looks to work in a field instead of alone. And no, I don’t mean out in a field of flowers (though that sounds lovely). Rather, I’m referring to a field of organizations trying to cause the same type of change, though not necessarily in collaboration …

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