I’ve spent a lot of time over the last decade thinking about, experimenting with, and refining tools for planning in complex, adaptive settings. As we put together Spark’s Adaptive Planning Toolkit, I’ve had the opportunity to reflect back and think about the genesis of the tools and what we have learned over the years. I …
Category Archives: Complex Social Issues
Community Engagement: Nine Dos and a Don’t
There is power in voices coming together to protest a broken system or to heal communally after a system has hurt them, whether through hashtags on social media or through US Representatives raising their hands in protest on the floor of the House. But there is greater power in listening to those who stand to …
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Working with the Faith Community to Spark Social Change
This month, we’ve looked at how to use the private sector to scale change. Now I want to shift the focus outside of the public/private realm and look at the role other groups can plan in creating meaningful change: specifically, the role the faith community can play in bringing attention to and energizing people around …
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Scaling Change: Market Forces are Part of the Solution
I’ve been thinking about this issue of how to scale social innovation a lot lately. When I was at the D.C. Presidio Fellowship week, we talked with the Social Innovation Fund. Their focus is on mobilizing public and private resources to find and grow the best community solutions. They identify evidence-based strategies that can make …
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Cross-sector Collaboration Lessons Learned: Implementing a Powerful Tool for Social Change
I was fortunate to spend the last week with 23 other cross-sector leaders who are doing amazing things – everything from changing how PepsiCo sources its fruits in order to benefit local economies and increase the nutritional content of their drinks, to scaling an evidence-based afterschool program throughout the country, to developing and disseminating an …
Evaluating Complexity: Developmental Evaluation in Collective Impact
With a half dozen Collective Impact evaluations in the last year alone, it’s becoming second nature for me to think about the complexity inherent in evaluating Collective Impact. The model’s emphasis on a shared measurement system has been both a benefit to evaluation and a hindrance. Sometimes I find that recognizing the need for shared …
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Spark’s New Year’s Resolutions to Support Sustainable Change
Don’t you just love thinking up New Year’s resolutions? I know I do – they’re so full of the rich promise of that makes Change, capital C, so alluring. A fresh start – an opportunity to draw a line in the sand and say, “On the other side of this line, things will be different!” …
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Tips to Ensuring Your Evaluation is a Learning Tool
It used to be that evaluation was something that happened occasionally, was sometimes required by funders, and could sometimes be useful. Not anymore. When you ask a room full of people who are trying to make a meaningful difference whether they have been part of an evaluation, almost everyone raises their hand. But what that …
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Systems Transformation for Underserved Populations – The Colorado Daylight Project
Systems transformation, which we explore further in our Resources for Igniting Systems-Wide Change Blog, can be applied to just about any type of population with a defined need. In this week’s blog, we’ll explore how one project is approaching systems transformation for a particularly underserved population: the deaf and hard of hearing in Colorado. This …
Children, Trauma, & The Aurora Shooting
Children of all ages will have questions about the Aurora shooting – some around trusting others, others about the safety of going to the movies. Whatever the questions, there are two important things to keep in mind as you talk to a child about trauma: Tell the truth; and Keep the discussion appropriate for the development …