Get 2 stories per person and

1. Rockefeller Funding! RED: Concepts extracted from organization docs Yellow: Locations BLUE: words found in many community stories WEWASAFO CHEDRA SWIM St. Vincent de Paul iEarn BOMA Comm. Xformers KCDF EAAG Since 2002, GlobalGiving has helped 7,386 projects, non-profits and social entrepreneurs grow their community of donors and volunteers to raise a total of $80,185,026. Experience working with corporate partners to support employee giving What is GlobalGiving? A global market for ideas, information, and money that democratizes aid and philanthropy. How do we work? We've got 3,000+ organizations worldwide that we've qualified for giving. We are a non-funding, non-implementing partner. Our relationships are rooted in dialogue and mutual benefit. We help organizations do what they do more effectively; in turn, they help sustain GlobalGiving. Where do we work? The Storytelling Project Since 2010 we have collected over 60,000 stories about community efforts in East Africa. Most stories came from regular people, not beneficiaries of our partners' work. Our network of organizations helped us find thousands of individual "scribes", who listened to others in their community, and wrote down these stories. We then tried to direct this feedback to community actors that can learn from it. Today the challenge is not collecting stories, but turning them into a valuable learning tool for civil society. We continue to iterate on the design of the feedback loop and analysis tools, because this data's value only grows when droves of people use it. • This approach strikes a balance between many design goals: • depth of information • inclusiveness of all civil society efforts • cost-effectiveness - pennies per story • simplicity - because few people will fill out traditional surveys • benchmarking - anyone can ask questions about an org, topic, or location and compare to matched reference stories • real-time feedback loops Listen. Act. Learn. Repeat. Evolution of GlobalGiving's work to harness the power of citizen voices What do you do when the community rejects an organization ? The problem (2009) Real world problems are Complex. Evaluations are not timely, affordable, and don't instruct organizations during the project cycle. SACRENA case study: IPA For more information, scan QR codes: Method: Technology-aided feedback loops (listening vs. evaluating) Using paper to get stories, with a goal of using smart phone apps, SMS, and web communications. Cognitive Edge TYSA AidData Story exploration tools IDF Horizon: cheap paper transcriptions! ActionAid Pilot: Smart phone & computers didn't work; paper worked. Other tools: BigML -- mapping trends with large datasets Gephi -- mapping network relationships Big picture dashboard: Explain the scope and quality of stories that mention an organization, idea, or location. Custom Drill Down: Click any part of this dashboard to explore smaller clusters of similar stories by outcomes (success/failure), perspectives, and within-subject benchmarking (compare the 2 stories to each other) IFC UN Global Pulse World Pulse Media C4K TYSA VAP AMREF PLA RETRAK Method: Community meetings to complete the feedback loop and encourage action. Didn't work. Orgs attended, discussed, but did not take action or coordinate existing work in most places. Not scalable. PEDN Method: Use SMS to promote dialogues (cheap, scalable) Bubble charts contrast two story text searches: YAU Kitovu Scribes & Paper method SMS from Sadili: Would you like to plant a free tree? Sent thousands of SMS, no response. Built Freelay SMS gateway ? Tried storytelling by SMS various ways. VAP MREMBO Sita KImya Interactive Community Map shows alignment between an organization and the communities where it works: Didn't work; too complicated for storytellers. We get richer stories from face-to-face interaction. SMS requires a relationship with community itself; we don't have that. Get 2 stories per person and Moma Africa you can benchmark data quality. Read story: PACT VAP organization focuses on youth and education, but stories about youth often mention drugs. Addressing youth & drugs is a "missed opportunity." CUSO-VSO Storytelling project Storytelling as big data Method peer review Method: Building and testing a variety of tools, to learn which ones promote organizational learning "vaguely right" beats "precisely wrong" USAID OTI/KTI • Good uses for story data: • Improve organizational performance. Does your project address the right needs in the community? • Project redesign. Search for new ways to address some complex social problems? • Pre-evaluations with Grant Proposals – you can now make a more compelling case for your new approach if it is supported by patterns in stories before you try it. • Advocacy and democracy – unifies voice Orgs want to impress funders by demonstrating their alignment with community needs USAID copies the method to understand why Somali youth join extremist groups and it works! Funding dried up (2013) Democracy branch: If we give communities a common voice, will leaders share power with those who have been given a voice? Orgs want a more flexible survey design