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Assessing Your Job Description

Reading the tea leaves, we believe that organizations that have a bottom-up, demand-driven learning culture that empowers staff to be creative, will be most likely to thrive in the turbulent days ahead. And believe it or not, the process of establishing such a culture can begin with a job posting. But did you know that despite their best intentions, organizations often don't seek the right candidate attributes for such a role?

With All Our Hearts

What if your team or organization could conduct its monitoring, evaluation and learning work on its own terms, rather than based on the requirements of donors? Would this breathe new life into the process? And if so, which organizations are already doing this? We set out to uncover the secrets of such "positive deviants," and learn what a more bottom-up, demand-driven form of learning would look like—one practiced with all our hearts?

Cultivating a Culture of Creativity

Fostering an environment where your team can tap into their innate creativity is crucial for innovation, keeping staff happy, and more. We know it can be daunting to know where to begin, so here are some key areas of practice to pay attention to.

Power Tools for Maximizing Impact

We are generally interested in the principle of maximizing impact in the areas of influence and program design. There are at least four power tools in these areas that make a big difference in an organization’s ability to maximize its impact: creativity and generative thinking, systems design, research, and cross-sector collaboration.

Innovative Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Tools

Traditional methods are often used for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL). However, as the social sector landscape is ever-evolving, so must our MEL methods! Using technology and a bit of creativity, we can innovate our MEL practices. Check out some of these innovative tools!