I was on my way to meet Sheherazade for a meeting with a client yesterday and thinking about how to frame my section of our interim report when I thought of Frank Gehry. A few years ago I went to an exhibit at the Guggenheim that featured his work and what fascinated me at the time was that his creative process did not start with the building, but with understanding the space and flow of the project. His early stage drawings, starting with squiggles on a cocktail napkin or random pieces of paper, were about the energy and nature of the space itself; and even after he started to design the structure, his spacial thinking would run parallel, merging finally with the design. What made me think of this is because, in our small way, that is how Sheherazade and I approach our work. Long before we produce the ultimate product we spend considerable time understanding the nature of what we are working with, what ‘flow’ looks like, what ideas underpin the project, and what matters to the people involved. In this case, the task is to build an evaluation framework for the funders of a national scale-up of a successful local project. So one of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves as we mull around in the project’s ’space’ is, what is scale-up? Is it replication? Is it a community of practice? Is it social innovation? Is there a difference between those? Does that matter? We reviewed the literature, we talked to stakeholders, and we realized that yes, those are very different concepts, and yes, it does matter. We ultimately settled on two models that capture the essential differences, one which we call replication and and the other (for lack of a better term) ‘knowledge transfer’. Continue reading ‘The Yin and Yang of Scaling-up’
Archive for the 'Tools' Category
One of the first questions we explore with clients who are thinking about a new funding program is their tolerance for risk. And by that we mean not just whether they are willing to take a chance on an important issue or program with high potential that might not succeed, but what other factors might drive the decision (implicitly if not explicitly). For some, the primary risk issue will be the potential to have an impact on the issue itself and the opportunity cost of not succeeding. For others, like a recent corporate client, it was the impact on corporate reputation and brand image, understandable for a corporation that is just starting out in grantmaking in a volatile industry.
We probed a bit at the meeting, but later over coffee Sheherazade and I realized that what they needed was a simple tool they could use now and in the future to help them assess the risks of the options they were considering – a tool that was compatible with their overall corporate goals and risk strategy. We have found that without clarity on risk tolerance funders will either find themselves in hot water with a program or will, by default, be so cautious that their granting program does not make a significant impact.
The tool we developed balances risks with opportunity to avoid over-caution; and although it was developed for a particular corporation, we thought it would be of interest (hopefully of use) to others working in the field. Note that this tool is designed for issue or program selection, not for individual granting decisions. (We will be addressing grant decision tools in a future posting.)
So here it is, feel free to use it however you wish: Risk Tool
