Nurturing a Movement
For advocacy groups getting together to work toward a common objective, there are multiple organizational structures to consider: Partnership, Coalition, Campaign, Network, and so on. Henry Timms’ blog post for the Harvard Business Review is geared toward those interested in the broadest of these structures, the “movement,” and the potential role of social media in amplifying its impact. He draws on his experience with #GivingTuesday to identify four lessons learned to guide future movement generators…all starting with the word “think.”
Care for a Nudge?
In the latest issue of The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, Marc Langlois, Natasha Blanchet-Cohen and Tanya Beer present a series of actionable strategies for developmental evaluation—what they call the “art of the nudge.” Starting from the premise that complex social change efforts require an effective management of information and continuous learning, they define the “nudge” as the evaluator’s interventions to encourage program staff to use and learn from evaluative data. This kind of evaluation isn’t easy, but Langlois et al.’s five practices offer valuable guidance for tackling the many challenges.
Revisiting History
The NYU Development Research Institute’s “corrected development history of the United States” is a pleasant walk through the country’s greatest historical moments (well…sort of). After all, who doesn’t remember fondly Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Framework Speech”? And who hasn’t heard of those unforgettable words by Thomas Jefferson, “We hold these time-bound Development Goals to be self-evident”? We tip our hat to the Institute for this insightful yet funny commentary on development policy. It’s just our kind of post.
