LabStorms

One of the goals of Feedback Labs’ Labstorms is to ask organizations to be reflective and vulnerable as they wrestle with a feedback challenge and to share those vulnerabilities and questions with others. It is important to us that we not only encourage vulnerability in seeking feedback from others but also that we practice it ourselves.

In December 2021, we held the first annual “LabStorm on LabStorms” where we asked for feedback from you, the feedback community, to improve on our program. We learned that our LabStorm partners want to see more follow-ups, community gatherings, and deeper engagement. In 2022, we implemented a few changes in response to the feedback that we received in that first LabStorm on LabStorms and we are still listening and responding to feedback to ensure that LabStorms continue to grow alongside the community it supports.

In 2023, we aim to make LabStorms a more equitable space for sustained engagement. We plan to introduce the 365 Campaign to highlight organizations that are working with marginalized communities and identity groups. Our goal is to use our positionality as an organization and LabStorms to not only observe cultural and historic days of celebration but also to highlight organizations that are working year-round within marginalized communities. As well, we plan to pilot opportunities for follow-up and continued engagement for all LabStorm presenters and attendees.

As we reflect on the feedback we previously received, discuss the changes we’ve made, and present plans for the coming year, we invite you to our second LabStorm on LabStorms to receive your input.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are your thoughts on changes that we made in 2022 in response to feedback that we received?

2. What are alternative strategies to respond to the feedback which could not be addressed in 2022?

3. How do you perceive the new initiatives for 2023? How can we build a more inclusive and sustainable space for LabStorms?

Discussion Questions:

1. How can DCFS improve life skills development for youth in foster care & help them learn more about household budgeting, financial literacy & credit? (peer mentorship, State Youth Advisory Boards, Reality Fair)
2. Career Pathway – which work based strategies have successfully guided teenagers to develop an interest in a career trajectory to pursue during or after high school?
3. How can DFCS and community organizations gather feedback on the effectiveness of new and creative initiatives without inundating youth with surveys?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we develop feedback loops that account for language and cultural differences in order to ensure balanced power in feedback?
2. What are strategies to sustain listening and feedback loops in 6 months when funding and staff capacity are reduced?
3. What are the strengths and improvement opportunities of our prototypes for ongoing feedback processes? (Prototypes will be presented during the LabStorm)

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions:

1. HFHI codesigned our feedback collection process in 2014-2018 with 48 Habitat affiliates and 12 communities to leverage residents’ voices and ensure co-creation of community projects. How can we simplify our feedback methodology going forward? 
2. We have feedback data coming in from a lot of different sources. While this is beneficial because it means we get very rich data, it can be complicated to triangulate this data and ensure that we in the central office are able to understand and use this feedback in the most effective way. What advice do you have for us to do this?
3. We have used Habitat’s feedback loop methodology to empower resident voice, and we want to make sure we use the data collected to improve our work going forward. What advice do you have for what we do with the feedback we’ve collected going forward?

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we best integrate community voice and cultural context into our established processes and protocols?
2. What strategies should we use to get representative feedback from a community? 
3. How do we hold teams accountable for transforming transactions to relationships with the community?

Discussion Questions:

1. What does equity mean in the context of food security? (How do we equitably distribute the food resources we have?)
2. How do we gather honest feedback from our constituents when there is a power/resource imbalance?
3. How can we use constituent feedback to catalyze collaboration among organizations doing similar work?

Discussion Questions:

1. What are strategies for building buy-in on the part of our clients (governments) for citizen engagement/social accountability processes (i.e. listening, responding and accounting to citizens)?
2. How can we use engagement/feedback processes to help shift power to ensure people and communities have the ability to shape the programs, policies, and funding that affect their lives?
3. How can we best measure the success of its citizen engagement/social accountability efforts?
4. How can we create internal incentives to ensure citizen engagement & feedback?

Discussion Questions:

1. What are some effective ways to implement pre- and post-completion surveys that also capture the impact story?
2. How can we translate the success of one project that effectively used feedback to other projects?
3. What are efficient strategies for sharing the ways that you have implemented feedback with those at the heart of your work?

Receiving and acting on citizen feedback to local government units in the Philippines helps create more trust-based governance and closes the feedback loop. Without good feedback, local governments can’t make decisions that most benefit their community. So how can we hold these governments accountable?

Layertech Labs aims to answer this question through CloudCT, a feedback analytics portal designed to collect opinions from citizens and create more citizen-centered, data-driven local government policy changes. The CloudCT Portal provides real-time analytics from feedback to help government agencies increase the quality of their public services. Through the Admin Console, administrators are able to view public, in-depth analytics and post updates responding to feedback to show citizens their voices are being heard.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Thrive For Good is a nonprofit organization that works to empower communities to help eradicate extreme poverty. With 2 billion people – 33% being children – not receiving enough nutrients to reach their full potential and fight disease, Thrive aims to help communities grow Life Gardens so that a nutrient-dense diet isn’t out of reach for people living below the poverty line. Life Gardens are an essential part of Thrive’s work. The organization hosts five-day workshops to teach people how to grow healthy food and sustain those gardens for the future. Furthermore, Thrive provides training through the Thrive Institute so that community members and partner organizations can reach more communities and help create more access to healthy food.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Pace Center for Girls creates opportunities for girls to share their thoughts and opinions about their services in order to cultivate the best overall program experience. In this LabStorm, Pace shared its framework and experience exploring several feedback challenges where participants had the opportunity to reflect and react to the information.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Keystone Accountability is an organization that works to help others understand and improve their social performance by harnessing feedback from the people they serve. In this LabStorm, the feedback community explored Keystone Accountability’s tool – the Feedback Commons – and discussed ways to demystify data and ensure that data is easily shareable.

This LabStorm explored how we can create ways to better measure and acknowledge the challenges and experiences of people around the world.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Generation USA is committed to supporting people into life-changing careers that would otherwise be inaccessible. Through bootcamp-style training and placement support, Generation USA ensures that learners have employer engagement right from the beginning.  These programs aim to create business value for employers as well as a lasting career impact for participants.

As Generation USA is dedicated to serving people who are unemployed, underemployed, or need to learn new skills, it presented in a LabStorm focusing on a learner’s feedback journey. The discussion, which took place at Feedback+ Summit in Jacksonville, revolved around collecting feedback from the participants, transitioning from in-person to virtual programs, and connecting with alumni after graduation.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Moving the Margins is an incubator program for BIPOC artists to collaborate with the change agents of Jacksonville to create accessible and immersive art installations. They serve the community by creating a committed, intentional place that is responsive to the variety of lived experiences that encompass Jacksonville’s hidden diversity and that catalyzes tangible, equitable outcomes for its citizens.

As Moving the Margins continues to expand the space for BIPOC artists, they presented in LabStorms at the Feedback+ Summit in Jacksonville to brainstorm ideas for the involvement of the community in social justice conversations.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

The Dynamic Accountability Community of Practice (DACoP) is a joint initiative by CIVICUS, Restless Development, Accountable Now and the Global Standard Partnership. It is made up of almost 200 people across a range of geographies. It is a space where a wide range of civil society practitioners can come together to share good practice, discover useful resources and learn from one another on the topic of Dynamic Accountability.

Our objective for the LabStorm is to identify what we can do to strengthen and deepen our engagement with the community of practice, and use the opportunity to widen our reach.

Discussion questions:

1. What does it take to build a successful community of practice?
2. How can we create a safe inclusive space?
3. How can we work with members to catalyse action?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Students Recover’s work is grounded in equity and justice, it is critical to our mission to value the lived experiences of those we serve and not replicate the harms of systemic oppression in our organization. Therefore, using volunteers is somewhat of a touchy issue, as the ability to work for free is not a privilege everyone has access to.

Additionally, because Students Recover is dedicated to providing support to those college students who come from communities most impacted by the war on drugs and/or who are least likely to have access to recovery support services on their campus, centering the needs of those who have been most systematically marginalized is critical to the mission. Thus we hope to engage the targeting communities in a meaningful and respectful way.

Discussion Questions:

1. How to raise funds to pay the workforce that is representative of the students being served?

2. What are some recommendations to recruit a small group of tech volunteers who can help build the platform and develop an app in the long run?

3. How can we intentionally reach out to the target community and include them in the development of the organization?

Silver Lining Mentoring empowers youth in foster care to thrive through committed mentoring relationships and the development of essential life skills. We are committed to cultivating an environment where marginalized voices/identities are lifted up and centered in service of dismantling systems of oppression, and listening to the youth at the heart of our work has helped us improve the programs we offer and even the name of our organization! Beyond our community based mentoring model we also support young people affected by out of home care with Life Skills training and Transition Age Youth support.

In early 2023, Silver Lining Mentoring will launch a pilot program supporting youth who are transitioning out of the foster care system. In planning for this new program, we have made sure to provide multiple opportunities for input and feedback to help plan for the pilot. We want to listen deeply to the youth who are participating in the pilot, and iterate on the program in response to their feedback. While we’ve had success in gathering and utilizing youth voice for planning, in the past we’ve had challenges getting youth and mentors to respond to feedback surveys. We’re exploring new ways we can listen the youth who are part of this pilot program and respond to what they say, and we hope you’ll join us in this LabStorm to share your ideas and advice on how we can do that best.

Discussion Questions:
1. In what ways can we balance collecting feedback and evaluation needs during the pilot, without adding to survey fatigue or an extra burden on participants?
2. The pilot will rely heavily on young people and their mentors utilizing Google Classroom to access the TAY curriculum. In what ways could we integrate opportunities for real time feedback and progress between quarterly check-ins with SLM staff?
3. How can incentives play a role in this pilot that can help interest youth in participating and stay motivated throughout the pilot program?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Strive Together uses a Theory to Action framework to build an equitable future for children and an equitable world for everyone. Strive Together invests in communities to eliminate disparities, strengthen networks, advocate for policies, and shape systems to create improved outcomes for every child, cradle to career. Strive Together serves as a financial intermediary between funders and community entities, engaging in innovative approaches to trust-based philanthropy and capacity building through coaching. Join us on October 20th for a LabStorm with Strive Together as we navigate feedback challenges related to effective assessment in philanthropy and the use of asynchronous learning management systems to create high-impact instruction and coaching for community partners.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are effective strategies for soliciting feedback from end users (organizational staff, community leaders) on the development of asynchronous learning/learning management systems?
2. How do you embody trust-based philanthropic principles within a results-driven organization?
3. What are the best strategies to balance feedback as a financial intermediary between direct impact community-based organizations and philanthropists?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

How can the feedback field recognize, celebrate and support nonprofits that are improving how they listen to the people at the heart of their work? And how do we do that at scale? This is a question that the Irritants for Change, a group of nonprofit ratings platforms and feedback champions, have been asking over the past few years. The group wants to ‘irritate’ the nonprofit sector in order to promote more and better listening. In this LabStorm, we’ll explore one way we might do that!

In past brainstorming sessions, nonprofits have said that they’re interested in peer-based mechanisms that can help them evaluate their current listening practices and identify steps they can take and resources they can draw on to improve how they listen. The Irritants have developed three different paper prototypes for such a mechanism, which we’re calling ‘Peer Success Reviews.’ We’re excited to share the prototype and hear your reactions and ideas for improvement!

Discussion Questions:
1) Which one of these prototypes do you think will be most effective at motivating and supporting nonprofits to improve how they listen?

2) Which of these prototypes do you think is most scalable and would attract hundreds of thousands of nonprofits to participate?

3) What practical considerations do you think we should look into as we think about developing these prototypes further?

MILE (Measuring Impact for Learning & Empowerment) is a people-centric and action oriented participation and feedback methodology in Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). It blends the technical rigor of programming paired with active beneficiaries’ participation and feedback. 

It promotes ownership through co-creating, joint monitoring, mutual learning, and mutual influencing of program design, implementation, and learning. 

MILE enables project beneficiaries, particularly the poorest, the excluded, most marginalized, and vulnerable, to be at the center of planning and execution of monitoring, evaluation, and learning in VSO projects, making it participatory, accountable, and empowering for the beneficiaries involved. 

Discussion Questions:

1. The MILE process has relied on face-to-face interactions with beneficiaries and other stakeholders. In the wake of COVID19 and the related restrictions, this has been a challenge. VSO is currently trying to find other mechanisms (such as remote/online engagement) besides face-to-face interactions.
2. MILE can appear to be complicated to those who interact with it for the very first time or to those who do not have an understanding of how it works. 
3. MILE is resource specific with process discipline, which requires careful planning and budgeting at the design stage in order to be people/beneficiary centered.

SEMA – Swahili for ‘Speak! What’s up!?’ – aims to improve transparency and accountability of public services in Uganda and East Africa at large, to make citizen feedback central to how governments evaluate and improve their service delivery.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can SEMA drive the usage of feedback tools from the public?
2. How can SEMA provide the results of those feedback tools to the public?
3. Does anyone have experience with deploying hardware feedback tools in the public sector, and if so what are the best practices?

Read the LabStorm recap here.

Tangible Initiatives for Local Development (TIFLD) is a tech-driven NGO based in Tanzania Mainland. Their mission is to contribute to the development of policies and laws that promotes democratic principles, strengthening institutions, mainstream the marginalized, and build resilient communities.

Discussion Questions:

1. People are sent to prison for giving feedback. How do we ensure the safety of our community when expressing feedback on a public platform? 
2. What are recommendations for capturing feedback from our community members who do not have access to the internet? 
3. For those of you with experience working with highly political local governments, what advice would you give on strategies we can use to inspire them to respond to feedback?

Discussion Questions:

1. Question 1: Are there successes/learnings to support people with disabilities in leading community engagement activities?
2. Question 2: What are the key considerations/practices we must have when running an iterative and adaptive volunteer training program for people with disabilities?
3. Question 3: How do we ensure we create an inclusive application digital platform for collecting feedback?

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we ensure the data management integrity of when different users and stakeholders need to access the data?
2. For those of you with experience in development indicators, is there a particular way you format?
3. Right now the tool requires internet access, but there are many folks with any internet. What type of recommendations do you have for building an offline platform?
4. What type of requirements can the beneficiary use to rate the organization?

Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we reduce the friction to make the app a standard using tool?
2. What are the best ways to collect (what is considered) sensitive professional data from teachers?
3. How do we use this data to influence top-level policy decisions? (moving from British-based standard to competency-based)

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions:

1. COVID presents some unique challenges and opportunities for civic engagement. How might our tool navigate through that? What could be some COVID-related pilots we could test? (Citizen reports on conditions of quarantine centers, for example)
2. What is the key question we need to ask ourselves to make an informed judgment on whether we should do the technological part of our initiative (mobile and web apps, integrations, etc.) in-house or outsource it?
3. How might the tool be scaled or mirrored in other contexts? (similar to how Poverty Spotlight used Ushahidi’s citizen activism for gauging multidimensional poverty)

Read the LabStorm recap here.

The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics was established, to help address this issue as an advisory and research organization focused on applying behavioral science in emerging markets. With the pursuit of poverty alleviation, Busara applies rigorous research methods and evaluation tools to enable partners to improve program design, assess existing interventions, and optimize internal processes.

To shift this paradigm and show that traditional research methods can be complemented with findings that are collected in a fast and nimble way, Busara created a proprietary platform called Knowledge and Insights Tool for Experiments (KITE), a system for managing participants registration/recruitment and invitations, that can also be deployed remotely.

As Busara is scaling the tool’s rollout, they came to LabStorms to get perspectives on the remote collection of feedback, access to communities without internet access, and presenting easily communicable findings.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions

1. Currently, the tool is particular to the Philippines. How do we make the tool more usable and relevant for cities or organizations overseas?
2. Do you know of any global policies, movements, success stories, or strategies that we can leverage in order to encourage the local governments and institutions to close the feedback loop?
3. Are there any alternative ways to communicate with folks without an internet connection or capacity to use digital devices?

Discussion Questions

1. What are the effective ways to feed and share this crucial data, learnings, and insights back to the communities, potentially leading to conversations, a shared understanding, and collective action that could be spurred effectively to improve and positively influence accountability within the local democratic systems?
   1. How to effectively share the data with the community? How to present the data better to influence accountability in local democracy?
2. What are the tried and tested pathways and possible case studies of using this bottom-up, community-fueled data to achieve policy advocacy?
   1. What are the ways of driving policy advocacy by using bottom up data? 
3. While drawing inferences from this collective data and sharing this information and user voices with relevant stakeholders, what are the best practices to address any data privacy-related concerns of the user community?
   1. How to ensure data privacy?

Read the LabStorm recap here.

Discussion Questions

1. It is tricky for an impact investor or donor to share constructive feedback with portfolio companies or NGOs after discovering a negative result from their interventions. How do you exercise power in a constructive way?
2. How do you protect the identity of respondents who may be providing the negative results, especially if they may experience negative consequences if they were discovered?

Discussion Questions

1. We know that models already exist for measuring progress on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI). How do we best develop a process for aligning with nonprofit leaders for a DEI without reinventing the wheel?
2. How do we garner feedback on our work from communities we haven’t typically engaged within deep ways (particularly Latinx and Indigenous communities)?
3. How should we think about the composition of our listening sessions and expert interviews?

Discussion Questions

1. How can we invite educators and communities through communication campaigns to better use the resources available to do SOLE? What are some techniques and recommendations on closing the loop with these educators and communities?
2. What low-cost tech solutions can we suggest to communities to improve their possibilities of having recurrent SOLE sessions?
3. How and who could fund different types of solutions for different contexts?

Discussion Questions

1. What is the best way to communicate this idea to our key stakeholders, i.e., staff & donors?
2. How can we build trust and receive honest feedback from potential partners in Palestine?
3. How can we make sure our partners and staff remain safe in this fragile security environment?

World Vision is a Christian relief, development, and advocacy organization dedicated to working with children, families, and communities to reduce poverty and injustice. With operations in over 100 countries, World Vision seeks to be accountable to all its stakeholders because they exist to benefit others. They developed a framework for program accountability, which includes four practices: providing information, consulting with communities, promoting participation, and collecting and acting on feedback and complaints.

To navigate the challenges of collecting in-person feedback from marginalized communities, World Vision International presented at a recent LabStorm and were seeking feedback on better ways to use technology to safely gather feedback that includes sensitive information.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions

1. How to categorize feedback in a way that will facilitate and lead to smoother and faster resolution processes?
2. What are the different ways humanitarian responders could code open-ended (qualitative) community feedback comments to analyze and address more complex feedback together?
3. What are useful indicators for monitoring the impact of a feedback mechanism?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions

1. How do we supplement news stories with engagement tools and events that can reach our communities?
2. How do we build trust and close the loop with the communities that we work as a startup with sparse resources?
3. How do we quantify or measure how we’re doing in engaging and listening to our communities so that we can hold ourselves accountable?

Frustrated by the difficulties in finding and purchasing art by Black artists, founder Tatiana Rice launched the BlkArthouse platform in 2020 to provide a space for collectors looking for Black art and Black artists to thrive. Their mission is to increase the accessibility and representation of Black artists in the global art market through technology and community-building. Currently, BlkArthouse hosts over 200 artists on its platform, with more than half selling directly through them on their online marketplace and through their in-person art events.

As BlkArtHouse continues to expand the community for Black art and artists, they presented in LabStorms to brainstorm growth strategies.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Discussion Questions

1. How do we collect feedback from the communities as there are restrictions on travel, organizing meetings? It is also important to keep in mind that many in the community are not digitally literate. 
2. We (management team) used to visit the rural communities, local leaders, and the local government at least once every two months. Now, we are not able to do so due to the COVID. What are some of the best practices for collecting their feedback and maintaining relationships during COVID?
3. We have been designing the projects based on local needs that are observed and/or requested by the community and agreed by the local government. What are the best methods to incorporate local needs especially when the funders have set limited funding criteria?

Discussion Questions

1. Because the spaces at the U.S. – Mexico border are co-designed with our customers, how do we ensure that we are getting feedback from all relevant sources in the ever-changing environment of the US-Mexican border?
2. How can we get feedback that will be useful not only for emergencies but also for long-term sustainability?
3. As we look to expand this work to very different groups of people – think moms in South Sudan and with Afghan refugees resettling in the U.S. – what are the first steps that can be taken to set up a feedback loop in the future ventures?

Discussion Questions

1. How do we encourage financial institutions to contribute a greater percentage of funding to human labor?
   1. In order to build community capability to build resilient buildings and also advocate for rights, need to work with communities closely. That means staff needs to be in communities, but many funders won’t pay for that staff time. They’ll pay for construction materials, but not human labor
2. What are the best ways of closing the feedback loop between rural communities and government institutions?
3. What are the best practices to work within government and advocate for rural communities?

Discussion Questions

1. What strategies beyond social media can be implemented to recruit youth and keep them engaged in the programs? How can we include them in an open community-centric fundraising model?
2. How can we reach out to potential partner organizations, for example, those that work directly with youth and/or in schools, to assist with recruiting more youth?
3. What are some ways to improve buy-in from the youth to effectively include them in the feedback process? What steps can we take to improve the response rate and have meaningful feedback in the surveys?

Discussion Questions

1. How can we make the process of inviting presenters more equitable? How could we invite speakers from diverse backgrounds? (For instance, recruiting more grassroots, POC, and women-led organizations)
2. What are some recommendations to achieve the goal of 10-12 non-FBL participants? (Have you experienced barriers to attending a LabStorm)?
3. How should we close the loop with the audience from the LabStorm audience? What are some metrics we could use to evaluate the effectiveness of the session?

LabStorm #128: Closing the loop on anonymous feedback.

Read the recap here.

LabStorm #132: Affiliate Open Gov Hubs: Scaling Up a Worldwide Social Franchise. 

Read the LabStorm recap here.

The Open Gov Hub (OGH) was founded in Washington, D.C. in 2012 as the world’s first “open gov”-themed meeting place, which provides its member network with resource sharing and collaboration opportunities to help open up governments and empower citizens globally. (It is also the birthplace and home of Feedback Labs!) Since day one, OGH has hosted many thousands of international visitors, some of whom have been inspired by our model and have expressed interest in recreating some version of the hub in their home country. The Accountability Lab, a founding OGH member, has played an instrumental role since 2014 in establishing these like-minded civic innovation hubs in several countries. And in 2019, we formalized our Global Affiliate Hubs program to offer dedicated and structured support, to nurture existing hubs and help bring new ones to life.

Today, we are supporting 13 different affiliate hubs across 12 countries and 5 continents, and this program is at a critical juncture. In order to make it sustainable over the longer-term, we plan to develop it as a social franchise model.

Social franchising is a way for social enterprises to scale up by replicating a proven model – both a proven business model and a proven social impact model. This presents a number of exciting opportunities, but many challenges too – especially related to financing and establishing strong feedback loops with affiliate hubs (who currently receive support for free, but who we plan to charge a fee in the future).

In the Labstorm, we look forward to fresh ideas and perspectives (especially from those familiar with social enterprises and/or global networks of various types), to help us take the next step to scale up our impact globally.

Discussion Questions:

1. How should we design and close feedback loops with affiliate hubs differently when they become paying franchisees, compared to now when they receive support for free?
2. How can we decide when is the right time to introduce a franchise fee and start to charge our partners for our services? We want to pilot the franchise fee model before implementing it with all partners, but how might we do that ethically (charge some people for the same service but not others)? And how might we choose which partners to pilot with?
3. A defining aspect of a traditional business franchise model is having strict quality control – to ensure consistency across all franchise locations. How can we ensure a consistent, high-quality standard at all global affiliate hubs, without imposing too narrow a top-down vision or quashing local innovation/adaptation?

LabStorm #134 – Conversar: Can we talk our way into changing the world together?


Decades of armed conflict and violence has made residents in Colombia silent. Now, we have a unique opportunity to get them talking. In 2020, the UN in Colombia partnered with SOLE Colombia (Self-Organized Learning Environments) to celebrate their 75th anniversary with a series of community conversations to imagine the future. These conversations will convene diverse participants from across Colombia to discuss issues such as gender, education, and the economy. Due to COVID-19, this is the largest experiment in remote conversation in the history of Colombia and is highly relevant for the national healing process. UN75+ and SOLE Colombia believe that through these conversations, participants will be inspired to act and create positive change.

Discussion Questions:

Fostering Momentum: Coming out of the first round of conversations, how do we animate the conversation and keep it alive? How do we build momentum towards change organically?

Creating belonging: In the first wave of conversations, we created this map of voices and infographics to show what people said. We believe that this will create a sense of community and accountability for conversation participants. How do we know if our communication work is creating a sense of belonging to the SOLE Colombia community? What else could we try to make participants feel togetherness?

See the recap of the session here.

Encouraging participation in a self-organising community: SOLE Colombia would like to see these conversations lead to action. In order for that to happen, participants will have to stay in touch and work together. How do we create a habit of participants engaging in self organized learning and a self-managed community?

ideas42 has a vision is for everyone on the ideas42 team to a) recognize the institutional power we individually and collectively hold, and how this creates dynamics within the work we do; b) develop strategies and resources to support the team in practicing cultural competency in all aspects of our work; and c) adopt a mindset of continual growth, learning, and humility, understanding that cultural competency is not an outcome one can truly “achieve.”

The purpose of this LabStorm is to hear from you—how have you seen cultural competency talked about and practiced at your organizations? What are some best practices that you know of? What resources can you share? How might feedback loops play a role? Join this session to help us work through challenges around understanding, integrating, and measuring our cultural competency.

Participatory campaigns in the age of social distance

Mobilisation Lab was born inside Greenpeace International in 2011, and facilitated a massive culture shift across the organisation towards more modern campaigning — from digital tools and tactics including listening and a/b testing to more creative, nimble and participatory campaigns. MobLab trains, coaches and challenges changemakers, advocates and campaigners to build people power, deploy creative tactics, tackle root causes and adopt collaborative cultures in their campaigns. They guide campaign leaders to design nimble advocacy campaigns using participatory approaches, and facilitate opportunities for changemakers to skill up through peer learning within the global advocacy campaigning community.


In 2020, with nationwide protest and COVID-19 dominating the headlines, many organisations are rushing to adapt. In this time of rapid change and social upheaval, MobLab has seen many of its partner organizations reevaluate their strategy and tactics – including fresh consideration of participatory design methods that center the most impacted people in planning and engage people more meaningfully in the work.

MobLab is founded on the belief that campaigns are most effective when organizers include constituents in the design and implementation of campaigns. But how can they encourage participatory methods and feedback in this unique time — when resources are more constrained than ever and when rapid response often means excluding people from the process?


MobLab is coming to the LabStorm group to work through these challenges. Specifically, we will dive into diagnosing and dismantling the current barriers to participatory strategy and campaign design and measuring the impact of participatory design work in order to show its value.

Discussion questions:

1. Right now, advocacy and campaign organizations face many barriers to listening meaningfully to supporters/activists and planning people-powered campaigns. Given new constraints (distancing, recession, etc.), how can we work with our advocacy and campaign partners to help them diagnose and overcome the barriers they currently face?
2. Advocacy NGOs want to engage their constituents more deeply. How can we help partners measure the impact of their participatory design/feedback work?
3. How do we build feedback loops that show the value of participatory design work in advocacy and campaigning?

See a recap of the session here.

Oxígeno2030: Breathing life into smartphones in Mexico as a COVID19 relief response

Oxígeno2030 seeks to detonate lasting social impact in Mexico by helping 1 million people stay connected through free/at- cost mobile wireless service and an information/education content platform to expand their economic opportunities and foster a more accountable, caring and resilient community in support of the United Nations SDGs and COVID19 crisis relief.

Guaranteeing data access and offering verified and educative content to smartphone users will allow them to use their devices to take care of their health, monetize their activities and learn new skills. This can shift their behaviors and views on the use of mobile data to help their communities build resilience and navigate through the crisis.

While creating a platform for the users and having them grouped and connected opens many possibilities for feedback loops, our multi-stakeholder approach brings interesting challenges: ensuring accessibility, maximizing reach, finding common ground, and defining the right KPIs to be able to compare data, just to name a few.

We seek to explore these questions:

1. How do we get platform users to engage with us meaningfully, given the fact that they have not built a relationship with us through in-person programming? How can we gain their trust to show them that their feedback will be heard?
2. What are best practices for shifting feedback online, especially in communities that have already gone digital for social and entertainment purposes and that are currently facing information overload and fake news?
3. How can we make online engagement and feedback accessible to a wide audience, especially to people with disabilities, communities with low literacy rates, or users who have not traditionally been asked for feedback.

Email analysis for measuring depth of community engagement

The Open Contracting Partnership (OCP) is a silo-busting collaboration across governments, businesses, civil society, and technologists to open up and transform government contracting worldwide. We bring open data and open government together to make sure public money is spent openly, fairly and effectively. We focus on public contracts as they are the single biggest item of spending by most governments. They are a government’s number one corruption risk and they are vital to make sure citizens get the services that they deserve.

Learning and evaluation is a key part of OCP’s work. We have an internal learning framework that we update as a team every quarter. We re-evaluate if we are tracking the right things at least once under each new strategy and then we course-correct as needed both in terms of indicators as well as targets. We then incorporate lessons from every quarter into our individual work plans. We track the following indicators for measuring our community engagement and empowerment:

• Number of our contacts who have sent us at least 3 emails in the last year
• Number of new non-OCP projects, programs, and organisations that get funding
• Network average interconnectivity
• Number of people and organizations in our wider network who engage in open contracting conversations

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we get comprehensive and meaningful feedback on our community calls without over-burdening attendees with long surveys?
2. What engagement measures should OCP consider beyond network connectivity, twitter participation, and email rate? Have you seen examples of robust engagement measurement in your work?
3. OCP is planning to use email activity as an engagement for the foreseeable future, and we want to make sure we do it right. What are the potential pitfalls to this indicator?

See a recap of the session here.

Description:
LabStorm #127: Socialsuite – COVID-19 impact assessment technology


Socialsuite is a technology platform to rapidly assess social impact and monitor long term effectiveness of services through monitoring feedback. A few weeks ago, Socialsuite launched a free COVID-19 impact assessment tool for any organization to rapidly listen, understand and act to help their people during the COVID-19 crisis and then share emerging trends on what is working to help their funders optimise COVID-19 related grantmaking. Nearly 1,000 organizations have signed up in the few weeks since launch and we have a rapidly growing set of feedback and insights that every organisation is sharing with each other and with their funders – we aim to reach 10,000 organisations in the next few months.

We are working with researchers and partners around the world to distribute the free tool to their local network of organisations and help them understand and act on locally relevant insights based on the pooled data from their region. The more organisations that use the tool, the more valuable the global and local shared insights on how to adapt to the COVID-19 crisis become and the quicker every organisation can adapt, especially with the help of their funders. In these early stages, we are facing challenges with knowing what feedback to collect, building global awareness, and engaging grantmakers. We are also trying to prevent any future survey fatigue. We are coming to the LabStorm group to hear your input on these challenges.

Before the LabStorm discussion, we encourage you to login and take a look at the live data for yourself, and please share the registration link with any organisation or feel free to use the tool for your own staff and service users (or for your grantees if you are a funder).

Discussion Questions:

1. Collecting Valuable Feedback: We have a rapidly growing uptake in the free tool, what other feedback would be valuable to collect over time to be most helpful to the organizations and how do we avoid survey fatigue from regular feedback collection?
2. Global Awareness: How can find and work with more local partners to accelerate uptake and create locally relevant insights? How can we get overseas media coverage?
3. Grantmaker Engagement: How can we encourage funders to use the local and global feedback trend data to help drive better grantmaking decisions towards what is working?

See the recap of the session here.

Global Fund for Children (GFC) envisions a future where all children and youth are safe, strong, and valued. We boldly pursue this vision by partnering with community-based organizations around the world to help children and youth reach their full potential and advance their rights. To this end, as a public foundation based in Washington, DC, GFC provides flexible funding, capacity development support, and network strengthening activities to help our partners become more effective at transforming the lives and communities of children and youth.

We are committed to raising youth voices and ensuring that young people inform our work. Our Youth Leadership Council formed to articulate and advance the needs of youth peers, and to serve as advisers to GFC. The Council took shape in 2019 and led a nomination process to identify new members to expand its global representation.

GFC supports organizations that address systemic oppression resulting from an imbalance of power where young people often do not have the space to realize their agency. Through our Youth Leadership Council and creating space for young people to participate in our work, we hope to model power shifting practices for our partners, inspiring them to create space for young people to lead, contribute feedback and take on meaningful roles in their organizations.

As we engage in this journey, we want to ensure that the involvement of young people is genuinely embedded with our organization, honors their time and skills and is not tokenistic. We recognize that our Youth Leadership Council members have multiple commitments, at the same time they are dedicated to advancing the rights of young people and building their global network.

As the Youth Leadership Council takes shape, we are navigating the following questions:

1. How do we engage our Youth Leadership Council meaningfully?
2. What processes should we use to include youth voices in our work beyond the Council? How can we have the youth our partners serve inform the work of the Council?
3. How can we better support our grantee partners to think about shifting power to young leaders?

Read the recap of the session here.

Virtual relationship building through feedback

The First Universalist Church of Denver is doing a strategic review to revitalize and build trust in their church community. The church has done strategic reviews before using the Appreciative Inquiry method, but this time, they are focusing on creating sustainable feedback loops in order to promote lasting change. Given the current pandemic, their plans are now obsolete. They are trying to balance doing this in a virtual setting while also remaining present to the changing needs of their members (feeling connected and processing grief now matter more than planning for the future).

As they embark on their process of responding and adapting to church members’ feedback, they are coming to the LabStorm group for advice. It is a challenge to build trust and measure the health of a church community, even more so in a socially distanced world. Join this conversation to help The First Universalist Church of Denver navigate feedback in an unprecedented time.

Discussion Questions:

1. What can the First Universalist Church of Denver do to build trust and relationships virtually in a time of social distancing and mourning?
2. How can we build trust into our feedback process, and how can we improve the feedback process overall? What are recommended platforms or strategies for feedback in a church community?
3. How can we measure the health of our community in a socially-appropriate way? What indicators should we use to measure growth and decline, and how can we collect data to compare against the indicators?

Strengthening feedback in a funder collaborative’s monitoring, evaluation, and learning system


Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI) is a collaborative of funders committed to building a more just, equitable, and inclusive society through greater transparency, accountability, and effective participation around the globe. TAI’s Secretariat assists its members to strengthen the impact and effectiveness of their transparency and accountability funding, and the field as a whole.

Collaborative member engagement and feedback are crucial to TAI’s progress and success. We recently completed an evaluation of our 2016-2019 strategy period, and we have engaged our funder members to inform the evaluation, make sense of the findings, and translate those learnings into our revised strategy for 2020-2024.

The shifts in our forthcoming strategy reflect a continued commitment to the transparency and accountability sector but bring changes to our outcomes and work going forward. In this context, we will revise our existing monitoring, evaluation, and learning system to align with the new strategy. We are grappling with several challenges to ensure that we leverage assets and address gaps from our past MEL system.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we communicate TAI’s culture of curiosity and learning to new stakeholders and sustain this culture with current partners? Does this look the same or different for shorter- and longer-term stakeholder engagement?

2. How can we incentivize positive change among funders? What visible and invisible aspects of relationships and influence might we focus on to see positive change in the funding landscape?

3. How can we better balance feedback and responsiveness to members with more systematic learning and strategic adaptation?

Read the recap of the session here.

Creating trust and insuring feedback that builds a culture of collaboration

Loneliness changes the brain, creates costly behaviors and severely impacts quality and length of life. Lack of social connection transformed my Dad and left me feeling impudent; my story is one of millions – with loneliness costing billions of dollars in additional healthcare expenses annually. Innovations are appearing every day, but it is all but impossible for even the providers to figure out which programs work and understand how loneliness impacts their operation. We created the Social Quotient – an analytics platform to help older adult service providers understand what’s effective and to provide insights on the impact. We connect loneliness to our clients key metrics to drive better outcomes.

We use Natural Language Programming, validated self-reported surveys and other data and analytic tools to measure social connectedness in a community and provide actionable insights to our clients. The SQ looks across programs and provides you insights about the specific community you serve. In organizations just beginning to look at data tools, we provide them an easy way to start using data to answer these questions and a data foundation that can be built upon. In those organization with an existing data platform, we provide them with tools and analytics that enable them to deepen their understanding of how loneliness and social connection are impacting their bottom line.

For example, if you’re a senior housing provider, we provide insights that can impact length of stay and staff retention; if you’re a hospital we help you to understand how increased social capital that can lead to lower readmission rates; if you are an MA insurer, we deliver insights that enable the duplication and adaption of the best initiatives to lower the cost of loneliness. Klaatch is the solution of choice for forward-thinking organizations serving the older adult market who want insights into how loneliness is impacting the metrics that matter to them.

We believe that our mission is facilitated by empowering our team members and our clients through trust, openness and transparency. Figuring out how to create a technology foundation that fosters these principals is central to our vision. Corporate cultures are a certainty, the only question is are they intentional or ad hoc. We want to create an intentional culture that is supported by systems and technology that further our mission and our core values.

As Klaatch continues to grow, we want to make sure that we are building effective and sustainable feedback systems with the older adults we serve. We are coming to the LabStorm group for advice on how to establish trust with adult users, keep feedback private and secure in a growing system, and build internal feedback loops within the Klaatch team.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we establish trust with the older adult users we interview (typically first time they’re speaking to this person and it’s over the phone)?
2. What are the best, most cost-effective systems that you’ve used for keeping feedback secure and private? What are your recommendations for building feedback systems that enable us to continue to scale and grow?
3. What types of internal feedback systems can we implement to ensure team success and cohesion as we grow?

Collective Mind is a “network of networks” for networks working across a wide range of sectors and topics. Collective Mind believes in the power of networks to foster collective action. Our goal is to equip networks as well as their leaders, staff, and members to better create impact. We do this through both advisory services to networks and a learning community of network leaders and staff for peer learning and knowledge sharing.

As we build a learning community of network leaders and staff, we struggle to engage people in ways that are meaningful and value-added to them. Often colleagues working for networks don’t see themselves as network practitioners, which means creating a shared identity – and even bringing in new members – is a challenge. Furthermore, finding mechanisms and activities that help members to articulate their needs and engage with each other is a challenge.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we create a sense of identity around the community?
2. How can we learn from our community about what value-adds they would like to see?
3. How can we best survey our network? What mechanisms/activities can we put in place to engage them in an ongoing fashion?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Community-Driven Feedback for Inclusive SDG Implementation

The Leave No One Behind partnership urges decision-makers at the global and national levels to ensure the voices of marginalised communities are Heard and Count in the planning, review and implementation of the SDGs. The partnership, initiated in 2017 by twelve of the world’s largest international civil society organisations, combines an inclusive approach to data generation with an evidence-driven approach to advocacy, at the global and national levels.

Some of the challenges we have faced in the Leave No One Behind partnership have been gathering data and feedback in an ethical and robust way, getting community-driven data recognised by decision-makers, building capacity of local champions, and fundraising in partnerships.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we build the capacity of community champions so that they ethically gather data on the ground? What specific best practices for working with marginalised communities do you have? What are the challenges we should prepare for when working with local champions?
2. When it comes to working with local governments, what are best practices for turning data into decision-making? How can we support governments to make efficient use of community-driven data and feedback into their policy agenda?
3. The Centre is based in Germany, but works with local coalitions world-wide. Do you have practical examples or suggestions of raising funds in international partnerships for global work?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Building Online Communities for Social Change

RNW Media is an international nonprofit based in the Netherlands that supports human and political rights as well as sexual and reproductive health and rights of young people in restrictive societies across the Middle East and Africa. We specialize in building large digital communities that enable free expression, provide fact-based information, stimulate pluralistic dialogue, and solicit citizen feedback for social change.

Central to our work is an inclusive approach that uses active online community moderation (as opposed to content moderation, or censorship) to yield robust yet safe and respectful civic discourse and feedback even in highly fractured and conflict-prone countries. Libya is one such country and will serve as an example of our work in the LabStorm discussion.

Among the challenges we face, three stand out: (1) achieving balanced inclusion within our communities by gender, urbanicity/geography, and ethnicity; (2) determining where and how best to scale our model; and (3) connecting our community members to local civic and elected officials to channel their feedback and seek appropriate response.

Discussion Questions:

1. While we have long sought and had success in achieving gender balance in our communities (to the extent that in Libya some see us as a feminist platform), gaining geographic and ethnic balance has been more elusive. How can we best address this (without without sacrificing gender inclusion)? How do you ensure comprehensive inclusiveness in the work you do and on your platform?
2. RNW media works in a diverse set of contexts. Which parts of our model can we scale, and which parts should we localize?
3. How do you connect people (young people, particularly) to influencers and decision-makers in their societies? How do you close the feedback loop?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

We know what voters think, but how do they feel? Read the recap here.

Does radio make an impact? Read the recap here.

Strengthening Local Governments Through Civic Engagement: Read the recap here.

Human Nature Projects is a pioneer in communityconservation, encompassing 1200 volunteers in 102 countries. Six months in,their network is rapidly growing but this scaling carries with it theinevitable challenges. They must break down barriers – mental and physical,cultural, linguistic and geographical – and there remain many impediments tothe open exchange of ideas they envision.

Moving forward, HNP is hosting a LabStorm to knuckle out these issues and discover the best means ofmaintaining momentum whilst ensuring effectiveness throughout its internationalactivities. In this session, we will explore how best to design a platform thatreflects a global interconnectedness of vision, providing people with the powerto protect that which they hold most dear.

Discussion Questions:

1. How can we make sure we are including diverse voices in our global network?
2. Which measures and structures would best facilitate exchange for such a global network?
3. How can other NGOs be incorporated into this framework for maximum impact?

What was the outcome of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Fonbnk is an emerging provider of blockchain-based mobile money solutions; turning any prepaid mobile SIM card into a bank account. With Fonbnk, you can buy and send mobile data to anyone anywhere in the world instantly. For international NGOs, this platform offers global low-cost mobile data access solutions with accountability. Fonbnk also has great humanitarian applications, especially during disasters, because it allows people to donate mobile data to recipients across the world with no delays or fees. Recent clients include a Medical Aid NGO in Malawi and Malaria Prevention in Ghana. Fonbnk currently resells mobile access from 600 carriers in about 200 countries representing ~4.5Billion people, and is continuing to expand. As they grow, they must consider how to best collaborate with the social sector to deliver mobile data to those who need it most.

Discussion Questions:

1. How should Fonbnk engage with the NGO community?
2. Who are the appropriate representatives to engage?
3. How do we build constituent feedback into our humanitarian work?

What was the outcome of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Description:WITNESS.org is a global organization that has collaborated with 420+ groups in over 130 countries since its founding in 1992. Specialized in the use of video for human rights, WITNESS has supported partners using video to expose and preserve evidence of war crimes, protect indigenous land rights, denounce police violence, defend immigrants, fight hate speech, and more. With a team based around the world, WITNESS is always learning about new tactics –and gaps— in the global field of video-for-change. And while each local context is unique, time after time we’ve seen activists in one place grappling with problems that activists in other countries have solved when trying to use video safely, ethically and effectively. So we’ve committed to nourishing this knowledge – serving as a conduit when it makes sense but also bringing people together to learn from each other and ensuring these learnings are documented, systematized, available. Our online Library, for example, allows visitors to download/remix/share 180+ training resources in over 27 languages. Growing downloads and shares of these materials make us happy, but our end goal is that this knowledge contributes to real human rights impact, not fancy metrics. So for this Labstorm we’d like to draw on partners’ experiences to help us think through the following questions:

1. How do we figure out which local learnings (for example, local advice and tactics for using video safely and effectively to defend/protect human rights) have global salience/value?
2. How do we streamline and share these globally salient tactics and learnings, without falling into a “copy-paste” mindset?
3. How can we get high-quality feedback (not just anecdotes) from people who download and use our materials so we can continue improving our global knowledge base?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Africa’s Voices, a Kenya-based organisation with a mission to enable individual and collective citizen voice to drive accountable service delivery and governance, has developed a one-to-one conversational channel for engaging citizens via SMS in co-designing interventions that aim to improve their lives. We strive to close feedback loops between citizens and service providers by focusing on meaningful conversational engagement with people, on their own terms and language – by interpreting “messy” subjective data. The objective is two-fold: service deliverers (governments, NGOs, humanitarians and others) design programmes and policies that are grounded in the desires, needs and experiences of the people they serve, while citizens become active participants in decisions that affect their lives and are able to hold those service providers into account.
We would like to use this LabStorm to demonstrate Africa’s Voices’ two-way channel for feedback and accountability and to spark a lively discussion with partners in the accountability space, particularly in the context of international development, about how it could be used to facilitate vibrant, interactive communications with programme beneficiaries, allowing them to become co-designers of interventions that aim to improve their lives.

Discussion Questions:

1. What’s the unique value that is enabled by unstructured conversations?
2. How do we communicate the value of subjective “messy” data?
3. What place does subjective data derived from citizen feedback have in the crisis of policymaking?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

About Tata School of Social Sciences – School of Vocational Education

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences is a premier institute of Social work in India established in 1936. It received the status of a University in 1964 and is now one of the top-ranked Universities in India. The School of Vocational education was set up in to provide immediate and definite interventions to improve the skill levels of millions of youth in the country through appropriate vocational education programs

Over a period of time after a few initial setbacks, TISS-SVE has succeeded in developing a work-integrated training model of vocational education involving different types of partners with specific roles in the delivery of vocational courses.

The model is self-sustaining, low-cost and scalable. At the moment we offer 33 B.Voc. programs in 19 different sectors with the help of 19 vertical Anchors, more than 240 hub partners and have more than 8000 students currently pursuing their B. Voc. Programs with us. More than 2000 students have completed their B.Voc.degree with us and more than 70% of them found employment immediately after the course.

We have also setup a system of gathering feedback every month from 10-15% of the stakeholders either through telephone conversation or through reports sent in by counselors after their monthly life-skills sessions. Once a year we organize a Hub-meet and connect with larger group of hubs to appraise them with our concerns/achievements and get their suggestions. These are used to take corrective measures for day to day operations and students concerns.

For the first time in May-July 2019 we conducted 360-degree feedback through telephone interviews of some stakeholders and online surveys for other stakeholders in the ecosystem. We will present some of the significant results in the LabStorm session.

Discussion Questions:

1. How do we move from one-on-one feedback collection to large scale feedback collection and still retain the same quality and value of data? How often do we have to collect feedback when we are working at scale?
2. How should we engage with partners to make sure that the 360-feedback results in changes?
3. We know the TISS-SVE model is replicable. How can we use feedback data to show our impact of our model and make the case for the importance of vocational education in India and abroad?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Project summary 

OVD-Info has designed a data-driven primary constituent accountability project. We work with 5 main constituent groups within the scope of the RR initiative (activists, journalists, donors, readers and the OVD-Info staff). As part of the project, OVD-info collects feedback from various constituent groups through a wide variety of tools, including: F2F interviews, online surveys, bots, and analytics from our website traffic, social media, etc. We use different tool based on the way we engage with each constituent group, though most of the feedback and data we collect is entirely anonymous and at times hard to identify which constituent type it comes from.

Almost all of the quantitative information and data ((including number of calls on our hotline, number of likes on Facebook, average donations, etc) we collect is fed onto a dashboard we have created to help us track, interpret and analyse how we are doing on key indicators . An expert board of advisors (OVD-Info staff working on various things) has been set up to lead on the analysis and interpretation of this data, to then make changes. The qualitative data is analysed separately and followed up accordingly.


Feedback-related challenge 

During the course of our project, we have faced several issues. The first one is involving the whole team in the accountability processes. We have implemented some mechanisms – and it was made by the project team. However, we believe that this is what should be included into the mindset of the team. And we were not able to promote it to the team. The second issue related to closing the feedback loop, when it comes to quantitative feedback. Based on the analysis we do, we can implement many minor changes, which makes a user experience of our primary constituents better. But it is that small, that we have some doubts whether we want to communicate it back – since the number of such messages would be very high and may decrease loyalty of our PC’s to us. Also, some feedback we collect is quite sensitive and private and not everything can be transparent for publicity – from privacy point of view, as well as security.

About Resilient Roots 

The Resilient Roots initiative tests whether organisations who are more accountable and responsive to their primary constituents are more resilient against external threats. We are working with 14 CSOs – among which is OVD-Info – across a range of locations and issues to support them design and rollout year-long accountability projects. The initiative is coordinated by Civicus. Technical support is provided by Keystone Accountability and Accountable Now along with our regional partner for Latin America, Instituto de Comunicación y Desarrollo (ICD).

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Sopact is a software company, based out of the San Francisco Bay area, on a mission to make Impact measurement and management simple. Our aim is to bring cutting edge technology to the social sector that is going to help organizations measure impact easily and to help organizations apply changes in the intervention methodologies to improve the impact they have on their stakeholders.

Since Sopact is deeply involved in analyzing stakeholder data to measure impact, qualitative and quantitative data plays a vital role in the process. We at Sopact are striving hard to improve the quality of data that we get from our stakeholders and this starts with asking the right questions and through the right medium. Through asking the right questions, we intend to give organizations the right feedback so that they can have the opportunity to improve their intervention methodologies to have an even better impact on people and the planet.

Discussion Questions:


1. There are many ways to survey people. What is the best way to reach people to get an honest response about their social sector experience (door-to-door survey, emails, mobile data collection, etc)?

2. Asking something like “would you recommend this organization to a friend?” might not tell us rich enough data about a customer’s experience and how it changed their life. What questions would get stakeholders to open up and truly reveal the impact that an organization has had on their life?

3. We want to build an open platform with resources for better Impact measurement and management practices. How can we standardize our client experience survey so that it works across multiple social sector contexts and we do not have to reinvent the wheel each time we assess a new organization?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Integrity Icon, Accountability Lab’s flagship program, has become a global movement- on the ground, online and through the media- to celebrate and encourage honest government officials. We want to move away from “naming and shaming” corrupt leaders and towards “naming and faming” those bureaucrats that are working with integrity. Integrity Icon is a global campaign that was carried out in seven countries in 2018 with millions of viewers and hundreds of thousands of voters. Read more in the Economist here.

The goals of Integrity Icon are threefold: first to create role-models and celebrate honest public officials; second, to inspire young people by indicating that government is a career path in which one can work with integrity and honesty; and third, to connect and support the winners to help build coalitions to push for further reform and value-based decision-making over time.

The Integrity Icon process is evolving but essentially involves 4 steps over the course of a year:

1. Nominations and Selections– citizens can nominate online or through SMS/Whatsapp. We also have networks of volunteers that collect hard-copy nominations in hard-to-reach places. Esteemed panels of judges help us select the top five Icons each year.
2. Filming and Outreach– the five finalists are filmed- doing their jobs, talking about why it is important to have integrity and interacting with others who can vouch for their great work. These episodes are shown on national TV and social media and adapted for radio.
3. Voting and Ceremony– citizens are made aware that they can vote for their Integrity Icons through social media, e-mail and phone. After a public voting period of two weeks, the Integrity Icons are crowned in public ceremonies including VIPs and the media.
4. Coalition-building and Support– we work with the Icon community through summits, training programs, fellowships, events and retreats to begin to push for norm-changes within institutions, agencies, civil service training programs and schools/colleges.

Having run the campaign successfully in Nepal, Pakistan, Liberia, Nigeria, Mali, South Africa and in Sri Lanka (through a partnership), Accountability Lab launched Integrity Icon for the first time in Mexico last month.

LabStorm Questions: 

1. We’ve learned that each context requires different low and high tech tools to activate participation. In the US, what creative ways can we use to encourage community members to join the conversation on what integrity in the civil service should look like? How do we inspire them to participate in the campaign?
2. We never run this project without building civil society partnerships. What partnerships should we build in the US to promote and strengthen the program here? What are the levers for buy-in?
3. Ancillary programs provide ongoing support to Icons, other civil servants and youth. What ancillary programs would work in the US context?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Most social development organizations believe it is important for people to have a meaningful voice in the programs that affect them. But how many really listen effectively? And how many respond to what people say? Feedback Labs has been working on the feedback quiz – a 10 minute online survey that will tell you your strong and weak points on your feedback loop and how you stack up against peers. With more benchmarking data and more tools to support feedback practice, version 2.0 is better than ever with better charts and visualizations, better advice, and a more accurate overall score. But to truly make the most of the quiz we need your help. Join us for a LabStorm tomorrow to explore how we can take the Feedback Quiz to scale.

1. Discussion Questions:
   What can we do to attract quiz takers? How could you envision utilizing the quiz in your work?
   What is the value (if any) to multiple people at the same organization taking the quiz? If valuable, how many people at the same organization should we aim for?
   What else can we do to help quiz takers take the next steps in their feedback journey after taking the quiz?
   (Bonus): What comes next? What should FBL develop to complement/build on the quiz?

Today we incorporate feedback into our Ethical Compliance program and verify the dissemination of compliance policies and best practices from the business leader to the workers through our Compliance Assessment and a Worker Well-being Survey. The compliance model is a training-first program unlike traditional auditing programs and is dependent on human capacity.

One of our strategic priorities is to expand supply chain visibility and accountability and improve individual worker well-being and agency. We have to figure out how to scale our work within an informal and dispersed workforce while ensuring feedback loops with all stakeholders (including business leaders and individual workers) remain intact. We have a few ideas for where we could go with it and we’re looking at the FBL community to help us narrow the approach.

Discussion Questions:

1. We may not always visit the same homes to conduct our Worker Well-being survey although the workers will be employed by the same central business. What threat—if any—does this have on the reliability of our feedback data?
2. How do we stay connected with local resources and community structures (tribal leaders, community organizing bodies, municipal governments) in the long-term if we don’t frequently visit the same communities over and over again?
3. What do we gain/lose by incorporating technology (like push messaging) to scale the reach of our Worker Well-being survey? What are cautions to consider?
4. Creating a universal tool for surveying worker well-being across a variety of countries with different regulatory frameworks, cultures, etc. is challenging. How tailored can we/should we afford to make it in order to still scale our efforts? What considerations should we keep in mind?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Kuja Kuja is a start – up of the American Refugee Committee that began with a simple observation: at some point in time, humanitarian organizations like ours had stopped thinking of refugees as their primary customers. We had deprioritized the voices of the people that we are here to serve – and that wasn’t good enough. Kuja Kuja, ARC’s response to this issue, is a real-time feedback system that collects, analyzes, and supports clients to take action on real-time customer feedback, helping organizations to design and deliver better services.

With Kuja Kuja, our goal is to create agency amongst customers around the world and to shift people from passive receivers of services to active, discerning, and demanding consumers of them. We do this in two ways: Firstly, we create granular, objective, real time data sets describing customer satisfaction with the services being offered to them, helping to align the decision-making apparatus of humanitarian actors around the voice of their customer. Secondly, recognizing that real time data requires radically reduced response times and new ways of working, we support those actors and the communities in which they operate to access, interpret, and take optimal action on that data.

Discussion Questions:

1. At Kuja Kuja we focus on analogies to make our approach easier for the humanitarian community to understand. For example, we say that Kuja Kuja is like a FitBit for the Humanitarian Sector, shifting organizations from yearly check-ins on the health of their operations to having a daily pulse of it. What other analogies might we use to effectively communicate our work?
2. In the private sector, businesses start to fail if customers don’t like their products, and the long-term success of companies often rests on their ability to provide superior customer experiences. However, in the humanitarian space, customer experience of a product or service is rarely considered, despite the protracted nature of many humanitarian crises. How can we ensure that customer experience, the demand from people for dignified services, becomes the relevant standard for judging the efficacy of humanitarian organizations?
3. Imagine that you are a decision maker in a humanitarian organization, a CEO, a Country Director, a coordinator for Health service delivery, a grant writer, whatever. If you could draw a dashboard of the information that you need on a daily basis to do your job better, what information would be on that dashboard and how would that information be presented. Can you draw some?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Open Contracting Partnership is excited to share the results of its third round of measuring our community’s size, reach, and strength with Marc of Keystone. Building on our Labstorm from last year, we’ll explain how we took action based on last year’s results, review this year’s results and what we plan to do about them, and share what we’ve learned over the last three years of taking standardized measurements. We’ll also share how what we learned over these three years informed our new set of indicators, which we will begin tracking under our new 5 year strategy. We’ll welcome all critical feedback about our new targets and measurement plans.
Discussion Questions:

1. What are the pros cons of social media vs direct communications like emails as measurements of network connections?
2. How could we better understand and measure the quality of connections? What would you need here to get a similar methodology of tracking standard indicators of movement growth and engagement quality adopted in your org?
3. How do you separate “tracking trends” form “setting performance targets” based on measurement?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Where We Live NYC is the City of New York’s community-driven process to develop the next chapter of fair housing policy that confronts segregation, fights discrimination, and builds more just and inclusive neighborhoods. The process includes extensive engagement with residents, community leaders, and government partners – including 60+ focus group style “Community Conversations” led by community-based partners in 10 different languages, and a Fair Housing Stakeholder Group that includes 150+ advocates, service providers, researchers, and community leaders who have been engaged throughout the process. Join us in a LabStorm where we share our engagement approach to date and work through upcoming challenges.
Discussion Questions:

1. How can we best position Where We Live NYC as a national leader on fair housing issues and influence other practitioners?
2. How can we design a Fair Housing Together Summit that achieves our goals of connecting, educating, fostering dialogue, and closing the feedback loop?
3. How can we continue building momentum, accountability, and collaboration during the implementation phase of this effort?

What was the impact of the LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Earlier this month, Accountability Lab and Feedback Labs teamed up to present at the World Bank Data Day – a gathering of World Bank teams working on key data issues from open government data to climate data to human capital and more. As external experts invited to look at ongoing work (i.e. what’s working, what’s not, and what’s coming for country counterparts and partners in developing contexts), we declared “Feedback is the most valuable piece of data you will ever get.”

Throughout the course of the day, we collected data on the attendee’s use of data, and use of constituent feedback. Our conversations highlighted consistent pushback on perceptual feedback as important data. We believe that for feedback to become a movement, it is essential that “data” includes feedback because 1) it may be able to predict outcomes, 2) in some cases, it’s been shown to improve outcomes drastically, and 3) it can also catalyze essential collective action.

Join us at tomorrow’s LabStorm to discuss, “Do we have evidence that feedback may predict outcomes? Is it enough? If not, should we prioritize generating it and how? And, how can the feedback community affect the institutionalization of constituent feedback on a much larger scale?”

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Poverty Stoplight, created by Fundación Paraguaya, seeks to activate the potential of individuals and families to eliminate multidimensional poverty through a self-evaluation tool. The Stoplight is used to support poor families in assessing their poverty levels and identifying and implementing practical solutions for addressing their challenges. Poverty Stoplight has ultimately improved the lives of thousands of families through a process that enables poor families to be the protagonists of their life-changing story.

The Poverty Stoplight is a social innovation tool that includes a metric and a methodology. Program staff work directly with families in poor communities to evaluate poverty levels across a variety of dimensions and indicators. Each indicator is presented in three different scenarios categorized as red for extreme poverty, yellow for poverty and green for non-poverty. Each family selects the scenario most relatable to them for each indicator. Then, the methodology generates poverty elimination life maps that go beyond traditional aid, seeking to bring about changes generated by the families themselves.

Our goal is for every family in the world to assess their multidimensional poverty level. Our main challenge is making Poverty Stoplight the reference of choice for participatory poverty analysis and tailored-made family driven action. We seek to activate millions of families to measure their own multidimensional poverty, and enable them to take actions to overcome it.
Discussion Questions:

1. How can we promote a system change and global scale from a small, unknown country? (Is it even possible?)
2. Currently, the families we work with are stakeholders of our paying customer. This model provides steady, but linear, growth. How can the Poverty Stoplight disintermediate and reach families all over the world directly?
3. We are currently active in more than 20 countries, one of them being the U.S. at a moderate scale. How can we access the US market at a larger scale?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

ideas42 is a nonprofit organization that creates social impact through the application of insights from behavioral science to public policy challenges around the world. Our work spans a variety of fields, such as education, consumer finance, health, criminal justice, and others. Our projects feature the rigorous application of qualitative and quantitative research methods to diagnose the nature of behavioral impediments to beneficiaries’ actions and decisions, followed by the design and testing of new program delivery methods to “nudge” beneficiaries towards realizing better outcomes for themselves.

We are currently working on improving government responsiveness to citizen-submitted requests and feedback through civic monitoring platforms through applied behavioral science. Civic monitoring platforms allow citizens to submit requests to government officials. Despite their enormous potential, there is mixed evidence on whether they actually improve service provision or governance outcomes. Much attention has been devoted to user engagement as a driver of responsiveness, but attempts to increase engagement have not led to sustained improvements in responsiveness.

If user engagement cannot explain non-response, neither can a lack of resources, policy alignment, or political will. In fact, complaint platforms tend to be well-funded and installed in high-capacity government offices where there is an existing incentive for officials to deliver on their promises. So, why does responsiveness remain a challenge in many cases around the world? Behavioral science may offer a compelling opportunity to improve government responsiveness by improving officials’ performance and service provision through inexpensive interventions that work within existing systems.
Discussion Questions:

1. Considering the four features of responsiveness–time, accuracy, equity, and satisfaction–should some features be prioritized over others? Will some of these be harder to measure?
2. Considering the 7 steps taken to resolve requests, should we prioritize our focus on any steps over others? Should we focus on the same steps across cities, or on the steps that are causing the biggest issues for each particular city we partner with?
3. In what ways does politics bias responsiveness, including how requests are received, tracked, prioritized and resolved? What sort of political incentives exist for those at the bureaucratic level to resolve complaints overall (or some more than others)?

What was the impact of the LabStorm? Read the recap here.

RNW Media is a Netherlands-based NGO, funded by the Dutch government and selected foundations, that gives young people a voice in repressive societies across the Middle East as well as North and Sub-Saharan Africa. We work with local partners to create and nurture large online communities of youth to allow them to take part in robust, safe, and respectful discourse. In doing so, we support freedom of expression, social inclusion, and civic participation. But we aspire to something even larger: citizen feedback at scale. That is, we want to close the loop between the young people we reach, and what they have to say about their lives and societies, and the decision-makers and opinion leaders (including government officials and civic leaders) who need to hear and act on their views. Our efforts are gaining traction. But, with greater democracy, equity, and justice as our goals, we want to bring our model to scale. We believe the field of constituent feedback offers critical insights to inform our work.

Discussion Questions:

1. We believe our experience in soliciting citizen feedback is analogous to constituent feedback. Do you agree (differences/similarities)? If so, how do we apply the core principles and best practices of constituent feedback to our work?
2. How do we ensure integrity – that the feedback is representative or contextualized with transparency; that it helps and does not harm the population we’re representing; and that we are accountable to our audiences so they continue to share their views?
3. How can we measure success of our citizen feedback efforts – ultimately, it’s through improved laws, regulations, government practices, but what are the interim indicators? And how do we best manage and account for limitations for channeling citizen feedback in repressive societies?

What was the impact of the LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Linking Data and Decisions: How Can We Use Data to Influence Government Behavior?   

Development Gateway (DG) delivers digital solutions for international development, creating tools to make development data easier to gather, access, use and understand. DG works across sectors to create tools that help institutions collect and analyze information; strengthen institutional capability to use data; and explore what incentives, structures, and processes are needed to enable evidence-based decisions. By focusing on a decision-centered approach to the use of data, DG helps to build institutions that are accountable, better able to listen and respond to the needs of their constituents, and are efficient in targeting and delivering services that improve lives.

In this LabStorm, DG will explore how to integrate development data into Haiti’s budget preparation process, further institutionalizing the use of data as a critical part of planning for the country’s development. DG built a custom Aid Management Platform for Haiti shortly after the 2009 Earthquake to help support the government’s goals of tracking and managing foreign aid flows. Current activities focus on deepening investments made in the Aid Management Platform, with a focus on encouraging the use of the Platform’s data across sector ministries and among the donor community, as well as linking the Platform to other existing government systems.

Discussion Questions:

• How can we encourage the use of development aid data in the planning and budgetary preparation of Haiti’s government agencies? How can we make data usable/useful for government audiences?
• How can we navigate the political (and technical) challenges of linking different data systems? How do we get different system “owners” to see system linkage as beneficial?
• How can we use data to strengthen collaboration in the donor community and reduce the burden on government agencies?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Fishing for Solutions: Can Feedback and Social Media Create Scalable Sustainability in Fisheries?  

Environmental Defense Fund, a leading international nonprofit organization, creates transformational solutions to the most serious environmental problems. EDF links science, economics, law, and innovative private-sector partnerships. By focusing on strong science, uncommon partnerships and market-based approaches, EDF tackles urgent threats with practical solutions.

In this LabStorm, EDF will explore how to quickly build a critical mass of people who want to see and create sustained change to fisheries world wide, and magnify their impact. EDF Oceans works to create sustainable fisheries that provide more food, more prosperity and greater environmental wellbeing for people, their communities and the planet. We work to end overfishing by deploying science-based catch limits, economic incentives and technological innovations to return our oceans to abundance and ensure that people and nature prosper together. By working in 12 key countries, which together make up 61 percent of the global catch, we see a future where we can bend the arc of progress toward sustainable fisheries that deliver fish for life.

Discussion Questions:

• How can we learn to deploy social media and other mobile platforms/tools to accelerate the adoption of sustainability in fisheries?
• How can we better understand the core kernels of fishery management knowledge that could empower a fisher to take action on their own behalf while also helping the long-term health and sustainability of their fishery? How can we learn to communicate the knowledge in a more accessible way that can overcome language and/or formal education barriers?
• How can we disseminate that knowledge to the growing numbers of people we hope to attract? How can we support our early adopters to be change agents for sustainability in fisheries?

• How can we use data to strengthen collaboration in the donor community and reduce the burden on government agencies?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Description:
Impact Experience – building bridges between funders and marginalized communities 

Impact Experience builds lasting relationships between investors, philanthropists, innovators, entrepreneurs and community leaders — linking vision with action and directing investment to solve society’s greatest challenges. By invitation, they go into some of the most disadvantaged communities to facilitate convenings designed to generate trust, enhance strategy and accelerate transformation. Their goal is that together we can ensure every community has the access, relationships, and resources they need to reach their full potential and contribute to a more inclusive, sustainable, and prosperous world. They have a particular focus on implicit bias and increasing proximity to provide more context in the process of engaging in marginalized communities.

We are currently trying to work out how to maintain the depth of engagement in the communities that we are working in as well as scaling to engage in an increasing number of communities. We are considering different models such as a train the trainer structure and ambassadors to be able to engage an increasing number of people and communities in our work. We are interested in exploring what has worked and not worked with similar initiatives.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Description:
Supporting funders to strengthen the impact of data for transparency and accountability

Transparency and Accountability Initiative (TAI) is a donor collaborative that supports members to work together to improve their grantmaking practices and boost collective impact around four focus areas: Data Use for Accountability, Strengthening Civic Space, Taxation and Tax Governance, Learning for Improved Grantmaking.

Global funders invest significant resources in data for transparency and accountability (broadly, “governance data”), but what has been the overall impact, and how can we do better? As part of TAI’s focus on promoting data use, we are helping donor members identify key barriers to data use and impact, and improve the targeting and effectiveness of governance data funding. This year, we reviewed lessons learned on the outcomes of governance data funding to date, and developed basic guidance for funders and grantees to consider when designing governance data programs.

We are seeking insight on how to put this guidance into action and ensure relevance and uptake among funders and grantees.

Discussion Questions:

1. Are these questions useful/relevant for your organization/work and are there tweaks you would recommend? How might accountability actors take these considerations on board?
2. What might be effective strategies or approaches to influence funders, particularly to promote engagement with data users and building feedback loops into governance data activities?
3. How can we encourage funders and grantees to measure progress on data use and make the impact of data investments more apparent, perhaps drawing from good practices from feedback initiatives?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

How Can Data Build Trust Between Communities and Government?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Do(Zorro)ing Open Contracting Right- Citizen Monitoring in Ukraine

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Long Distance Relationships: How Can We Use Feedback to Build Effective Remote Working Cultures

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Breaking Through the Illusion of Transparency: Homelessness Services

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Inclusivity & Feedback: How can we practice inclusive feedback without experiencing analysis paralysis?

What will it take to build 4,000 homes on a rock?

Identifying a “threshold” for prioritizing feedback, tracking feedback, and designing tools

Tools to Open Up: A Compendium of Donor & CSO Strategies to Combat Shrinking Civic Space

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Online feedback to support learning and change in healthcare

Engaging Survivors in Strategies to Prevent and Disrupt Human Trafficking

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Filling the Democratic Void and Enabling Mass Participation

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Stories and Philanthropy: Using first-person audio accounts to improve feedback

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Developing (good) indicators for advocacy organizations from social network analysis

Scaling Up: So you have a proof of concept – now what?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

“What Went Wrong? Citizen Journalism on Foreign Aid” – Building a feedback loop between journalists and aid recipients

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Delivery Labs, Ethiopia

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

DocSCALE platform: a new digital survey approach that uses peer-ratings to surface the wisdom of the crowd.

The Independent Television Service (ITVS) is the largest funder, presenter, and community engagement driver for documentary films made by diverse makers for public television. As leaders in this space, they are always looking for ways to get feedback and build community among documentarians and audience members alike.

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Opeartionalizing a Feedback-based Business Model

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Open Schools Kenya

Needs Index

In the Loop: Building a candid feedback cycle between grantees and funders

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Know your clients!

Using GIS and Social Autopsy to Drive Local Innovations to Improve Maternal and Newborn Health in Rural Ghana

Can a “Yelp” for Homelessness Unlock Transparency?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Making it easy to measure impact

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

How do we best listen to refugees?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Ambient Feedback

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

User-centered Philanthropy

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

The feedback chain is only as strong as the weakest link

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Unlocking the Insights in Personal Stories

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Can feedback collection improve education intervention?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Feedback Signal in Least Developed Countries

Constituent-driven Program Funding

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Provide a Framework to Elicit Meaningful Feedback

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Measuring the Impact of Advocacy

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Ask the Right Questions, Reach the Right People

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DeCODE

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Managing Constituent Data

Crowdsourcing Nonprofit Evaluations

Building the Accountability Frame of the Future

Decolonized Design, Part 2

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Results Data Initiative

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Uncovering a Code for Decolonized Design

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

Can website data help measure our impact?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.

How can email metadata tell you who to stop emailing?

What was the impact of this LabStorm? Read the recap here.