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For AC practitioners, systems mapping is essential but also difficult. To lessen obstacles, Peter Woodrow proposes a scaffolded approach. An Experiment in “Fast Forwarding” Drawing upon our near-decade work on corruption, we recently decided to try an experiment: we would present “common patterns” of corruption as tentative models to adapt and add to—rather than try to teach people to do systems mapping from scratch. In this teaching experiment, each common pattern would function as a kind...

Check out this video to see what’s inside our new resource: Practitioners' Guidance to Assessing Systems Change, developed by MEL Managers for MEL Managers. (Check out the Guidance here https://bit.ly/MSPMELClinics.) Hear from the authors about which parts they love the most and how this guide challenges MEL managers to assess systems change as an ongoing aspect of implementation, generating feedback that teams need to better understand and catalyze change, for more impact.

DT Global is proud to introduce our new Guidance Note: Practical Introduction to Adaptive Management There is a growing consensus around adaptive management as an effective (even necessary) approach when programs are tackling complex development problems. While there is no standard definition of adaptive management, there is general agreement that such programs need to routinely engage with and respond to program context; constantly test what works in that context; and adjust approaches,...

The world changes too much for anyone who is invested in social change work to imagine that this work is linear and predictable. Opportunities come and go, whether caused by a pandemic or political shifts. This much most social movement leaders and activists intuitively understand. But what can be done with this realization? How might movement groups better prepare for moments of opportunity? We want to explore how we can create the changes we want to see by responding to the changes that are outside our control.

The idea that technologies can change moral beliefs and practices is an old one. But how, exactly, does this happen? This paper builds on an emerging field of inquiry by developing a synoptic taxonomy of the mechanisms of techno-moral change. It argues that technology affects moral beliefs and practices in three main domains: decisional (how we make morally loaded decisions), relational (how we relate to others) and perceptual (how we perceive situations). It argues that across these three...

A resource designed to help organisations, teams and individuals manage innovation journeys responsibly and successfully. We have partnered with MIT D-Lab to develop a new resource to drive greater diversity and inclusion within project design and implementation. The Participation for Humanitarian Innovation (PfHI) toolkit sets out a robust approach to setting expectations for and monitoring the degree of participation within research and innovation projects for, with, and by people...

A resource designed to help organisations, teams and individuals manage innovation journeys responsibly and successfully. We have partnered with MIT D-Lab to develop a new resource to drive greater diversity and inclusion within project design and implementation. The Participation for Humanitarian Innovation (PfHI) toolkit sets out a robust approach to setting expectations for and monitoring the degree of participation within research and innovation projects for, with, and by people...

This study explored how the Outreach Philippines, Inc. (OPI) implements the participatory human development (PHD) approach using transformative communication, in a community-based organization (CBO), Lawag ti Caridad Norte Association (LCNA), in Caridad Norte, Llanera, Nueva Ecija. A phenomenological lens examined the lived experiences of six participants interviewed on December 10 and 13, 2022, and through my own reflections as a community development worker of OPI. Specifically, I analyzed...

Addressing 21st century development challenges requires investments in innovation, including the use of new approaches and technologies. Currently, many development organisations prioritise investments in isolated innovation pilots that leverage a specific approach or technology rather than pursuing a strategic approach to expand the organisation’s toolbox with innovations that have proven their comparative advantage over what is currently used. This Working Paper addresses this challenge of...

How can donors and grantees work together to create effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practices that drive field-wide transformation?

Achieving impact through research for development programmes (R4D) requires engagement with diverse stakeholders across the research, development and policy divides. Understanding how such programmes support the emergence of outcomes, therefore, requires a focus on the relational aspects of engagement and collaboration. Increasingly, evaluation of large research collaborations is employing social network analysis (SNA), making use of its relational view of causation. In this paper, we use...

Large publicly funded programmes of research continue to receive increased investment as interventions aiming to produce impact for the world’s poorest and most marginalized populations. At this intersection of research and development, research is expected to contribute to complex processes of societal change. Embracing a co-produced view of impact as emerging along uncertain causal pathways often without predefined outcomes calls for innovation in the use of complexity-aware approaches to...

The United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) aimed to address global challenges to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals through 12 interdisciplinary research hubs. This research documents key lessons learned around working with Theory of Change (ToC) to guide Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) within these complex research for development hubs. Interviews and document reviews were conducted in ten of the research...

Research for development (R4D) funding is increasingly expected to demonstrate value for money (VfM). However, the dominance of positivist approaches to evaluating VfM, such as cost-benefit analysis, do not fully account for the complexity of R4D funds and risk undermining efforts to contribute to transformational development. This paper posits an alternative approach to evaluating VfM, using the UK’s Global Challenges Research Fund and the Newton Fund as case studies. Based on a...

The complexity of issues addressed by research for development (R4D) requires collaborations between partners from a range of disciplines and cultural contexts. Power asymmetries within such partnerships may obstruct the fair distribution of resources, responsibilities and benefits across all partners. This paper presents a cross-case analysis of five R4D partnership evaluations, their methods and how they unearthed and addressed power asymmetries. It contributes to the field of R4D...

Research for development (R4D) aims to make a tangible difference to development challenges, but these effects typically take years to emerge. Evaluation (especially impact evaluation) often takes place before there is evidence of development impact. In this paper, we focus on opportunities for assessing the potential for impact at earlier stages in the research and innovation process. We argue that such a focus can help research programme managers and evaluators learn about the...

Criticism that the development sector has not delivered in terms of eliminating extreme poverty, fast-tracking growth and preventing conflict, is neither new nor surprising. In fact, it may be the one thing that scholars, donors and practitioners agree on. While many of these concerns are valid, this book makes a case that the sector is closer to unlocking the gates to more effective and efficient development outcomes than is popularly believed. Specifically, it argues that by overturning a...

Nearly all challenges in international development tend to be complex because they depend on constantly evolving human behaviour, systems, and contexts, involving multiple actors, entities, and processes. As a result, both the discovery and scaling of innovations to address challenges in development often involve changes in system behaviour or even system-level transformation. This is rarely a linear process over time and can result in unexpected outcomes. Existing evaluation techniques...

When funders aren’t accountable for impact, it ruins the party for everyone.