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Measuring the unmeasurable:  A tool to assess the progress of social movements Chris Allan, Naomi Foxwood, David Gordon February 22, 2022 The suffragette movement.  The anti-apartheid movement. Indian independence. The U.S. civil rights movement.  Powerful social movements have changed the arc of human history, seeking justice and achieving social change. But social movements are messy… Continue reading Measuring the unmeasurable

Social movements have few resources, and nearly no cash, yet many thrive and often succeed in achieving their goals. How do they mobilize resources to achieve their objectives? What sort of strategies do they use to generate material resources needed in their campaigns? Scott DuPree and I talked to three social movements in Northwest Mexico… Continue reading Movement Magic? How Movements Mobilize Material Resources

There are two great things about the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics that went to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer. The first is the focus on poverty, which for some reason is rare for the Prize. The second is that one of the winners is a woman – Esther Duflo – which is… Continue reading Nobel Prize, Randomized Controlled Trials, and Poverty

Stanford Social Innovation Review has just published our blog, Crackdown on Environmental Action: How Funders Can Respond. In the face of increasing restrictions from legal barriers to murder, environmental and conservation funders are finding new ways to support civil society organizations. The blog draws on our recent briefing on the issue for environmental funders, Closing… Continue reading Our new publication in the Stanford Social Innovation Review Crackdown on Environmentalists

The lines between “donors” and “grantees” in the NGO world have become blurred in recent years. Partnership often involves money, and money always affects relationships. For most international networks, Southern partners are limited in capacity by the lack of access to funding that Northern partners have. Many networks try to balance this asymmetry by channeling… Continue reading Partnership and Grantmaking

I remember a remarkable conversation I had many years ago when I had my first job in Africa. I was working with African farmers, and casual conversation turned to life in America. “Monsieur Chris,” one farmer asked me, “there are no poor people in America, are there?” I assured him that yes, even in America… Continue reading Pull Up your Socks vs. It’s the System

It’s no secret it’s getting harder and harder for civil society organizations around the world to function, and for funders to support them. Dozens of countries are increasing restrictions on what civil society organizations can do, and from where they can get money. Funders and NGOs are pushing back, usually through public policy advocacy. But… Continue reading Resilient funders

We’ve all been there – a discussion about gender issues in international development deteriorates in a defensive exchange, and people finally give up, convinced that the other is too narrow minded to work with. So one of the most important factors in what makes some people more sensitive to shocks and stresses than others gets… Continue reading Resilience and the shape of your body

As funders we often talk about supporting movements – the environmental movement, women’s movement, etc. Yet how do we do that? What does it mean to support a movement with grants? We can learn from movements that have been successful in the past. The civil rights movement in the United States is a classic example.… Continue reading Supporting Social Movements With Grantmaking

When I first started hearing folks talking about complexity and social change 10-15 years ago, I figured that was fine for the ecologists and physicists, but not much use to me. Yet the more I heard, the more the ideas started making intuitive sense to me. When you’re working for social change, you’re mucking with… Continue reading Tools for taking social complexity seriously