Collaboration Fund Closed
The Collaboration Fund supports organizations within and outside Feedback Labs to experiment with and build innovative tools and approaches to closing the feedback loop. Two key requirements to receiving support from the Collaboration Fund is a commitment to partnering with at least one other organization in developing and implementing a project, as well as structured sharing of learnings with the wider Feedback Labs community. You can read more about past winners below.
FEEDBACK IN HUMANITARIAN AID:
POST-EARTHQUAKE NEPAL
Organizations: Integrity Action, Ground Truth Solutions (Keystone Accountability), Youth Initiatives, Local Interventions Group, and Accountability Lab
On April 25, 2015 a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal, killing over 8,000 people. In its aftermath, millions of dollars in relief funding poured into the country. While this funding has been critically needed, research shows that communities feel there is widespread unmet need and inequality in the distribution of aid.
Surveys were conducted to get citizen feedback but sadly, the response to this feedback has been limited. How do we close the loop to this feedback?
Feedback Labs is funding a consortium of organizations to find out how to close the loop. Together, a team led by Integrity Action and Ground Truth will mobilize Nepali citizens to work closely with aid providers, using the documented citizen feedback to improve aid and its equitable distribution.
Specifically, Youth Initiatives, a local Nepal-based NGO, will help mobilize youth volunteers in five of the worst earthquake affected areas. They will use Integrity Action's Community Integrity Building approach to better connect citizens to humanitarian aid leaders. It will train local communities to be monitors and use open two-way communication with leaders. Together, they will eventually create action plans and resolve identified problems.
To track success, Fix-Rates (the rate at which problems are resolved) and results will be published online showing real-time progress. There will also be surveys conducted later by Local Interventions Group and Accountability Lab to understand changes in citizen's perception about aid distribution.
Read what they learned through engaging feedback:
Using citizen feedback to improve services for earthquake victims in Nepal
Improving relief distribution in post-earthquake Nepal through citizen engagement
CAN BIG INTERNATIONAL CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS LEARN TO USE PEOPLE-LED FEEDBACK?
Organizations: INGO Accountability Charter (hosted at International Civil Society Centre) and Keystone Accountability
The digital age – allowing for ubiquitous connectivity – has placed people engagement and co-creation center-stage. As a consequence, organisations are increasingly shifting from a purely staff-led to a supporter-led model.
What exactly does this paradigm shift look like within the operational models of big international civil society organizations (ICSOs)? How are ICSOs engaging people, collecting feedback, and using feedback?
Feedback Labs is funding the INGO Charter and Keystone Accountability to help ICSOs pilot new models for citizen engagement and feedback. Specifically, they believe that ICSOs can learn a lot from newly established digital campaigns organisations like 350.org, 38 Degrees, Purpose and others. The INGO Charter will facilitate learning between ICSOs and these digital campaigns.
Throughout the process Keystone Accountability will provide guidance on how to close feedback loop systems so that organizations don't just stop with the collection of feedback. Keystone will be consulted at every step of developing principles, models, approaches and tools to increase the connectivity and co-creation of ICSOs with their stakeholders.
The INGO Accountability Charter is an initiative of international civil society organisations (CSOs) – such as Amnesty International, BRAC, Care, Greenpeace, Oxfam, Plan International, World Vision and Transparency International – to demonstrate their commitment to transparency, accountability and effectiveness. The Charter provides a global, cross-sectoral and comprehensive accountability framework for CSOs against which its current 24 Member organisations report in a rigorous annual process. This triggers organisational developments, which have significantly improved the accountability of CSOs to its various stakeholders.
Citizen Engagement: what can we learn from the digital campaigns organisations
Creating change with, not for, people
FEEDBACK IN AGRICULTURAL INCLUSIVE VALUE CHAINS
Organizations: Catholic Relief Services in Haiti, CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Root Capital Catholic Relief Services, along other partners involved in the cocoa sector in Haiti, is carrying out a project to help small farmers in Haiti gain access to the global market. This project aims to revitalize the cocoa sector by supporting 4,000 small producers and cooperatives in rural and mountainous Grand'Anse region of Haiti with new techniques and new skills in market and marketing to maximize the benefits of this value chain.
In 2011, CRS in Haiti set up an accountability mechanism intended to collect information requests, feedback and complaints that arise from the communities that CRS aims to support. Committed to using community feedback to improve operations and programs, CRS noticed a drop in the use of available feedback channels: face-to-face conversations and a dedicated phone line.
Feedback Labs is funding CRS Haiti to improve the quality of its feedback loops with local communities This process includes testing new methods for tracking, analysis, presentation and reporting of feedback in order to increase its use in programming decisions.
The experiment, conducted in the cocoa project in Grand'Anse, will inform CRS feedback practices across the country. With improved documentation and reporting, CRS will enhance communication with communities about resulting actions and more effectively close the loop.
Presenting Feedback Data to Decision-Makers: Does Form Influence Action?