The process of improving the relevance, quality or efficiency existing model, program or strategy is a form of incremental innovation that all change-makers should be capable of integrating into their work if and when their aim is truly 'incremental' innovation. This short piece summarizes the basic ideas of 'continuous improvement'...
Social Innovators and evaluators have been using Developmental Evaluation since it was introduced in 2006 by Michael Quinn Patton. The Developmental Evaluation Companion – prepared with the support of the J.W. McConnel Family Foundation – provides a high level update on the approach based on the experiences of a score...
Evaluators are increasingly inspired by the field of design thinking and rejecting the big-design-up-front approach and employing a small-design-first, which emphasizes developing, testing and refining evaluation practices on a small scale before 'betting big' on larger designs....
There are no one-size-fits-all evaluation designs to evaluate and learn from efforts to change the systems underlying tough societal challenges: each system change effort, and evaluation, must be customized to their unique context. There are, however, universal principles to guide asssment efforts, and this short paper explores fifteen of them....
There are some good resources on evaluating social innovation experiments out there. But, very few on evaluating efforts to scale them. This resource summarizes some ideas about scaling from some of leading Canacian social innovators and offers some initial ideas on what that might mean for evaluation questions, indicaotrs and...
Almost every organization, collaboration and network has a strategy. But what kind of strategy do they have? The strategy continuum makes a distinction between three types, when they are appropriate, and the implications for evaluation....
This is one of the first systematic explorations of the different options communities have in developing shared measurements systems, a cornerstone principle and practice in Collective impact efforts to tackle complex problems....
Whether you work with policy coalitions, collective impact roundtables, social movements, or communities of practice, veteran and novice network builders alike will wonder how we ever managed without this rich resource....
Prototyping is a fast, lower cost, lower risk, learning-rich approach to surface and test promising responses to tough challenges. This resource provides a quick overview of the major types of prototypes social innovators might employ....
What are different ways that social innovators can organize their community-wide efforts to reduce poverty? This book explores the strategies, activities, results and learning of six different 'Trail Builder' cities, partners in the ground-breaking Vibrant Communities initiative (2002-2011), one of North America's first and largest collective impact efforts to reduce...