What a 2011 guide for grantmakers says about helping networks grow: know them, knit them, organize them, and judge them by network standards.
Networks & Impact
Plain-language guides to working in networks for social change: how funders support them, how nonprofits use them, open data in development, and collaboration tools.
Many of the problems people try to fix are too big for any one organization: clean water, school quality, disaster response, climate. Working on them usually means working with others, and over the past two decades the internet has made that easier and cheaper. This section collects short, sourced guides to how groups do it.
Every guide is written fresh for this site and points to the public reports, articles and records it draws on. Where a figure appears, the source is named, along with the date it was published.
The guides
How Funders Can Build Network Capacity What a 2011 guide for grantmakers says about helping networks grow: mapping them first, paying for shared spaces and a person to connect people, and judging networks by network standards.
Networked Nonprofits: Working Through Connections How nonprofits reach further by equipping supporters and partners to act, with the KaBOOM! case study and five benefits described in a 2010 Stanford Social Innovation Review article.
Open Data and Crowdsourcing in International Development The World Bank’s 2010 open data launch, a 2009 data BarCamp on aid transparency, and the Ushahidi map used after the Haiti earthquake.
Collaboration Tools for Social Change From the first wiki in 1995 to shared spaces built by foundations, and a short list of questions for choosing a tool.
The Working Wikily Report A page about the 2009 Monitor Institute report that gave “working wikily” its name, with a copy you can read.
Who this is for
- Program officers and funders who want to support connections between grantees, not only individual projects.
- Nonprofit staff and volunteers deciding which online tools are worth the time.
- Founders, solo workers and small teams who want to organize people around a shared goal.
- Anyone who has been asked to “build a network” and wants a plain description of what that involves.
How to use it
Start with the guide closest to your situation, then follow its sources. The reports named in the guides are written by the people who ran the projects, and they go into far more detail than a short summary can. If you spot an error or a link that no longer works, write to the editor at the address on the Contact page.
A note on dates
Most of the material cited here is from 2008 to 2012, when many of these ideas were new. Tools and websites have changed since then. Treat the examples as case studies of how people approached the problem, and check current details before acting on them.
How nonprofits use networks and online tools to reach further than their own staff can, with the KaBOOM! case study and five benefits from a 2010 SSIR article.
The World Bank's 2010 open data launch, a 2009 development data BarCamp, and the Ushahidi map used after the Haiti earthquake: what each shows about sharing data.
From the first wiki in 1995 to shared online spaces built by foundations: how groups working on social problems have used collaboration tools, and how to pick one.
A page about Working Wikily 2.0, the 2009 Monitor Institute report on networks and social change: who wrote it, what it covers, its licence, and where to read it.