The Latest

Right-Sizing Your Ask

Have you ever considered that maybe your ask is too small?

When I work with communities, the thing I hear myself saying over and over is to make sure you are always offering people ways to get involved. Often, the organizers will go through all the effort to get people out to an event, or to participate in a consultation, and then they don’t capitalize on the momentum. It could be as simple as inviting the community to stay informed with a newsletter or it could be a bigger commitment of time, money or effort.

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Securing fair employment and income: Where Living Wage and the Fight for $15 and Fairness intersect

If adequately addressed, income security through employment can produce benefits and outcomes that cascade into other areas of a person’s experience of poverty and ultimately, an escape from poverty. For example, we know that having secure employment that includes a full range of benefits and a possible career path, also known as a “Standard Employment Relationship” is a key to escaping poverty (The Precarity Penalty (May 2015). When an individual can secure sustainable employment that upholds their rights as a worker and pays a living wage, it is more likely that the individual will experience positive effects associated with economic independence such as increased opportunities for civic and community participation, stabilization of health problems, and even increased life expectancy.

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Watch Out for the Solution Bias

Solutions are exciting, especially those you are a part of creating; but even if the ideas behind them were not your own, implementing a new solution is an intellectual turn-on. Sometimes there is an ego-boost when you are part of something on the “cutting edge.”

I wonder though, if at least some of the time solution-makers are so pumped about the potential of their new journey, they overlook pitfalls, obstacles and unintended consequences. I call this, solution-bias.
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A Learner’s Journey

Bill Fulton, CEO of The Civic Canopy in Denver, Colorado recently said ‘the last day of a conference is the first day of a learner’s journey’.  These are wise words indeed.  How often do you attend a workshop or learning event, become inspired and take lots of notes and then, upon returning to your workplace, you let the noise of immediacy drown out the inspiration of learning.   

Tamarack recently co-hosted with The Civic Canopy a three-day Collective Impact workshop in Denver which engaged more than 220 learners and launched them on their learner’s journey.  I have been wondering how many of these learners have used the lessons learned.   

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The ‘Crown’ of Lobbying

People who are members of disability royalty, and that include staff, funders, policy makers as well as individuals, families, and friends, are by definition in it for the long haul. Their lobbying, petitioning and advocacy will continue for a lifetime. Chances are they will be engaged with the same people and the same departments more than once or twice. That makes it even more important to pay attention to their individual and collective reputation.

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Movement Building and Collective Impact

In an article written for Fast Company, Kaihan Krisppendorff, identifies four steps to building an effective social movement, which I have adapted below:

1. A community forms around a common goal or aspiration.
2. The community mobilizes its resources to act on the goal/aspiration.
3. The community crafts solutions and acts to deliver them.
4. The movement is accepted by (or actually replaces) the establishment or established regime of laws and policies (Source).

If you are involved in a collective impact initiative, these steps should resonate with you, in particular with the five conditions of collective impact. Krisppendorff doesn’t address shared measurement in his post about social movements, but successful movements are always about moving the needle and bringing about systems change to do so.

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