Harnessing Collaborative Technologies: Helping Funders Work Together Better

This report was produced through a joint research project of the Monitor Institute and the Foundation Center. The research included an extensive literature review on collaboration in philanthropy, detailed analysis of trends from a recent Foundation Center survey of the largest U.S. foundations, interviews with 37 leading philanthropy professionals and technology experts, and a review of over 170 online tools.The report is a story about how new tools are changing the way funders collaborate. It includes three primary sections: an introduction to emerging technologies and the changing context for philanthropic collaboration; an overview of collaborative needs and tools; and recommendations for improving the collaborative technology landscapeA "Key Findings" executive summary serves as a companion piece to this full report

Ufadhili Trust Peace Initiative in Nairobi and Kisumu

This paper shows how Ufadhili trust has been mobilizing comuunities to volunteer and mobilise resources for develeopment and peace through Sports, Active Non-Violence (ANV), Harnessing Locally Available Resources and Multistakeholders Approac

Investing in local people and harnessing local communities: a progress report on Victoria’s Work and Learning Centres

This report presents early findings about the impact of the Work and Learning Centres model, which aim to create learning and employment pathways for jobseekers by providing personalised support, implemented at five sites across Victoria. Overview Work and Learning Centres operated by community organisations with strong local networks aim to create learning and employment pathways for jobseekers by providing personalised support, non-vocational training, career guidance and direct links to vocational education and training and to employers. This report presents early findings about the impact of the WLC model implemented at five sites across Victoria (Carlton, Geelong, Moe, Ballarat and Shepparton). This research sought to gauge the efficacy of the model and to find what works for which clients and the elements that clients themselves identify as contributing to their outcomes

Harnessing technology: the learner and their context: choosing to use technology: how learners construct their learning lives in their own contexts: key findings from the first year of research

This report covers the findings from the first year of the learners and their context research and highlights emerging findings including; choosing to use technology and how learners construct their learning lives in their own contexts

Harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation: new opportunities for libraries in a time of change. The 2012 Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship Essay.

This essay is the winner of the 2012 Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship. The essay draws on Rose Holley's experience of managing innovative library services that engage crowds such as The Australian Newspapers Digitisation Program and Trove, and her ongoing research into library, archive and museum crowdsourcing projects. This experience and knowledge has been put into the context of Jean Arnot’s values and visions for Australian libraries. Jean Arnot, the distinguished Australian librarian, described her vision for an innovative library service over sixty years ago. Rose suggests how some of her goals are now being achieved through use of the internet and digital technologies, and how we can build on these to ensure that libraries remain valued and relevant by harnessing the cognitive surplus of the nation they serve, and by crowdsourcing

Public-Private Partnerships for Development: A Handbook for Business

CED partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on this publication, which is designed to help businesses operating in developing countries understand how to build public-private partnerships that will benefit their host country populations and the participating firms

Can Real Social Epistemic Networks Deliver the Wisdom of Crowds?

In this paper, we explain and showcase the promising methodology of testimonial network analysis and visualization for experimental epistemology, arguing that it can be used to gain insights and answer philosophical questions in social epistemology. Our use case is the epistemic community that discusses vaccine safety primarily in English on Twitter. In two studies, we show, using both statistical analysis and exploratory data visualization, that there is almost no neutral or ambivalent discussion of vaccine safety on Twitter. Roughly half the accounts engaging with this topic are pro-vaccine, while the other half are con-vaccine. We also show that these two camps rarely engage with one another, and that the con-vaccine camp has greater epistemic reach and receptivity than the pro-vaccine camp. In light of these findings, we question whether testimonial networks as they are currently constituted on popular fora such as Twitter are living up to their promise of delivering the wisdom of crowds. We conclude by pointing to directions for further research in digital social epistemology

Waqf, Values and the Ulama: Towards Harnessing Philanthropy for Community Uplift in Northern Nigeria

Employing narratives, and analysis of available literature, this exploratory study is limited in scope by the few accounts considered