Making sense of a strategy that never was: Lessons from an OSF program

The Economic Justice Program (EJP) of the Open Society Foundations ran from 2018 until the end of December 2021. During this time EJP developed the Foundations' first-ever strategy dedicated to fighting economic injustice and advanced approaches to good grantmaking for social change. Due to organizational changes, the strategy was never implemented as designed. But it was successful by many other measures; in the words of one staff member: "Despite numerous moments when many of us (definitely me) wondered if it might not actually be possible, we truly became a team, with a strategy and a culture we all believed in."  This brief summarizes the lessons learnt along the way, offering both insights from experience and practical tools for strategy design. Our aim in sharing these lessons is to equip funders and civil society organizations to embrace complexity and to inspire deeper engagement with culture, communications, and other key elements that are critical to bringing any strategy to lif

Feminist approach to open government : investing in gender equality to drive sustainable development

The Feminist Open Government Initiative (FOGO) oversaw 5 research projects covering 11 open government partnership (OGP) governments, reviewed multiple OGP action plans, forged new partnerships with key groups like Women Deliver and UNDP, launched a new campaign through Break the Roles, and grew a coalition of more than 20 governments and partners committed to driving this work forward. The report provides details of projects, research, accomplishments, outputs, links to project research and publications, as well as recommendations. FOGO works to broaden the base of open government support by investing in research from partners in the global south, alongside coalition-building efforts to rally reform

Social Accountability Reporting for Research (SAR4Research): checklist to strengthen reporting on studies on social accountability in the literature

Abstract Background An increasing number of evaluations of social accountability (SA) interventions have been published in the past decade, however, reporting gaps make it difficult to summarize findings. We developed the Social Accountability Reporting for Research (SAR4Research) checklist to support researchers to improve the documentation of SA processes, context, study designs, and outcomes in the peer reviewed literature and to enhance application of findings. Methods We used a multi-step process, starting with an umbrella review of reviews on SA to identify reporting gaps. Next, we reviewed existing guidelines for reporting on behavioral interventions to determine whether one could be used in its current or adapted form. We received feedback from practitioners and researchers and tested the checklist through three worked examples using outcome papers from three SA projects. Results Our umbrella review of SA studies identified reporting gaps in all areas, including gaps in reporting on the context, intervention components, and study methods. Because no existing guidelines called for details on context and the complex processes in SA interventions, we used CONSORT-SPI as the basis for the SAR4Research checklist, and adapted it using other existing checklists to fill gaps. Feedback from practitioners, researchers and the worked examples suggested the need to eliminate redundancies, add explanations for items, and clarify reporting for quantitative and qualitative study components. Conclusions Results of SA evaluations in the peer-reviewed literature will be more useful, facilitating learning and application of findings, when study designs, interventions and their context are described fully in one or a set of papers. This checklist will help authors report better in peer-reviewed journal articles. With sufficient information, readers will better understand whether the results can inform accountability strategies in their own contexts. As a field, we will be better able to identify emerging findings and gaps in our understanding of SA