Designing for Social Impact
Welcome to the (slightly) late April edition of Designing for Social Impact.
April has been a super busy month here at Design for Social Impact. We’ve been working on various social impacts, mainly with a research focus.
It has got me thinking about how we approach research in the social impact sector. In the non-profit and academic sectors, we often hear about the importance of collecting data, analysing trends, and making conclusions.
Multi-million £$ proposals and multi-year projects are built based on numbers, data and evidence that we collect, analyse and dream up social impact responses. We don’t often call it research, but that’s what we are doing.
However, amidst this focus on numbers and statistics, we often overlook an essential aspect of research: its potential to challenge and dismantle oppressive systems.
- What if evidence-based program design could be more than just numbers and statistics?
- What if community members and wider stakeholders beyond my organisation were centred when designing and evaluating evidence-based programs?
- How can their input and expertise inform program design decisions, ensuring interventions are culturally relevant, responsive to community needs, and respectful of local context?
Most of us got into the social impact field because we are committed to addressing systemic injustices and promoting social change. But our tools and ways of working often fall short of this. Pre-determined log frames, generic “ needs assessments,” and monitoring and evaluation toolkits written by people not directly impacted by the issues mean our responses are often developed with a narrow lens.
Given our sector, having a narrow lens is extremely problematic. Without a nuanced understanding of the root causes of inequity, for example, efforts to enact meaningful change may fall short. But because of our training, many of us have a narrow lens of knowledge, and we’ve most likely missed out on valuable contributions and insights from diverse voices. A narrow lens means that the activism rooted in communities most affected by systemic oppression is often overlooked or dismissed within mainstream narratives. Luckily, there are many ways we can move away from extractive, tokenistic and simplistic approaches to research.
Enter anti-oppressive research — a paradigm shift in how we approach knowledge production. Unlike traditional methodologies, anti-oppressive research goes beyond surface-level analysis to interrogate the underlying power dynamics that shape our understanding of the world. It acknowledges that knowledge is not neutral but deeply influenced by the social, political, and cultural contexts in which it is produced.
The first step towards taking an anti-oppressive lens calls for some critical reflection. So here are a couple of questions to help you get started:
- What biases or assumptions do I bring to my research?
- How might these biases shape the questions I ask, the methods I employ, and the interpretations I make?
- Am I actively challenging my biases and seeking to mitigate their influence on my work?
After a year of planning and consultations with 85 (yep!) practitioners, we are so excited to launch the first in a series of social impact online community courses.
Are you?
- In a role where you design “evidence-based social impact programs?
- Are you fed up with extractive, exclusionary, and tokenistic approaches?
- Wanting to connect and learn with other social impact rebels?
- Are you eager to apply theory to practice?
If so, our eight-week online Research for Design for Social Impact Course, which launches on May 20th, might be for you.
You’ll come away with
- A deep understanding of Equity Design principles
- Design tools to help you reflect and work through an anti-oppressive lens
- Experience applying theory to real-life examples ( we work on real-life challenges submitted by organisations).
- On-going access to a community and network of equity-centred practitioners.
Interested but not sure? Feel free to drop us a line at programs@designforsocialimpact.io or sign up for a connect call to see if its the right fit for you.
We’ve launched Payment Parity Pricing- which means location-based pricing for all our services.
Social Impact Organisations to support
Five resources to help you Design for Social Impact
- The Value of Susu: Economics, Mutual Aid, and Women’s Solidarity in Ghana
- The Land Education Dreambook is intended for organizations and groups interested in developing land education programs for youth.
- The Relational Work of Systems Change
- The Design for Social Impact Blog series. We are on the lookout for writers- if you would like to contribute, get in touch!
- The Trust-Based Philanthropy website has many great resources for grant-makers to deepen their work.
We want your problems!
You may be grappling with how to make your programs more participatory, want to set up youth — or community-led advisory structures, or don’t know where to start.
Submit your design challenge to us, and for 8 weeks, learners will ideate solutions. The benefits are two-fold- our learners get to work on real-life issues, and you get brilliant minds working to solve your problem for free!
