Around the Institute

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May 3, 2013

Advocacy Evaluation Breakfast: Assessing Coalitions with Innovation Network on May 22nd

During Q&A at our last breakfast event, someone in the audience asked Serra Sippel of the Center for Health and Gender Equity about the challenges of assessing an advocacy coalition working on policy change.  Coincidentally, our next breakfast will focus on just that: the team at Innovation Network will join us on May 22nd, from 8:15 to 9:45am, for a discussion about a nifty tool they’ve developed to evaluate community coalitions.  RSVP here by May 20th.

Measuring Social Media
This week, social media expert and blogger Beth Kanter posted a run-down of “Advancing Social Media Measurement,” a recent convening of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in our beloved (and unfairly maligned, mind you) Nueva Jersey.  She and others grappled with a very familiar question—so, what does “success” in the social media space really look like?  Check out FSG’s presentation on their work with the Knight Foundation: it lays out one approach to “social media impact.”

Back to School
It’s easy to understand the main thrust of the Center for Global Development’s (CGD) upcoming event on May 9th: the fact that students are filling chairs in a classroom doesn’t mean they’re actually learning anything.  In “Schooling is Not Education: Using Assessment to Change the Politics of Non-Learning,” CGD’s Nancy Birdsall will lead a conversation with the authors of their latest report to identify ways we can address these significant education challenges in the coming years.  Now that’s a big task…