Civil Society: Fund Effective Projects

Fund Effective Projects

Civil Society Organizations (CSO) who use the research and values metamap of the city (see Figure 1), position themselves for funding effective project selection and evaluation (see Map Vision and Values ) (see below).

Figure 1: Values Map of Sample City

CSO Evaluates Research

The CSO can use the four quadrant/eight level (4Q8L) framework to evaluate other research by using a form such as this one that you can download as a PDF. Research Evaluation Form

Combining the values metamap and the Research Evaluation process gives the CSO, the information to identify funding needs and funding gaps. It can then become proactive in funding Grants that will contribute to the short term requirements and long term sustainability of the city/community. By sharing the data analysis the CSO can also improve local awareness of its work and effectiveness.

The CSO can extend the application of the 4Q8L framework to evaluating the outcomes of its funded projects (as in the example of a Foundation in Figure 2). The benefits to the CSO of using the 4Q8L approach is that it provides a feedback loop, to report on the effectiveness of its Funding investments.

Some of the benefits of the 4Q8L map to the CSO include:

• Selection and Evaluation

1. Provides a tool to manage grant making. The metamap creates a common language where a diversity of data can co-exist.
2. Provides a rationale for organizing and stratifying data/valuesfor selecting and evaluating Grants.
3. Allows for Evaluation feedback loopsto advise change managers of the effectiveness of their decisions (e.g. see Figure 3).
4. Translates between multiple interestsof many community stakeholders who can benefit from an integrated framework
5. Provides the basis to design a synchronized set of vital signs indicators for measuring policy change across all three levels of government as well as bio-regionally and globally. This can allow pooling of funding and resources.
6. Allows mapping strategies for:strategic planning; analyzing group differences; developing communities of professional city management practice; threats; weaknesses; opportunities
7. Explores the richness of community in the context of creating sustainability at individual, group, organization, community and society scales, because it discloses the dynamics below the surface expressions of values.
8. Views the meso level of city values as a context for comprehending the interrelationshipof micro ecologies (individual/group) and macro ecologies (bio-region, country, world)
9. Opens up options on managing conflict. The framework makes visible multiple voices and values. It then becomes possible to facilitate a discussion where all can be heard and valued.

• Research

10. Ordinary citizens can voice the change direction they value with an explicit awareness of the assets, values and capacities they experience as their reality in a changing world. New web-based data gathering processes make dynamic data tracking a further option
11. An intentional four quadrant/eight level (4Q8L) data gathering approach, discloses more than other methodological approaches. Because the integral/spiral frameworks provide a wholes systems checklist to gather data and a common language to integrate the results from multiple data sources (Wilber, 2003) across nested levels of complexity, we can see both where our lenses are clear and where we are missing data. Thus we have a language to describe change that reflects different realities, indicators and values at any level of scale.
12. Other data bases can be translated into a common 4Q8L language and thus contribute to an integrated Vital Signs Monitor. This means that existing data bases do not have to be discarded or discounted, but can instead be integrated into the metamap.
13. The metamap charts different worldviews/values/tensions of citizens, elected officials, staff and experts. These can be mapped, compared and discussed for reconciliation and agreed direction.
14. Change states and dynamic data gathering permit the tracking of dynamic complex adaptive qualities and the use of natural systems for designing change processes.
15. The metamap qualities are GIS mappable and can be collected as change indicators by either or both government and private researchers.

Click here to find out more about how Civil Society can:

• Develop Board Capacity
• Map Visions and Values
• Meshwork Strategically for a Healthy City