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Current News

Community Organizing Toolkit
	The pre-launch site for the Community Organizing Toolkit is worth a look. The main teaching tool is a flash based games that teaches organizing skills derived from the wisdom of the Center for Third World Organizing. They are releasing all the material under licenses that allow for adaptation and localization. Posted: 6/26/06; 12:44:39 PM #

What Drives Innovation? A Heuristic Framework

Despite its corporate focus, What Drives Innovation (16 page PDF) by Callahan, Ishmael, and Namiranian is a valuable read for civil society organizations. It focuses primarily on the questions related to the fate of good ideas, rather than to the environments that produce them. They present a set of six high-level questions that serve as a heuristic framework for looking at what drives implementation of new ideas and what stops it. Posted: 6/26/06; 12:41:46 PM #

Space for learning: Donors as Learning Organizations
	I was very excited to read Donors as Learning Organizations by Jenny Hyatt and Allan Kaplan. They point out quite directly that, in the world of grantmaking, "reflection and learning are neglected out of organizational complacency, fear of failure, and a paradigm of impact which is over-reliant on what can be counted rather than what counts." Posted: 6/26/06; 12:34:37 PM #

Social Isolation in America

Every now and then, some bit of research really touches on a core cause of social problems, rather than just the symptoms. The recent report on Social Isolation in America (23 page PDF) is one such bit of research. The trends are alarming and revealing. Social networks have shrunk. Segregation by level of education has increased. Does anyone know: Are there major organizations working on this, or are we all just focused on the symptoms? Maybe we need to work our way back even further to identify the causes of isolation. Some of the factors that contribute to isolation that come to my mind include: oil and automobile subsidies, land use regulations, and labor and environmental policies. Posted: 6/26/06; 12:32:21 PM #