Search strategy for specific kinds of social innovation?

October 29, 2022 3:11 PM

I'm pondering _how to find_ companies, academics, foundations, granting organizations, or non-profit organizations that are doing innovative, exploratory, or results-based work to help communities, small, large, and global, build trust and communication to actually solve fundamental society-affecting problems. (I mean, more systematically than reading Metafilter and watching TED Talks.)

This is really a librarian question: where is/are the database/search engine/journal/collection that I or anyone can search to discover these efforts? If, for example, one wanted to find a potential employer or partner or grantor?

These entities - the things being searched for - could be doing this through alternative methods of getting funds from the public to initiatives; understanding how to make fairness more achievable in anything from political districting to sentencing; structuring communication so that real issues are analyzed and elucidated (rather than focusing on how to get political power to implement a particular policy).

I can Google [prosocial business database] and search through databases of nonprofits, but I want a resource I can trust to be current and complete, and also, ideally, one clearinghouse (so I know that if I look through everything there, I don't have to also check another resource).

Charity Navigator is not really what I want because: 1) I don't want to restrict my search to nonprofits; and 2) I don't want to have to guess at the right keywords to search for since I could miss a novel approach I haven't heard of yet.

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There are a lot of awesome and important efforts out there that I want to support! I'm aware, though, that many of them run up against really hard meta-obstacles again and again: public apathy; difficulties communicating their importance or the long-range benefits of efforts in the present; (seemingly) competing interests from other issues; lack of leadership, or leadership that has its own issues; maintaining an effort over time; external social pressures draining people of the ability to contribute and participate; and lots more.

What I'm interested in is organizations that address _those_ kinds of concerns -- looking at not just "assuring clean drinking water in Gatlinburg", but "allowing the community of Gatlinburg, and all communities, to have a safe political environment and enough well-presented information to make intelligent long-range plans about infrastructure." (I don't know anything about Gatlinburg; it's the first place name I thought of).

Rather than debating whether it's better to be a welcoming nation with a fundamental drive to treat people well by not letting them die trying to cross the south Texas desert, or to be a nation that prioritizes the "safety" of its citizens by [misguidedly] building a wall there -- who is actually doing work to make it possible to communicate, at least to those who haven't overcommitted to a point of view, why being welcoming and humane is actually important and/or how a wall means more than just a wall? Other than possibly every A P History teacher, I mean.

I'm not asking for a specific org for either case here; I want to know _how to research_ this.
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I get that the perfect database or search strategy might not exist. If that's so, then what is the state of the art on finding out things like this?

posted by amtho to Grab Bag (10 answers total)

I want to know _how to research_ this.

Honestly the way to approach this is to narrow your scope and turn your query into a few subqueries. And yes, you've guessed accurately that there really aren't databases where you can find these things. Databases by and large aggregate information. So this will either be raw data (i.e. lists of businesses and non-profits, as you've seen) or news (i.e. libraries will have databases that are like "health news" or "business news" or "newspapers") or sometimes attempts to turn the former into the latter (i.e. places like Charity Navigator).

So not to put you off but this is one of those things that we call a hard problem because if such a system/database did exist, people would immediately be trying to game it because it exists as a way to help funnel money and that is what people want. This was sort of what MeFi-nemesis GiveWell was trying to do, though they were mainly looking at charities: looking at effectiveness and qualitative results not just promises and quantitative stuff. However there's a problem with their methodology which is that it's labor intensive for charities to even fill out the paperwork required to get on their radar which means there are already biases in favor of better-funded/staffed organizations.

So, given that I work in libraries but am not a business researcher (but have done some in the past), if I was looking at this issue I think I would start by looking at groups that try to overcome structural inequalities because I think that groups that acknowledge this would already be trying to handle some of the things you point out in your posts. I would look at people who work in academia (Ethan Zuckerman who works in public policy for example - UW iSchool's Technology and Social Change group might be another) who research this kind of thing and see whose work they are amplifying and how/why. Once I'd found maybe 3-5 groups that I thought were in the area I was looking at, doing the sort of work I found to meet my metrics. I would start combining these in business and news databases (and also Google, and possibly social media "advanced search" types of things) and see who was talking about them and see if that led to more.

Honestly, state of the art is getting a professional who does this for a job to do this work. But realistically, potentially finding someone else who has already paid a professional to do this work and then put it online for free (doesn't always happen but it happens) can also work.

The tough part is really that startups have co-opted the language of liberation and talk about stuff as being "revolutionary" in directions that are just intended to raise enough money to sell out. It's really hard lately to separate the people who are really getting the work done from people who talk about how to get the work done (i.e. TED Talks are sometimes like this and sometimes not) without boots on the ground. I hope you get other librarians to chime in because I am only one of many and my approach is only informed by my own knowledge and there are probably people better suited to give answers to this.
posted by jessamyn at 3:38 PM on October 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Trust is, of course, very related to disinformation, which is a topic of great interest to journalists worldwide. So I don't know if this is going down the wrong rabbit hole for you, but there have been recent conferences on the topic. Disinformation and the Erosion of democracy was the name of one. Another was called Global Fact 9, which was sponsored by the Poyntner Institute. They actually launched the International Factchecking Network (IFCN), which is paying attention to disinformation globally, all the way back in 2015.

According to the Washington Post, "In 2021, there were 391 active fact-checking projects, according to an annual census by the Duke Reporters’ Lab, up from 168 in 2016.
posted by Violet Blue at 6:14 PM on October 29, 2022

Response by poster: I think I would start by looking at groups that try to overcome structural inequalities

I would love other ideas for search keywords if anyone has ideas. Maybe, for examples: something like "systemic"; something to do with social psychology (but more pragmatic than theoretical, probably); something that means the way people and communities frame issues and store/organize/integrate the points of view of individuals and groups; something that means creating, testing, and deploying processes; other words that have to do with what I liken to understanding and balancing the nutrients in the soil of civilization (I have a condition that causes me to deploy metaphors a lot, sorry).

getting a professional who does this for a job

Does anybody have ideas about the name of this profession? Social librarian? Entity nexus? Political theoretical journalist? Meta-advocacy expert? Social systems programmer?
posted by amtho at 8:39 PM on October 29, 2022

Hrm. There are some institutions that study this kind of thing, perhaps that's a starting point?

Eg. The Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation, the Centre for Social Enterprise at MUN.

And publications like the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

I'm probably missing a few obvious ones.
posted by stray at 8:50 PM on October 29, 2022

Also the LSE Social Innovation Lab.

There are a number of masters programs in Social Innovation and Social Enterprise, I bet if you searched for faculty in google scholar it would lead to you to relevant journals.
posted by stray at 2:59 AM on October 30, 2022

“Civic engagement” is another keyword to explore. Also civic participation, civic agency. That’s the language funders often use to describe some of this work.
posted by yarrow at 6:53 AM on October 30, 2022

Response by poster: These are cool. I kind of knew about social entrepreneurship and social enterprise, but the reminders are good.

What I'm less sure about researching are efforts like, for example, Ostrom's study / advocacy of how common pool resources are successfully managed when they are run with certain techniques (FYI even though she's passed, there's a group carrying on this work); or certain parts of behavioral economics that yield a deeper, more accurate understanding of why people do "irrational" things, and what makes them behave more prosocially and more honestly. Research, yes, but also there are consultants putting these ideas in to practice, and people trying to share the information (I hope).
posted by amtho at 12:26 PM on October 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: ...some of which is social innovation and social enterprise, of course. But some is before the enterprise stage, and some is just figuring out how to present the ideas.
posted by amtho at 12:28 PM on October 30, 2022

Stir to Action is a great print magazine featuring social innovation. I recommend buying back issues. Yes in My Backyard is small but great for finding projects.
posted by parmanparman at 12:19 PM on October 31, 2022

There's a database called the Foundation Directory that lets subscribers search its expansive database of foundations and what they've funded. It's not open to the public and it's quite pricey. You might be able to find a university library that subscribes to it and explore. It tells you who is giving and receiving grants in a range of areas and places in the US. Finding out who has received certain grants might tip you off to certain organizations that have enough capacity to do some grant writing.

But, in the bigger picture, think about who would compile the information you're seeking, how they would judge success, and why.

In the even bigger picture, I would ask you why you want this information and what you hope to do with it. If it's because you want to find an organization to donate to, then instead of starting so big and all-encompassing, I'd start smaller and local and basically start a sort of citation hunt. (Which is to say, I think large foundations have entire staffs of people trying to answer questions like you are asking.)

If, for example, you wanted to know what local organizations were doing creative work in the area of, say, environmental racism advocacy in Texas, then I'd say to start reading about environmental racism in Texas and see what people and what organizations start popping up in news stories. Then check out their websites.

So rather than starting at the database search level, I'd say to read about the news you care about the most and figure out who is working on those issues in the communities you want to support, and dive in that way. I'm glad to answer questions about this.
posted by bluedaisy at 4:52 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]