Articles by

Mayur Patel

  • Article

    Eye on results: Publishers rethink how to measure impact

    Published December 19, 2013 by

    The following, written by Knight's Vice President of Strategy and Assessment Mayur Patel, is cross-posted from the Global Forum for Media Development. Above: Finding a Foothold: How Nonprofit News Ventures Seek Sustainability from Knight Foundation. Basic numbers tell an incomplete story about the effects of journalism, according to Mayur Patel, the Knight Foundation’s vice president of strategy and assessment. If you were philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, how would you measure the impact of your soon-to-be-launched new journalism venture? Omidyar, the founder of eBay and the venture philanthropy network that shares his name, recently committed $250 million to starting a new mass media organization with Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian reporter who broke a series of stories on national security surveillance.  You might suggest Omidyar track the number of stories his journalists publish, the quality of the reporting, and the number of people who read their articles each month. Are these the right metrics? They don’t seem to get at real impact, something Omidyar has put at the heart of his philanthropy. Maybe the focus should be on public policy changes and shifts in legislation. But what happens if the journalism produced isn’t so narrowly defined? Welcome to the media measurement merry-go-round. Those of us who work in media development believe that democracy would be poorer without good journalism. Journalism itself must have some democratic and social value, then. The problem today is that the measures we commonly use have been shaped by thinking about media’s economic value to advertisers. As Jonathan Stray noted, a series of public media impact summits summed it up best: the “usefulness of tools in this arena is limited by their focus on delivering audiences to advertisers.”
  • Article

    New resource measures crowdsourcing in journalism

    Published December 2, 2013 by

    WDET's Crossing the Lines: Esteban's Story via YouTube Community-driven journalism is rapidly changing the newsgathering process. Media organizations now routinely invite readers to share their thoughts on issues, report on breaking news and uncover stories. But it’s often unclear if reader involvement leads to better journalism. The Public Insight Network, a project of American Public Media, is taking steps to find out with a guide that measures the impact. A pioneering program funded by Knight Foundation, the Public Insight Network is a large-scale effort at crowdsourcing news; individuals can sign up to become “sources” to provide targeted information to journalists and reporters. Participating news organizations post questions through the network, and sources can choose if they want to respond to them. Recently, for example, WAMU collected responses from sources on how the government shutdown was affecting them, and WITF in Pennsylvania asked readers for their experience signing up for health insurance through exchanges. Today, the Public Insight Network includes more than 200,000 individual sources informing journalists in more than 80 newsrooms. However, the guide could be useful to journalists who don’t use the Public Insight Network in helping them to evaluate their audience engagement efforts.  Joellen Easton, Public Insight Network’s business development manager and the author of the evaluation guide, hopes that newsrooms will use it to help set goals and gather data around the implementation of community-driven journalism efforts. “We view the engagement that happens in public insight inquiry as part of both the story—and the impact of that journalism—not just as a reporting resource for the reporter,” she said. “So understanding the quality and reach of that interaction is an important part of understanding the impact of your work.”
  • Article

    How contests strengthen our philanthropy

    Published July 22, 2013 by

    Knight Foundation has supported nearly a dozen open contests, reviewed almost 25,000 applications and chosen more than 400 winning ideas. We’ve learned a lot from this experience about how good contests work, what they can do, and what the challenges are. We’ve captured this in an array of materials that share these lessons.                                               Today with the launch of a new report, “Why Contests Improve Philanthropy: Six Lessons on Designing Public Prizes for Impact,” we’ve brought together our experiences in managing contests across all our program areas: journalism and media innovation, arts and communities. We hope this will serve as an invitation to others to consider how contests, when appropriate, might deepen the work they already do, broaden their definition of philanthropic giving and amplify their impact. Our contest work started with the launch of the Knight News Challenge in 2007. The digital age had turned communications on its head, and we needed a way to respond. The contest enriched our journalism program’s traditional network of blue-chip educators and newsrooms and put a spotlight on an energetic community of emerging innovators, software engineers, designers and media entrepreneurs. It also allowed us to leverage technology—as a powerful tool to open up our giving. All of our programs have now used contests to uncover new trends, widen their networks and support bold new ideas. In total, we’ve granted more than $75 million to experimental arts projects, resident-led neighborhood improvements, tech startups and data applications. Our support has gone to individuals, nonprofits and commercial enterprises.
  • Article

    Measuring what matters

    Published May 22, 2013 by

    Measuring What Matters from Knight Foundation on Slideshare In his 2012 annual letter to grantees, Bill Gates stressed the value of measurement as a critical tool for delivering social impact – in classrooms, clinics and cities. “Setting clear goals and finding measures that will mark progress toward them can improve the human condition,” he said. It’s a familiar and important refrain and it turns out most of us agree. More than 80% of nonprofit leaders recently surveyed believe that demonstrating impact through performance measurement is a top priority.  Yet still, when we get down to evaluating our work, it can feel like a time-sensitive and daunting task that delivers little value. How, then, do we improve our practice of it? How can we use it to strengthen our programs without overtaxing our organizations? These are questions we often grapple with at Knight Foundation. At the annual Philanthropy Miami Conference in March, we shared a few simple exercises on how to use evaluation to deliver better programs and promote greater effectiveness within organizations. A lot of what we shared was drawn from three resources that we’ve found valuable in our work. Each comes at the topic of measurement from a different angle. Together they offer a great starting point on various approaches, techniques and tools for using data to make progress towards your goals. Measuring the Networked Nonprofit (Beth Kanter and Katie Delahaye Paine) - Provides strategies and step-by-step guides for measuring relationships, social connectivity and engagement in nonprofits. Lean Analytics (Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz) – Offers a guide on how to use data to build a better startup, by tracking indicators that help you iterate and understand market needs and user engagement. Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity (Mario Morino) – Provides a call to action and a set of case studies that highlight the importance of outcomes-based management in the nonprofit sector. A few highlights from these resources include:  
  • Article

    Foundations ask, how to measure social media’s contribution to social change?

    Published April 25, 2013 by

      As social media tools have become ubiquitous, foundations have used them in a variety of ways to expand their networks, gather insights and build new relationships. As a result, there’s a growing interest in developing better ways to measure the impact of their online efforts. Today, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the largest funder of health programs in the U.S., is hosting a roundtable on Social Media Measurement. Nearly a dozen foundations, including Knight Foundation, will gather with communication experts, evaluators and data analysts to share best practices and learn from one another. At Knight, our approach to social media is based on using the tools to create opportunities for interaction and information exchange. As my colleagues Elizabeth Miller and Jon Sotsky recently wrote, we actively use social media to connect with our network, gather feedback, cultivate networks and promote our grantees and topics of interest. As a foundation, we’ve often used social media to disseminate publications and lessons learned, invite discussion on foundation topics, promote open contests and let people know about grant application deadlines. Our experience has demonstrated that social media tools have been powerful in pushing us to be more transparent. It’s opened up new channels for participation and feedback in our work. Social media can be part of a broader shift in philanthropy as foundations seek to become better networked as organizations and more adept at building effective relationships. It can also help a foundation inspire and promote the work of its partners, and engage others in marshaling resources towards achieving social change. Steven Downs, director of IT at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, summarizes their investments in social media as part of a larger focus on greater “openness, participation and decentralization.” We think these broader shifts in philanthropy are a good thing. At Knight, we try to use social media to mirror our programmatic goals. And we’re eager to learn how we can better use and track its impact on our work in the following areas: Transparency: Improving the transparency and responsiveness of our work and the openness of our strategy and grantmaking. Information Dissemination: Sharing lessons learned and helping shape best practices. Network Strength: Diversifying and growing our network to find new talent and sources of innovative ideas. Several foundations now regularly collect basic social media analytics, which are monitored on a monthly basis and fed into program reviews. These measures tend to cover two areas:
  • Article

    Nine insights on taking community information projects from idea to impact

    Published February 6, 2013 by

    It’s almost time for our sixth annual Media Learning Seminar, where community and place-based foundations will gather to discuss how to create informed, engaged communities. This year, we’ll give them something new to consider – a case study of how foundations have been able to put together their community information projects. RELATED LINKS Case Studies:        "How Four Community Foundations Information Projects Went From Idea to Impact"                         Dubuque Community Foundation "Dubuque2.0: How the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque Used Environmental Information to Spark Citizen Action"  Incourage Community Foundation  "Revitalization in Central Wisconsin: How the Incourage Community Foundation Used Information to Build Hope and Speed Community Change"  Hawaii Community Foundation "HIKI NO: Youth Journalism to Foster Digital Literacy and Build Diverse Community Stories"  New Jersey Community Foundation  "NJ Spotlight: Building Transparency and Improving State Policy Debates" Why does this matter? Because making positive change in communities requires the free flow of quality news and information. If the news and information environment is in trouble, so is civic life.  Foundations can only help improve education, public safety, the environment or anything else if people understand and are engaged in the issues. Through the Knight Community Information Challenge, more than 80 foundations have stepped up to invest in everything from local and state reporting to citizen dialogue and digital literacy, all to help their communities thrive. These projects have successes to show for it too - resulting in new funding for early childhood education, more environmental conservation and increased digital literacy among teens and seniors. This new study - published today in partnership with FSG and Network Impact - provides a behind-the-scenes look at four foundations. We asked: Why are they working in media? How does that connect to their overall goals? How did they go about doing it? Has it mattered? The four funders are: Community Foundation of New Jersey, supporting quality journalism through an online news site that promotes a dialogue on state policy; Hawaii Community Foundation, creating the first statewide student news network; Incourage Community Foundation, strengthening the civic health of a rural Wisconsin town through information; Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque, using information to engage residents in conserving the environment. You can find an in-depth look at each project in today’s report. Here are a few insights and examples of foundation practices that stood out for us: Lessons on Design and Planning
  • Article

    The business of open data: How Guidestar can be a test case for social sector innovation

    Published December 19, 2012 by

    Guidestar, the leading source of information on U.S. nonprofits, has developed into an impressive database with over 1.3 billion pieces of data and 10 million users. Many talented individuals worked committedly to build its operation into what it is today. When Jacob Harold took over recently as CEO, he inherited an organization that has a phenomenal amount of data, but is only scratching the surface of what’s possible in terms of extracting, modeling and visualizing its data and linking it to other sources to create new products. At the same time, the organization faces many challenges similar to other information-based businesses, with disruptions in digital media and technology opening the way for new substitutes for its services. As a case study, Guidestar has all the ingredients to be a great test for what it takes to innovate in the social sector:  How can Guidestar make open data an asset rather than a liability? Balance openness with the imperatives of nonprofit sustainability? Maintain the organization’s core operations while experimenting aggressively? At Knight we care about and wrestle with many of the same issues in our own work, particularly in our journalism and media innovation program. Last month, we partnered with Harold to bring together some of the best talent in data analytics and tech for a conversation about Guidestar’s future. The honorary advisors included Sean Gourley,  Stephen DeBerry.  Chris Diehl, Schuyler Erle, Jake Porway, Robert Munro, Lucy Bernholz, David Gutelius, Corey Ford and Jason Payne (from Palantir). Here were five pieces of feedback that came out of the conversation:  
  • Article

    Four insights into how tech is changing the way communities share, trade and borrow

    Published July 11, 2012 by

      Last month I spoke with Rachel Botsman, founder of the Collaborative Fund and author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. Botsman’s work explains how our traditional relationships of mutual assistance – things like sharing, trading and renting – have been entirely reinvented and scaled with the help of new network technologies. Last year, as part of a Knight Foundation study on social networks, we talked about how various initiatives are trying to catalyze mutual support in communities. They seek to connect residents with one another, encourage them to discover latent assets in their community and build trusted, reciprocal relationships. Through our Technology for Engagement initiative, Knight has supported a number of projects that help neighbors connect with each other to exchange information, goods and ideas, including CommonPlace. Recently, we supported FavorTree, an online platform that allows community members to share, lend or swap goods, services, and information, and as a result, the community increases its social capital. Favor Tree is led by Micki Krimmel, the founder and CEO of NeighborGoods.net, a site that allows users to save money and resources by sharing stuff with their friends. Four insights stood out from my conversation with Botsman that are relevant to efforts to build mutual support networks in communities. 1. Rethinking Proximity: Transactions of goods or services in a collaborative consumption setting tend to happen physically, even if the introduction is done remotely. This means that people have to be in the same space. We tend to think about proximity in terms of where people live, but there are a range of different places that end up being useful exchange points that fit into someone's everyday life, such as where they work, where they drop their kids off at school and where they go to church, etc. For example, FavorTree, , an online forum for sharing goods between community members, allows users to create a group for their small business, religious organization, or sports team in addition to their entire neighborhood.  
  • Article

    Seven lessons learned about social impact games

    Published June 19, 2012 by

    The prevalence of games in people’s lives is undeniable. Nearly three-quarters of all American families play computer and video games. Increasingly, businesses, nonprofits, funders and governments are tapping into this trend, experimenting with games to unlock existing social challenges. Yet, what are games good for and when are they most effective? Last month, we completed an in-depth evaluation of two-real world social impact games Knight funded to bring individuals together to address local challenges: Macon Money, an alternative form of local currency to connect residents to each other and to attract and expose people to local business in Macon, Ga; and Battlestorm, a youth-based game to improve hurricane preparation awareness and habits in Biloxi, Miss. We’re excited to share the results of these two experiments today at the 9th Annual Games for Change Festival! While a lot has been written about the impact of digital games on learning, less attention has been paid to the effects of real-world games – i.e., games that are played out in the physical world. We hope the insights gathered will encourage funders, researchers and gamers to explore the potential of these games with us and help move the field forward. In addition to the main study, we’ve created an interactive data visualization synthesizing the Macon Money findings and an infographic poster on Battlestorm. Here are seven lessons about the effectiveness of the two real-world games and how games can be leveraged for social impact in communities.  1.       Making Exploration Safe – Games are powerful liberating structures that allow people to test new patterns of behavior in a playful and secure environment. In Macon Money, residents took advantage of their free currency to experiment with new spending habits: 46% of players surveyed spent their bills at a local business they’d never frequented before, and 92% of those players report returning to those businesses after the game.
  • Article

    Five lessons in bridging the digital divide

    Published April 5, 2012 by

      Three years ago, Knight Foundation set out to find ways to bridge the digital divide in Detroit, a formidable task in a city where less than 40 percent of households have broadband access. We approached the challenge by focusing on three, high poverty neighborhoods, and set out to fund a broadband network there in addition to digital literacy training. What we discovered with this project could provide lessons on what works and what doesn’t for communities trying to digitally connect the 100 million Americans without home broadband access. The insights are part of our new report on digital access in Detroit.  Written by journalist Fara Warner, it details the significant difficulties faced in installing a Wi-Fi network: one company considered building towers for free, but pulled out; another donated several towers but the signal didn’t, in the end, cover the entire area.  Nonprofits and civic leaders seeking to close the digital divide in their communities should instead consider these major insights outlined in Warner’s report:  
  • Article

    Measuring your work: puzzles, lessons & trends

    Published March 28, 2012 by

    Last week, I was invited to speak to some of South Florida's top nonprofit leaders in education, community development, the arts and public health as part of the Philanthropy Miami conference. The (impossible) task: to do an overview on measuring social impact - in 60 minutes.  I think I've sat through workshops like that before. First we learn about 'Theory of Change', review what goes into a 'Logic Model', and then debate the differences between short and long term outcomes, with a brief interlude to touch on contribution versus attribution. All important stuff no doubt, but fairly dull material to have to present.   Instead, it seemed like more fun to talk about these topics: ·      Why measure in the first place? ·      What big lessons have we learned at Knight? (with a few stories drawn from others), and ·      What three emerging trends will affect how all of us measure and analyze our work in the future? You can see the answers in the slides from my presentation, below.