IssueLab Switches to Scribd: Good for us, good for you!

IssueLab is now using Scribd to provide site visitors, contributing organizations, and data partners with real-time dynamic views of the research documents we archive.

Our decision to switch away from Issuu to Scribd, “the largest social publishing and reading site in the world,” was based on a number of considerations including:

• Scribd's application programming interface (API) enables us to more easily work with our documents.
  
  
• Scribd makes access statistics available via their API so that we can now provide our contributors with this important metric.
  
  
• Scribd is actively working to move their entire document sharing platform away from proprietary Adobe Flash to open-source HTML 5. This means IssueLab users will soon be able to access documents on their mobile phones and other devices.
  
  
• Bonus: Scribd provides all of its services for free.

We completed the transition to Scribd last week. Users will experience no change to our document contribution or access work-flow. As well, contributors can still easily embed a dynamic view of their documents anywhere they like on the web -- embed code is available in the “Edit Listings” area of Research Contributor accounts.

Scribd’s vision: “to liberate the written word, to connect people and organizations with the information and ideas that matter most to them.” We couldn’t agree more!

Walking the Talk of Collaboration

When we ask nonprofits to contribute their research to IssueLab we talk a lot about the importance of knowledge sharing and the necessity of collaboration. We remind them (you) that in order to avoid recreating the wheel we simply have to share what we know with our colleagues in the field. Given the importance of our work and the scarcity of resources we can't financially or ethically afford to duplicate efforts. In essence by sharing our knowledge we build our capacity as individual organizations and as a sector.

But knowledge sharing requires more than just nonprofits sharing research with information hubs like IssueLab. It also requires that in turn IssueLab shares those resources and that research with other hubs, platforms, and online communities -- getting it into as many relevant online places and spaces as possible. In other words, walking the talk of collaboration.

One of the areas where nonprofits are constantly developing new strategies and looking for more efficient and effective approaches is in the area of volunteering. How can I best recruit volunteers? Do I need to manage online volunteers differently? How can I tap into the number of retiring baby boomers who are looking for meaningful volunteer opportunities? How can I best measure the value of volunteer contributions? Well matched and well managed volunteers directly contribute to an organization's capacity to deliver its services. And by extension when we share case studies, white papers, evaluations, and operational templates about volunteering we also build our capacity as a sector.

So forgive the long lead up -- but all of this explains why we are so excited to be collaborating with VolunteerMatch and IdeaEncore on making these resources more readily accessible to nonprofit practitioners. In partnership with IdeaEncore we are now sharing all research that addresses the topic of volunteering through the new Volunteering Resource Library. This library is directly available to the more than 73,000 nonprofits who use VolunteerMatch and are already looking to improve the way they recruit and manage volunteers.

There is a lot of talk about collaboration in the sector, from merging back office operations to developing joint programming but not a lot of this talk focuses on one of the most simple yet critical acts of collaboration -- knowledge sharing. The Volunteering Resource Library is a simple example of how much more we can do when we do it together.

Valuable nonprofit knowledge + a willingness to share = increased capacity.

If you know something about volunteering or you are looking for information about how to improve your volunteer program, plug yourself into this simple equation. We did!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/111201180/ CC licensed: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic

WiserEarth Members Get Wise to IssueLab's Research Collection

Exciting news! Starting today, WiserEarth begins carrying research titles from IssueLab's collection! Any IssueLab listing carrying a 2007 or later publication date and related to social justice and the environment will now automatically become available to WiserEarth's members and site visitors on a weekly basis.

WiserEarth's mission is "to help the global movement of people and organizations working toward social justice, indigenous rights, and environmental stewardship connect, collaborate, share knowledge, and build alliances in order to address and solve the world’s problems." WiserEarth's community includes over 40,000 members around the globe and a plethora of groups where members can engage in discussion, post and share resources, and collaborate on projects. The WiserEarth directory is the world’s largest international directory of nonprofits and socially responsible organizations (110,000 in 243 countries). Of interest to our gentle-readers, WiserEarth boasts a taxonomy that is the "world’s most detailed classification of issue areas related to social justice and environmental restoration". Love it.

We view this partnership as a terrific opportunity to: 1) introduce activists and advocates to effective nonprofit organizations and research resources; 2) forge new, vibrant collaborations; and, ultimately, 3) create new knowledge that gets us all closer to a more just and peaceful global society. I know - it's a win-win-win!

We're confident that WiserEarth's community – individuals who care deeply about the state of the natural and social world, and who actively participate in social change through collaboration, knowledge sharing, and deepening their own understanding of the issues – will surely benefit from having immediate access to the research and analysis shared through IssueLab. We are very excited to share our collection with WiserEarth and all of its members.

And ... an important note of gratitude: Luise Barnikel, a former and much missed IssueLab team-member, started conversations with WiserEarth in early 2010 and pursued this collaboration for many months. Truly, without Luise this whole partnership may never have happened. Thank you Luise for your tireless work on this project!

Happy collaborating!

Guest Post: Five Steps to Translate Your Research Reports into English

Today's post is from Susan Parker's Clear Thinking eZine. It's a great publication about reading, writing and communicating research - you can subscribe for free here.

Five Steps to Translate Your Research Reports into English

Word count: 908

Estimated read time: Less than 4 minutes

When I was in graduate school, I had a very proper British professor who had brilliant insights about the role of women in society. I believed that her ideas mattered and needed to be heard beyond our classroom and the obscure academic publications that she wrote for.

One day after class, I beseeched her to write in a way that would reach more people. I told her that I would help--and that my goal was to get her featured in a popular magazine. She looked bewildered at my suggestion. And she never took me up on it.

While I did not succeed with her, I have "translated" scores of evaluation and research reports into clear English--and I am convinced that there is a rich supply of groundbreaking reports and important evaluation results that many people can benefit from. But this information is often buried in dense, jargon-laden language. As a result, the work does not make the impact that it might.

Foundations and other nonprofits spend millions of dollars each year commissioning research and evaluation projects that may end up on a shelf and read by no more than a few people. One reason these reports do not make an impact is that they are just too hard to get through. We have to make this important work inviting for people to read and learn about.

Here are a few things I have learned that can help you reach a wider audience and disseminate your valuable information:

1. Determine the key audience that you want to reach. It is one of the most important first steps. Don't say the "general public" or even "policymakers." That's too vague. You need to have a clear picture of the key people you really want to read this report. You also need to understand why they would care about what your research says. It's helpful if you can picture one person as you revise this report.

For example, your audience could be a three-term state legislator in California who serves on an education committee. He's heard about the childhood obesity epidemic, but he has not thought much about the connection between healthy students and positive educational outcomes. Your report provides timely data that makes the case that students who are obese or come to school with chronic illnesses do not achieve as well as healthy students do. That's the information that the legislator needs to help convince him to start considering health issues in his policy work.

It is critical to have a particular person in mind as you revise the report. By getting that specific about your audience, ironically, you will reach a much larger group.

2. Get the context. Most research and evaluation reports don't provide readers with enough context to make sense of the findings. You will likely need to add context to the report to make it relevant to the audience that you want to reach.

In a blog post, Jim Canales, president of the James Irvine Foundation, wrote that Irvine's board members spoke of how important contextual information was in making sense of the information that the foundation shared with them.

You may be able to get the context through the research or evaluation proposal. Or you may need to do a little more research.

3. Read the report with the audience in mind and see what jumps out at you. What strikes you? What seems new? What's confusing? Make a note of it. Because you are not steeped in the subject yourself, you have a perspective on what could be truly interesting.

4. Talk to the person who wrote the report. This is imperative. The evaluator or researcher often writes for a particular purpose and narrow audience (sometimes just a program officer at a foundation). Because of this, she won't necessarily include some of the details that might be useful to the people you are trying to reach.

Ask the researcher for her three major findings. Most researchers and evaluators write in the muddy middle, that is, they don't take a step back and report their overarching findings or themes. If the researcher is the least bit unclear, keep asking follow up questions.

These conversations are fun to have. People are often clearer about their work when they just chat about it then when they write about it. And this is work they are passionate about. That passion will come out and you can convey that in the revised report.

5. Find a story to tell. It may be buried in the report or mentioned tangentially. Stories bring flesh and blood to findings. Find a story or example that illustrates each of the top three findings. These stories do not have to be long, but they need to paint a picture that accurately illustrates the key findings.

For example, if a research report talks about the importance of schools working with their communities to achieve better health outcomes for students, find an example of a specific school working with its community to lower smog levels.

Try some of these ideas and, unlike my graduate school professor, the insights in your research and evaluation reports will reach the large audience it deserves.

By Susan Parker of Clear Thinking Communications.

Please visit Clear Thinking Communication's web site at www.clearthinkingcommunications.com for additional tips on communications for foundations, nonprofits and progressive businesses.

Our KM Toolbox and Social Source Commons

This is a cross-post from the Social Source Commons Blog, where Matt Garcia recently wrote about IssueLab and Knowledge Mobilization.

In case you haven't yet, check out Social Source Commons. It's a great resource and:

"a place to share lists of software tools that you already use, gain knowledge and support, and discover new tools. It’s a place to meet people with similar needs and interests and answer the question: what tools do they use?"

IssueLab recently used Social Source Commons to compile a set of tools that are helpful for Knowledge Mobilization. This includes many free online tools that our staff uses for both internal (collaboration) and external (dissemination) purposes. Matt writes that,

"I thought this was an interesting toolbox in that many organizations, nonprofit and otherwise are constantly combing the internet in some kind of fashion for information and data related to their work. Each has its own technique of capturing relevant information and sites. Whether it is using Delicious bookmarks or covering a wall in Post-It notes, it's valuable and important to take a step back to see how your organization is collecting and storing data and resources that are organizationally relevant."

Continue reading the entire post and check out our KM Toolbox here!