Measuring Narrative Change - Moving From Theory to Practice

Summary

Brett Davidson, writing in Stanford Social Innovation Review, on what can and can’t be known when measuring narrative change. Sometimes the work is planting seeds and tending soil, not knowing whether anything will germinate. Funders and grantees may need to accept that only so much is knowable in emergent work – though if nobody does the work, nothing changes.

Rationale

Davidson’s seeds and soil are our language too. Where he asks funders to live with not knowing, we propose learning across a portfolio of experiments, so patterns can surface.