Based on a key recommendation from our KM diagnostic process earlier in the year, Think Twice helped JPMorgan Chase Foundation to design and develop a shared taxonomy for describing the work of the foundation in more consistent and useful ways. The design process include an audit of existing vocabularies, the definition of a minimum viable product (MVP) that could help this cross-functional, cross-departmental effort keep momentum, and the drafting, testing, and vetting of a set of top-level terms.

Alongside a comprehensive diagnostic and redesign of JPMorgan Chase Foundation's KM function, Think Twice conducted a set of in-depth, multi-stakeholder, knowledge capture exercises with several of the foundation’s key initiatives. 

Based on the familiar “What, So What, Now What” exercise, and a desire to center the insights and experiences of not just staff but also partner organizations and participating community members, Think Twice synthesized responses from multiple stakeholders in an easily digestible and shareable format. The final synthesis products also included a worksheet/template to support internal teams using a similar process for future reflections.

Over the course of 18 months, Think Twice, in partnership with Candid, managed a collaborative effort to support the Heising-Simons Foundation’s rethinking of its early childhood care and education strategy. A key project goal was to provide the foundation with valuable context while also contributing to improved data sharing and learning amongst funders focused on ECE.

This project included: the development of an interactive map showing the landscape of funding for ECE in the U.S., an evidence review of specific ECE interventions, planned learning sessions with the program team throughout the process, engagement with an advisory group of practitioners, and a public webinar sharing findings and freely available tools.

In the summer of 2016 media attention was squarely focused on the long history of police bias and brutality towards black Americans. But the insights and expertise of nonprofits who have been working on this issue for years was conspicuously missing. Working closely with my colleagues at IssueLab, we were able to quickly pull together and share this collection with the goal of helping to inform not just policy and funding decisions but also the conversation that’s happening around the kitchen table.

I was able to contribute to the significant update of this collection during the summer of 2020 when the country was, again, grappling with the realities of police brutality and the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.

Think Twice partnered with the DC-based Bainum Family Foundation to develop a KM philosophy and framework that both reflects and actively supports the organization’s new strategic vision and its commitment to anti-racism. The project included: an in-depth discovery process, the co-creation of a KM philosophy and framework, the development of a shared vocabulary for describing and tagging organizational artifacts, and the design, codification, and ongoing implementation of new learning and knowledge sharing practices related to regular reflection and knowledge capture. This rewarding partnership continues to evolve as the organization's KM and Learning functions continue to mature.

Orginally identified as a core KM need during our 2019 KM Diagnostic, Think Twice worked with Project Evident's team of analysts and project leads to collaboratively design a “codebase” for use in delivering the organization’s key service offering, baking it directly into their Asana project management workflow.

In keeping with the organization’s commitment to continuous improvement we revisted the project one year later, identifying barriers to adoption and opportunities for improvement.

As one of the primary leads on this project I was deeply involved in designing and implementing this multi-year, sector-wide, change intiative. The effort, encouraging foundations to more openly share the knowledge they fund and create, included the design and development of an open repository for foundation funded evaluation and the crafting of a "manifesto" for open knowledge in the social sector.

Each year foundations make an average of $5.4 billion in grants towards knowledge production. What holds them back from sharing more of this knowledge as a public good? This article in the Foundation Review, co-authored with Lisa Brooks, explains some of the most common obstacles to knowledge sharing at foundations, as well as a vision for a different kind of knowledge leadership in philanthropy.

As part of a deeper engagement to help the organization articulate and improve its knowledge capture, synthesis, and sharing practices, the foundation asked Think Twice to conduct a series of Program Reflections with staff. Coming on the heels of an 18-month long strategic planning process, these Reflections document an organizational inflection point through a combination of storytelling, in-depth interviews, the mining of board minutes, and the curation of key strategic documents and commissioned research.

As an organization focused on shifting social sector norms around how and why we collect evidence, Project Evident deeply values the importance of sharing what it is learning.  

After completing its first strategic planning process, Project Evident engaged Think Twice to help design a framework for ongoing knowledge management and learning.

This framework was based on a process that included: a diagnostic of the organization’s current practices through in-depth interviews, surveys, and group discussions, a set of summary recommendations, and the facilitation of meetings to support leadership in identifying priority recommendations and next steps. 

It turns out that there is no simple cure for what ails small-scale fisheries around the globe. Instead their success depends on a number of interconnected factors and interdependent players. This project, which includes a publicly available interactive visualization, digital collection, and synthesis report resulted from The Rockefeller Foundation's own effort to understand what's worked and what hasn't for the fisheries on which so many very poor people rely. As the project lead for Foundation Center, the project also provided an opportunity for me to develop and test an approach to synthesis that prioritized the inclusion of practice-based evidence and the sharing of our results as a public good.

As co-founder and co-director of IssueLab for 10+ years, this project has been an incredibly rich experience in the design and development of open knowledge management systems. Since its inception IssueLab has grown to include more than 33,000 resources authored by social sector organizations, and is freely available for use by anyone.