“It was seemingly straightforward. We provided a small grant to a youthful and energetic group in Malawi for a small income-generating project. They wanted to start a chicken-rearing business and sell the eggs to generate revenue for their HIV projects.
But the group explained to us in their first report that they had not seen any profit. That was because a ‘beast’ had eaten all of the chickens.
To most donors, this would seem like a failure…”
Smart Risks is a compilation of 30 essays grouped into 5 parts, each focusing on an aspect of risk as it relates to reducing poverty and empowering communities around the world. The contributions are case studies, personal stories of lessons learned, and provocative opinions on power and privilege. The book also contains practical frameworks for investing, measuring impact, and choosing who and what – but most importantly how and why – to support local leaders.
Smart Risk #1: Investing in local expertise
Around the world, everyday citizens have the contextual expertise, past experience, and credibility to implement projects in their community. Funders and outsiders can support people to recognize their own strengths and give them space to employ their strengths in implementing lasting change at local levels.
Farmer Maximiliana Balan with her chickens. Balan is a member of Women’s Association for the Development of Sacatepéquez (AFEDES) in Guatemala, which works to strengthen the physical, economic, and political autonomy of indigenous women and their families. Photo Credit: Marlon Garcia/Thousand Currents/2008.
Essays in this section:
- Making local to global connections
- Community resilience: An untapped resource for sustainable development
- Peace begins at home
- Dedication, incentives, and what drives local leaders
- The real experts
- Respect at the core: Insights on fostering local leadership
Smart Risk #2: Being non-prescriptive and flexible, with a long-term outlook
Non-prescriptive, flexible funding allows for local organizations to respond to realities on the ground. Long-term relationships give time and space to address complex problems with long-lasting solutions.
Women in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa meet to share learning on agroecological practices, which integrate scientific understanding about how particular places work – their ecology – with farmers’ knowledge of how to make their local landscapes useful to humans. Photo: Biowatch/Thousand Currents/2011.
Essays in this section:
- Unearthing community wisdom: Patience, perseverance, and partnerships
- When local leaders say, ‘Thanks but no thanks’
- Local leaders in the driver’s seat
- Leaving the room
- When small is too small: Recognizing opportunities to scale smart risks
Smart Risk #3: Looking to the grassroots for innovation
The most innovative solutions to intractable problems comes from local context, priorities, and realities. Innovation is most often a result of failure, and when funders can tolerate more risk, local leaders have room to learn and grow.
In Chinautla, a municipality outside of Guatemala City, community members work with Instituto para la Superación de la Miseria Urbana (ISMU), or the Institute for Overcoming Urban Poverty, to improve living conditions in their neighborhoods. They coordinate advocacy campaigns, legalize land tenure, improve housing and infrastructure, prepare for disasters, and create community services such as childcare centers. Photo: Thousand Currents/2010
Essays in this section:
- Small grants as seed funding for entrepreneurs
- Grants, not loans
- Building accountability from the ground up in Liberia
- Out of the comfort zone: Addressing the needs of women’s rights defenders
- Fruitful failures and the pull of curiosity
- What if we saw “mistakes” as fuel for innovation?
Smart Risk #4: Rethinking accountability
Taking “smart risks” means broadening the way that we evaluate, including seeking feedback directly from those being served, and using a local definition of effectiveness and accountability. Measurement can create a picture of control, or enable leaders to define their own successes.
Women in the Nuwakot district of Nepal attend a community training session on sustainable agriculture techniques organized by ASHA Nepal. Here farmers in Nepal are being advised to allow some squash to dry naturally, as this protects the seeds inside so they can be planted next year. Photo Credit: Jan Stürmann/Thousand Currents/2008.
Essays in this section:
- Charity rankers: Who is defining effectiveness?
- The solution within: Communities mitigate their own risks
- Does your financial report make people feel poor?
- What “real-time” community feedback can tell you that evaluations can’t
- Dusty sneakers, girls dorms, and challenging our assumptions
- Rigorous humility: Reconciling the desire for certainty and the space for possibility
Smart Risk #5: Practicing vulnerability
One of the bravest things that we can do as grantmakers is to get out of the driver’s seat. Listening to community members, seeking explanations rather than judging, and recognizing the privilege that we have as outsiders all lead to more lasting change.
Sewing classes are held at a vocational training center in central Malawi, supported by the Nkhotakota AIDS Support Organization. Photo Credit: Jennifer Lentfer/2006.
Essays in this section:
- The Dissonance
- Uncomfortable conversations
- Ten rules for helping
- Whose capacity needs to be built?
- Questions to focus organizational learning for social change
- What happens when we listen?
- The Five Essential Qualities of Grassroots Grantmakers
Graphics by Sharon Skylar. Photos courtesy of Thousand Currents (formerly IDEX) and Jennifer Lentfer.