It’s Official: More than 18,000 Paths out of Poverty
On April 3-5, the Institute for the Future (IFTF) and The Rockefeller Foundation invited people all over the world to join the Catalysts for Change game and imagine thousands of paths out of poverty. More than 1,600 people from 79 countries responded to the call to action. And after 48 hours of gameplay, they had built long chain reactions of ideas that added up to 18,160 ideas for ways to catalyze change in poor, vulnerable, or marginalized communities.
"Rising Asia, Growing Inequalities" Roundtable
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Dr. Judith Rodin participated in a roundtable discussion, “Rising Asia, Growing Inequalities,” with leading public interest and academic thinkers from throughout Asia at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. The roundtable was supported as part of the Foundation's Searchlight network. |
Our Strategy
Today, more than ever, the Rockefeller Foundation’s areas of interest are characterized by high levels of uncertainty and complexity. In the non-profit sector, a rapidly changing landscape is challenging established philanthropic models and beliefs. New and new types of actors—such as social entrepreneurs, private-public partnerships, and emerging donors from the developing world—coupled with the emergence of novel social networking technologies and the rise of more evidence-based approaches in managing, developing, implementing and evaluating philanthropic activities, all require much faster re-assessment and adjustment of funding strategies than in the past. In this fast moving environment, the Foundation aims to position itself as an innovative player that defines complex problems by applying a systems thinking approach and mobilizes partners across the non-profit, for-profit, and public sectors to test, scale, and evaluate cutting-edge intervention opportunities.
The Foundation’s centralized Research and Records Unit was created in 2007 in response to these new challenges to provide a broad and high-quality evidence base for decision-making, to illuminate risks and opportunities in the contextual environment in which the Foundation operates, and to identify trends that could spur the organization’s innovative capacity. The Research and Records Unit facilitates access to knowledge and knowledge sharing by serving as a steward of the Foundation’s acquired knowledge base of almost 100 years, one of the organization’s most distinguishing assets.
Focusing on the present-day, the unit surfaces crucial information and knowledge to inform ongoing behavior change. Looking into the future, it anticipates long-term contextual changes, investigates future trends, and incorporates forward-thinking perspectives to shape the organization’s overarching strategy.
The Research and Records team is an active member of research and records networks to ensure excellence with respect to methods, tools, and innovations in the global research field, particularly in the non-profit, philanthropic, and development sector.
Searchlight Function
Anticipating and tracking long-term trends and novel research results is a critical component to understand the future of development and poverty. In addition to utilizing more widely known horizon scanning methods, the Research and Records Unit has undertaken an innovative approach to generating applicable intelligence that emerges from a forward-looking, on-the-ground perspective throughout Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It is known as the “Searchlight” function—a group of forward-looking, regionally-focused horizon scanning and trend monitoring grantees that conduct regular, ongoing scanning for novel ideas, research results, and “clues” to where the world is evolving.
The Searchlight function has its roots in the growing interest on the part of governments, philanthropies, and non-profit organizations to apply forward-looking analysis to expand opportunities, strengthen resilience, and improve the lives of poor and vulnerable populations worldwide. The importance and need of applying foresight for the purposes of development—an approach that has been termed “pro-poor foresight”—is evident in the everyday world around us, as the effects of systemic crises have led to unexpected consequences that will likely have significant impacts for years to come.
Each organization participating in the Searchlight function contributes to achieving these objectives by preparing monthly trend monitoring newsletters that reflect their points of view, areas of expertise, and knowledge of local conditions. Participating organizations create these newsletters by monitoring secondary sources in their regions—including academic journals, think tank reports, conference proceedings, newspapers, magazines, grey literature, and activities occurring in their own networks—and aggregate this trend analysis information for distribution to the Foundation and to the wider research, non-profit, and policymaking communities.
Taken together, these publicly available newsletters outline a rich mosaic of themes, patterns, and concepts that provide early indications of how various driving forces might intersect and interact with one another over time. In addition to the preparation of these written trend analysis materials, the Searchlight function is envisioned as an iterative process that builds and links together networks of talented individuals and cross-cutting institutions that can highlight how the complex, sometimes disjointed findings of today might fit together and constitute the new realities of tomorrow.
Searchlight Scanning Partners
The 11 current Searchlight organizations are identified below, grouped by region.
Asia
- Noviscape, Thailand: A start-up, for-profit consultancy focusing on large scale societal shifts—such as identity issues, the relationship between demographics and urbanization, and new trends in food production—throughout Southeast Asia. Noviscape continues to connect the trend scanning conducted for the Searchlight function with an IDRC-funded project investigating the future of megacities in the region.
- National Institute of Science and Technology Policy and Strategic Studies (NISTPASS), Vietnam: A government organization focusing on the future of science and technology issues in the region. NISTPASS plans to use the Searchlight newsletters to inform the development of Vietnam’s science and technology strategy through 2020.
- Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore: Six university-based researchers and 11 Searchlight Associates scan for trends in the areas of trade, health, and energy. In addition, the Searchlight Associates produce podcasts, conduct interviews with thought leaders about trends and developments impacting disadvantaged communities and explore the solutions to these. In 2011, the Lee Kuan Yew School plans to organize a high-level, forward-looking conference for policymakers on issues emerging from the Searchlight process.
- Intellecap, India: A social-sector advisory firm that focuses on tracking new ideas emerging from social entrepreneurs in South Asia. Intellecap will be organizing the 2011 in-person gathering of the Searchlight grantees in Mumbai, India.
- Strategic Foresight Group, India: A forward-looking research organization that investigates a series of long-term geopolitical, economic, technological and societal trends in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia Thailand, and Vietnam. Strategic Foresight Group also conducts trend scanning for the Searchlight function on broader contextual issues related to the Middle East and Northern Africa.
Africa
- Society for International Development, Tanzania/Kenya: A civil society organization that tracks media, regional integration, and social issues throughout the Greater Horn of East Africa. The Society for International Development organized the April 2010 meeting of the Searchlight grantees at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center in Bellagio, Italy.
- South Africa Node of the Millennium Project, South Africa: A non-governmental organization conducting broad scale scanning on a range of development-related issues in Southern Africa. This institution has also developed a knowledge sharing platform—ForesightForDevelopment.org —to serve as a public repository and social network for foresight-related resources on the continent.
- Center for Democracy and Development, Nigeria: A non-governmental organization focusing on security, political, and social issues in West Africa. The Center for Democracy and Development reports on a different issue each month and has distributed the Searchlight newsletters to a growing network of partners throughout the region.
- African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), Ghana: The newest member of the searchlight function, ACET is a non-profit policy research and advisory institution that will monitor a range of topics across the region by utilizing input from selected interns located in countries throughout West Africa. ACET plans to distribute its Searchlight newsletters to decision-makers, policy-makers, and researchers within its network.
Americas
- FORO Nacional/Internacional, Peru: A civil society organization covering a variety of political and economic issues in South America as a way to track marco-level developments in that region. FORO’s plans on producing both an English and Spanish language version of the newsletter and has developed a systematic source base and scanning methodology.
- RAND Pardee Center, United States: This think tank follows poverty-related issues associated with political, economic, and social trends in the United States. RAND interacts closely with the Foundation to respond to a set of specific trend-related questions that are relevant to the Rockefeller Foundation’s issue areas and initiatives.
Searchlight Visualization Partners
While the Searchlight newsletters are designed to take a forward-looking, cross-cutting perspective, the strategic value of the information becomes most apparent when information from across the entire body of work produced as part of the Searchlight function is synthesized and analyzed together. This is accomplished by way of identifying emerging thematic clusters and creating high value-added visuals to emphasize the results and findings for the purposes of strategy development, learning, and wider dissemination. The Foundation’s Research and Records Unit is partnering with four organizations to undertake this work, including:
- Institute for the Future (IFTF), United States: The Institute for the Future (IFTF) will analyze the content of the newsletters and develop an innovative visualization map of the themes and ideas that emerge. IFTF will also develop a web-based tool that could be updated with information from the newsletters on a regular basis. Finally, IFTF’s analysis will also likely result in an innovative, participatory foresight “game” that could involve a large number of participants from other partners, networks, and the public at large.
- Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, United States: The Boston University Pardee Center will prepare a written report analyzing the body of information from the Searchlight newsletters using text-mining and data-mining algorithms to extract patterns and linkages.
- University of Manchester, United Kingdom: The Manchester Institute of Innovation Research will apply a network analysis approach to the newsletters. It will also organize the publication of papers emerging from this visual and thematic synthesis in the peer-reviewed journal Foresight.
- National Horizon Scanning Center, Government of Singapore: The National Horizon Scanning Center will use the collective material from the Searchlight newsletters as input into sophisticated trend monitoring software and will report on the results emerging from this analysis on a pro bono basis.
For additional information about the Searchlight function, please contact Claudia Juech at cjuech@rockfound.org or Evan Michelson at emichelson@rockfound.org.
