February 28, 2014
In the life of all impactful organizations, there are moments in time when it is important to assess past work, take stock of accomplishments and consider how the organization moves forward to most effectively accomplish its goals. Now that Humanity United is closing in on its first decade of work, we are embarking on a process to deliberately assess how we best achieve sustainable social change at scale in the years ahead.
I have asked our team to take the next twelve months to review our wide-ranging strategies and efforts around the world, to recheck our assumptions and ensure we are anticipating emerging global trends. By doing this we hope to achieve even greater clarity about the change we would like to see moving forward.
To help us with this process, we are working with a great resource in Rob Ricigliano, the Director of the Institute of World Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a former Executive Director of the Conflict Management Group and Associate Director of the Harvard Negotiation Project at Harvard Law School. Building on his own experiences and many of the findings from his book, Making Peace Last: a systemic approach to sustainable peacebuilding, Rob is helping us think about our investments and work in relation to complex systems and dynamic environments that impact large-scale social change.
There is no doubt that our strategic review will take time, and in 2014 we will be slowing the pace of our grant making. During this process, we are being deliberate and thoughtful to make sure we are capturing the wisdom of the local communities where we work and learning from our dedicated partners and grantees, as well as Humanity United’s staff and leadership. We will be reaching out to these groups to solicit their views on trends and opportunities for sustainable impact in the years ahead.
Humanity United remains dedicated to a more peaceful and less violent world. Over the past decade, we have led, supported and collaborated with a broad network of individuals, efforts, ideas, and organizations. As our work progresses over the next few years, this network will be essential to achieving the sustainable social change that is needed in our world.