Reviewing the proposals

By  Enrique Mendizabal
2 September 2014
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The participants of The Exchange came together in two groups, each focused on a collaborative project.

One of the groups met mostly online using Skype and email to coordinate the development of their proposal while the other decided to include a face to face meeting to finalise it.

Once the proposals were submitted, we sent them to external reviewers:

The communications project was reviewed by:

  • Lawrence MacDonald: Lawrence is currently moving from the Center for Global Development where he was VP for Communications and Policy Outreach, to the World Resources Institute to take on the job of VP of Communications. He has written a blog post about his experience at CGD.
  • Peter da Costa: Peter has been a pioneer of research communications. As Africa-based consultant to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, he provides support across the portfolio of the Foundation’s Global Development and Population Program, including in relation to the Think Tank Initiative.
  • Richard Darlington: Richard is a co-founder of WonkComms, a network of think tank communicators that started in the UK but has now spread around the world. He is also the Head of Media at IPPR, in London.

The performance assessment project was reviewed by:

  • John Young: John is a household name for the Policy and Research community. He is the founder and Head of the RAPID Programme at ODI and was formerly the Deputy Director. As Deputy Director he oversaw significant internal reforms within the organisation.
  • Dena Lomofsky: Dena is an experienced evaluator with a particular interest in policy research programmes and think tanks. She has been recently involved in an evaluation of a large regional programme led by a South African think tank.
  • Ben Davies: Ben is one of the key architects of the Knowledge Sector Initiative in Indonesia. He left DFAT (Australia) to join the University of Sidney.

Their comments were added to those provided by Vanesa Weyrauch, Stephen Yeo, and Enrique Mendizabal and provided to each of the teams.

Each team, too, participated in a conference call with the coordinators to discuss the reviewers’ feedback. These were taken into account to be incorporated into a new version of the proposal (which will take the form of a formal response from the team).

During September we will be busy reviewing the responses and arranging contracts with the participants. Also, we will be organising the second global event in Jakarta, Indonesia. We will be posting details of the schedule soon.