A panel discussing the "challenges for Challenges" as Marnie Webb explains, with Will Schmidt of Global Development Commons and more.

Mark Summer from Inveneo

Background: working with start ups in the tech space, some business background. had a strong "Silicon Valley" background in addressing issues. NGOs who wanted to use technology for their work are challenged with developing and implementing. Wanted to address that chalenge by looking at technologies that work in those areas, where you don't have power from an electricity grid, heat issues, users are inexperienced.   Training the staff who can maintain the technologies is a challenge, because once they are trained they move on to work for local cellular companies, etc. Had to focus on the local areas and implemented a capacity building program that helped with open source, linux, solar power, etc. We see it more of a sustainable model.

Mozambique Example: requests for sms-based solutions. One way organizations are reaching out is via sms, like a hostpital who provides meds for HIV patients needs to be able to ensure that patients stay on the regiment and so forth.   Health care workers used to come once a month, get a list of people who didn't show up, then try to find them or find out what's going on.   Then report - at least a month's turnaround.   So, now they are using an sms based system to send information from the hospital to the rural health care workers to cut down on that month-long turn around for reporting and efficiency.

Now, the task is to share that knowledge with others in the region so they don't need to come to the US for help creating a process like that.

Gavin White

Background: lack of enterprise grade tools that you could lease, buy, use online for nonprofits working in or with the developing world, so set out to solve that problem.   Haven't yet launched (3 months out).   Hope to launch in Bangledesh or India. Have approached the problem with the assumption that there are usually at least "program offices" located with internet access.

Will Schmidt of Global Development Commons

Background: sitting in a place that's both inward and outward facing, hoping to change things inside and outside the agency.   We can address 3 of the most pressing issues the sphere is facing: 1. taking things to scale (a defining challenge of the times), 2. building or working with exisiting innovators (NetSquared has been a great example), 3. play a key role in contributing to government transparency (Data.gov is part of that). A number of initiatives we've focused on have been on open government and ethic.   It's now what's expected.

Examples: 1. Currently supporting IntraHealth OPEN initiative, open source software for health systems management in Africa and creating the network of practicioners of mhealth in sub-saharan Africa. 2. Modeling a process based on the IBM Innovation Jam model for our partners. The idea is to remake the IBM Innovation Jam for our staff. A key opportunity to show that we are about open government by asking all staff to voice and collaborate around issues and ideas.

Challenge Discussion

Open call for innovative ideas for mobile technology for any development issue.   You can see more about the Challenge and winners here.

Showed potential for new, unititiated partners working with us. We are accused of recycling our partnerships and there is fairness to that. But with this Challenge we had people and organizations we had never heard of or worked with coming out with their ideas.   Also got practitioners in the organization really excited to participate.   Currently exploring more partnership opportunities with Challenge participants. We are going to do another Challenge, but we don't know what the focus will be yet.   We've talked about mhealth, development, USAID missions, etc.   We are going to have a lot of company really soon, as more US Goverment offices (White House) look to the Challenge model.

Marnie Webb: what point do you hit saturation? When are people tired of voting? Do we lose value by doing it over and over?

Gavin: the market will tell you when it isn't valuable because no one will apply/participate but we are a long way from that.   The Challenge space is vibrant, just look at the university circuit in the US.   Plus, there are connections and relationships and opportunities to connect people and projects.   We didn't need $10,000 - we needed like $100,000 so we didn't enter for the money. We participated because of the model, being able to collaborate and network with the participants.   There are so many attractive projects, that are innovative, and work at scale.   There was also an open invitation to continue participating even if you weren't a finalists (others invited to the conference, etc.).

Will: Concerned with people doing Challenges for the sake of it.

Mark:   Our emphasis is to challenge the community, in our case the in-country community to think of problems, think of solutions, and then start working on them.   It gives it an opportunity for innovation to bubble up from the bottom.   To look at what comes up and what has worked there is really exciting.   The Challenges can be really effective once they hit the ground.

Audience: how would you say that the Challenge model is in line with USAID taking successes and scaling them up - how do you see the blossoming of scale gets to that point?

Marnie: Early on, USAID was interested in scaling up a wider community to be addressing the problems.   Like, how do we find out about the things that aren't the giant projects (because those often filter up to USAID on their own).

Will: My prediction is that we aren't going to go that much bigger.   One of our key challenges is to better leverage and support the very disperate projects that need to connect.

Mark: We provide tools to our local partners who apply those tools in very different ways. They may address education or health or microfinance all via solar power training, for example.   Need to have a process that funders can become aware of successful projects and a Challenge model can do that.

Gavin: Two conditions have to be met: 1. have to recognize a project is worth supporting and 2. if you are an NGO, the idea of replication gets shoved down your throat - there needs to be a nurturing and recognizing of good projects. Leverage is much more important than forcing the dogfood.  

Audience: what have you learned about required resources for the Challenge process?

Marnie: One thing we need is a better and more scaleable platform, for one. When we first started we didn't think we would have as much interest or success. So, be prepared for the community to take it over. Next is connecting the communities of support - bringing in experitise or connections that project groups might not have access to. We have to make it easier for partners to give away money and all of that, but in the interest of supporting innovators long-term we need to have good ways to connect the communities.   For this to really work, they need to get exposed to people with resources/skills/funding/etc. And how do we track it and make it more accessible (projects who will get funding at N2Y4 that isn't the N2Y4 cash award, for example).  

Will: We had folks getting really excited and interested in implemnting ideas, whether they were the official winners or not. Small scale stuff is hard for us and the AID model will continue to evolve.   Providing support services is a good interim answer. I hope it evolves to the point that we can provide rapid funding, but most government agencies aren't prepared to do that.

Audience: there's the challenge just to do the Challenge, then there's the service side. How would you do it differently if your goal was just to do the Challenge or just to do incubation?

Marnie: that incubation model has been a hard one for us to grasp because we would have to get all of the other resources a project needs to be successful but with the Challenge you can focus and drive attention.   So, how do you connect that to longer range resources?   The human cost is really high for project teams to articulate what they really need and then find people who can really contirubte.   USAID is a funder, not an incubator, but still interested in not just funding the winners but long-term support.   There are hurdles that have to be crossed that have nothing to do with the projects.

Will: we had legal issues that had nothing to do with funding projects.   Need to eliminate risk aversion if we want to really support social innovation. The incubation piece, well, we are looking at building a business development part, at least for the winners. But we would need to try it to see if it works. And we are in Washington and the projects are out in the field.   I'm sure there are things we can learn from ongoing Challenge efforts, too.

Audience: voting process...who's voting? And how does it work?

Marnie: when I worry about saturation I worry about voters, the project submitters are passionate and have an appetite for participating but maintaining knowledgeable voters that want to plug in in a smart way...We have been lucky with our Challenges that we've had a high number of voters. Ensure there isn't any "gaming" by requiring more than 1 vote to participate.   When we run Challenges with parterns we recommend that the second vote (final vote) is a jury.   One thing we have thought about is that the ability for projects to recruit supporters was a measure of the issues and the problems people wanted solved.

Will: our panel was 8 or 9 people and they kind of coalesed around 6 of the final 15 projects but there was disagreement.

Marnie: I don't think Challenges should be the only way to give away money.

Audience: so, how do you select the jury?

Will: We wanted half the jury to be internal USAID folks, then recruited others from the mobile tech sector (social entrepreneurs, etc.).   A reflection of our partners and enough internal people to generat support.

Audience: would it be possible to do the incubation if you required the project focused on social change AND had a sustainability model?

Marnie: we think that exists and that isn't necessarily the niche we need to build. There are lot of groups doing that for green right now, etc.

Will: There may be a point at which it is appropriate to do that and we have discussed doing a challenge about the development pyramid, etc. A huge chunck of our participants are nonprofits and it wouldn't be appropriate to exclude them.

THANKS!