Report

Wisdom in the Collective: Navigating tricky terrain from authoritarian tech to #shiftthepower in practice

We are delighted to share our report for the first half of 2021 that offers plenty to dig into.

You will find our take on:

• Navigating shifts in context since the start of the year. These are both external, such as ramifications of the new Biden Administration, and internal, such as strategic shifts in certain members and changes in TAI staffing;
• Progress seen against our Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) plan indicators, including headline data from the annual member survey, and confirmation of continued strong member engagement, e.g. 48 member representatives joining 16 TAI virtual events from January to June. All but one call saw three or more member funders in attendance.
• A recap of what we have been doing across our strategic outcome areas – What We Fund, How We Fund, and Funder Landscape – ranging from our climate and TPA scan to highlighting civil society roles in effective tax administration to launching our public member grants database to responding to 10 member bilateral requests.
• What we’re learning along the way. For example, we are finding traction with non-member funders spanning both the What We Fund and How We Fund work pillars; outcomes harvesting is proving a useful methodology for assessing contribution to global advocacy advances; the collaboration with Voice grantmaking facility is affirming that groups representing disadvantaged communities are able to leverage transparency, participation, and accountability (TPA) approaches, but the default starting point seems to be in securing access to information to reinforce their self-ad­vocacy.
• How we’ve been doing it – attention to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and JusticeDiversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ), communications, revenue and spend, and more
• What we are looking forward to in the second half of the year, including proactive dissemination of the TAI member contributions to beneficial ownership transparency evaluation.

Happy reading!