Cultivating Change by Numbers
After a bit of time off work, I've had the oddly satisfying task of compiling a master spreadsheet of every Cultivating Change project we’ve completed. And wow, it's impressive! Especially given that in that time we’ve dealt with multiple chronic illnesses, a new baby, working part-time and juggling life and little people.
So what did I find? Since 2020 Cultivating Change has completed 46 projects for 35 organisations.
Of these 46 projects:
34 (81%) were domestic (here in Australia), and 12 had an international focus.
For 37 projects (83%) we were the lead organisation; the other nine we were working as subcontractors
Guess what our most common type of project was? No surprises here! We’ve spent most of our time on core MEL tasks, but we do also love the variety:
MEL frameworks or theories of change - 12 projects
Conducting an evaluation or review - 10 projects
MEL capacity building - seven projects
Planning for an evaluation or review - four projects
Other types of work included data analyses, MEL partner to projects (from design to evaluation), communication of findings, facilitation, GEDSI advisor, literature reviews and developing assessment tools.
Our projects covered more than 13 different topics!
The most common* were projects covering prevention of violence (14 projects), diversity and inclusion (8 projects), sexual and reproductive health and rights (7 projects) and responses to violence (7 projects)
Other topics included mental health, alcohol and other drugs, crime prevention and safety, community legal support, women's economic empowerment, gender equality, governance and leadership.
We most commonly worked at the organisational and system levels*
* Note projects can cover more than one topic or level
We worked with a great bunch of other consultants and collaborators on many of these projects; shout out to (in alphabetical order): Anna Vu, Eva Burke, Fran Demetriou, Gillian Eva, Jayne Pilkinton, Jen Riley, Jill Thomas, Jo Farmer, Kat Watson, Kate Baker, Mel Collins, Michelle Weinberger, Naomi Carter, Natasha Ludowyk, Nicky Teggelove and Taimur Siddiqi. Also Annemarie Reerink, Didar Ali Didar and Francesca Lawe-Davies from Abt & Associates, Heidi Peterson and Ulla Keech-Marx from Clear Horizon, Sarah Callaghan from Collaboration for Impact and Claire Grealy from Rooftop Social.
Organisation wise, the 35 organisations we worked with were typically in the health, family violence or social welfare sectors. The most common type of organisation we worked with were domestic NGO, networks/peak/coalitions and government agencies. We also worked with state and local governments, international NGOs, academic institutes, managing contractors and UN/multilateral agencies. Eight organisations liked us so much they got us back more than once 🙂
Now that the numbers are done, next up on the consulting admin list is a website update! Early next year we plan to update our website to include short project profiles of all our work to date, along with links to our outputs and resources that are shared online. Watch this space!
Thanks for reading; I hope you found the results of our number crunching at least mildly interesting 😂
May you and your loved ones have a relaxing and restful holiday period, and look forward to reconnecting in the new year.
Photo Credit: Kati Hoehl on Unsplash