During my work with former Governor General David Johnston to develop the Rideau Hall Foundation, Mr. Johnston frequently referenced “barn raising” in meetings as an example of the great potential enabled by galvanizing collective energy and to demonstrate that one of Canada’s strengths is collaborating to build things together. Given the collective energy and aspiration following the first convening on R&D in the social sector in 2015 (read more in the first blog of this series), I felt that catalyzing a social R&D ecosystem must similarly be a collective effort. I took a page from the former Governor General’s book and attempted to foster a "barn raising" effort.

As the community interested in working together grew, there were two distinct sets of interests and strengths for the collective build. First, there were people interested in development, who became the development group, comprised largely of practitioners who wanted to work shoulder to shoulder on the ecosystem itself and lead the development of its diverse components. Second, there were people interested and ready for stewardship, who became the stewardship group, comprised largely of sector leaders and funders who would champion and advise the work of the development group. The idea was that these two groups could support one another and work in tandem through the collective ecosystem build process ...

We quickly learned that the "collective build" approach  —  with developers (practitioners) prototyping different parts of the ecosystem and stewards (funders and sector leaders) supporting them  —  was an idea that was good in theory, but not in practice. A common reflection across participants was that there is a combination of factors that make a barn raising approach challenging, including the nascent nature of social R&D as a field, propensity for a single point of leadership, people’s bandwidth, among other things.

Read the full article about catalyzing a social R&D ecosystem by Vinod Rajasekaran at Medium.