RINGO FAQs

1. What is RINGO?

The RINGO Project is a sys­tems change project that seeks to trans­form glob­al civ­il soci­ety to respond to today’s chal­lenges. We are host­ed by Rights CoLab, a net­work of glob­al social change lead­ers.

2. How will the RINGO project work with exist­ing ini­tia­tives?

We are look­ing to add val­ue with this project, not to dupli­cate, repeat or take away from oth­er ini­tia­tives. We want RINGO to build on and learn from oth­er things, and help to ampli­fy and accel­er­ate those that are gen­uine­ly trans­for­ma­tive. We are cur­rent­ly draw­ing togeth­er a full set of rel­e­vant research and writ­ings on this sub­ject, so that we can learn from and sign-post oth­er think­ing. We are also draw­ing up a ‘dash­board’ that will log all the efforts we know about by INGOs and oth­ers to shift and trans­form their prac­tices.

3. What do you mean by trans­for­ma­tion­al?

The project will look at rad­i­cal and pow­er-shift­ing exper­i­ments tak­ing place with­in the sec­tor. It will con­sid­er INGO col­lab­o­ra­tion, pol­i­cy (both inter­nal and exter­nal), and fund­ing mod­els, which will be shaped and test­ed through pro­to­types and the suc­cess­ful scale up of suc­cess­ful ones. More infor­ma­tion can be found here.

4. How do we par­tic­i­pate? (South­ern and North­ern CSOs, INGO, Fun­der, Net­work, Aca­d­e­mics etc.)

There are many ways that you can get involved. Here are a few:

1) If you are part of a rad­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion process in an INGO/NGO then you might be need­ed in an Action Pod at a lat­er date, to cap­ture real-time learn­ing. You can tell us about your process here.

2) If you are a fun­der then you could invest in this excit­ing and impor­tant project to help forge the future of glob­al CSOs. You can also join the Fun­der Action Pod, being host­ed by the Coun­cil on Foun­da­tions. – please get in touch here if that’s you.

5. You only have 55 indi­vid­u­als in the Social Lab – what about the wider sec­tor?

The Social Lab includes a broad range of stake­hold­ers, but we will also draw from the expe­ri­ence and think­ing from a wide range of actors beyond the Lab, and ensure their views are drawn into the process. We will also be reflect­ing on the real time expe­ri­ence of NGOs as they go through change, through the action research process. We will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing reg­u­lar­ly to keep the wider sec­tor informed about how the process is evolv­ing and to share the learn­ing that is emerg­ing from our process, via blogs and pod­casts.  Our Action Pods are also expect­ed to engage the wider sec­tor, as these grow and devel­op.

6. How will the process be facil­i­tat­ed?

We have part­nered with a glob­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive facil­i­ta­tion team – Reos Part­ners – who have expe­ri­ence in steer­ing sys­tems change process­es and using a mix of inno­v­a­tive meth­ods.

For now, we are work­ing entire­ly online. Reos are facil­i­tat­ing the think­ing and process­es of the Social Lab, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the core RINGO team.

7. Is this an anti-INGO ini­tia­tive?

No. We want to explore what is need­ed in glob­al civ­il soci­ety in the future. There are no pre-pre­scribed answers and it may or may not relate to the cur­rent dom­i­nant INGO mod­el.  Our start­ing point is that we still need con­nec­tion at the inter­na­tion­al lev­el, but we make no assump­tions about what that should look like. We also see that what­ev­er emerges, it needs to com­ple­ment and ensure stronger nation­al and sub­na­tion­al civ­il soci­eties too.

8. Isn’t this an over­ly long and expen­sive process? Is there a risk of it becom­ing a drain on resources in the sec­tor? Are we going to miss the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make change in real time?

We are keen to keep this process light, fit for pur­pose and cur­rent. We are inten­tion­al­ly not set­ting up a new orga­ni­za­tion, but an inno­va­tion space that is nim­ble and time-lim­it­ed where results can be embed­ded else­where after the life of the project. We are pur­pose­ful­ly doing this work now so that we take advan­tage of the cur­rent dis­rup­tion already hap­pen­ing in the sec­tor — as a result of COVID, Black Lives Mat­ter, and mas­sive shifts in Aid.

9. How did you select the Advi­so­ry Board and the Core Team?

The Core Team came togeth­er as col­leagues work­ing on var­i­ous projects who are pas­sion­ate about civ­il soci­ety, but col­lec­tive­ly believe that step-change is need­ed in how it func­tions, espe­cial­ly at the INGO lev­el. We come from a range of back­grounds in civ­il soci­ety and from dif­fer­ent regions.

The Advi­so­ry Board mem­bers were iden­ti­fied for their spe­cif­ic expe­ri­ence, skillset and per­spec­tive from dif­fer­ent parts of the sec­tor and from dif­fer­ent geo­gra­phies. They each come with incred­i­ble track records as indi­vid­u­als and are being asked to be on the board as such, although rec­og­niz­ing that a num­ber of them do cur­rent­ly sit with­in rel­e­vant orga­ni­za­tions.

10. What do you mean by ‘Pro­to­types’ and how will these be select­ed?

A pro­to­type will be any project that the core group of par­tic­i­pants iden­ti­fies as high­ly trans­for­ma­tive for the sec­tor and civ­il soci­ety over­all: it could be linked to a fund­ing or gov­er­nance inno­va­tion, for exam­ple, or some­thing else. Advi­so­ry board mem­bers will also help us to agree the cri­te­ria for any pro­to­types emerg­ing from the lab.

11. Why make the INGO the focus of the process, when in fact it may not be the right frame­work going for­ward [and is los­ing pow­er]?

In spite of the mount­ing cri­tiques of INGOs, there con­tin­ues to be a role for a glob­al­ly con­nect­ed and mul­ti-lat­er­al civ­il soci­ety, able to build shared knowl­edge, exper­tise, and momen­tum towards glob­al change. Research we con­duct­ed in 2020 showed that south­ern CSOs rec­og­nize the poten­tial and need for INGOs but that the active rela­tion­ships with INGOs are not cur­rent­ly work­ing. Of the over 600 orga­ni­za­tions we sur­veyed, 85% acknowl­edged that exist­ing part­ner­ships with INGOs were not mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial, but favor­ing north­ern INGOs instead.

RINGO is about ask­ing what we need at the glob­al civ­il soci­ety lev­el in order to address sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and social jus­tice. Many in the #shift­the­p­ow­er move­ment often talk about INGOs as being block­ers to change. They are a sig­nif­i­cant part of the sys­tem that can enable or pre­vent change, often the dom­i­nant group receiv­ing fund­ing from gov­ern­ment, and act­ing as a con­duit to oth­er CSOs. Thus, whilst INGOs are our ‘unit of change’, we see a dual pur­pose, address­ing how we shift more pow­er and resource to nation­al and local civ­il soci­eties and away from a cen­tral­ized INGO mod­el that doesn’t rein­force the same issues under a dif­fer­ent guise. Equal­ly impor­tant, is to see more pow­er in the inter­na­tion­al sys­tem ascribed to local actors, ampli­fy­ing the pow­er they already have, but that has been oth­er­wise mar­gin­al­ized in the cur­rent sys­tem.

12. Is the Social Lab skewed towards the ‘North’ and exist­ing INGO voic­es?

The Lab gath­ers togeth­er ‘the sys­tem’ of INGOs in a micro­cosm of 55 peo­ple. When curat­ing this group, our aim was to gath­er a broad range of par­tic­i­pants from dif­fer­ent geo­gra­phies, types of orga­ni­za­tions, and rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent races, gen­ders and so on. Par­tic­i­pants have been asked to par­tic­i­pate as indi­vid­u­als, and do not rep­re­sent their orga­ni­za­tion (for those from or affil­i­at­ed with orga­ni­za­tions). It is by no means a per­fect col­lec­tive in terms of diver­si­ty, but we believe it sits some­where between a reflec­tion of the sys­tem as it is cur­rent­ly, and the sys­tem we hope to see in the future. You can see more on Lab mem­ber­ship here.