Who Is in the Lab?

Who is in the RINGO Social Lab? And how were they select­ed?

The RINGO “Social Lab” is at the heart of our project, and it was designed to cre­ate the con­di­tions need­ed to reimag­ine and co-cre­ate path­ways for gen­uine change. The mem­bers of this group have com­mit­ted to col­lab­o­rate on redesign­ing and trans­form­ing the INGO sys­tem.

In April 2021, the Lab gath­ered 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. Lab mem­bers have been asked to con­tribute as indi­vid­u­als, and do not rep­re­sent their orga­ni­za­tion (for those from or affil­i­at­ed with orga­ni­za­tions). Since we start­ed to launch the RINGO pro­to­types in March 2022, we have wel­comed many new Lab mem­bers who joined as part of the pro­to­typ­ing teams. The RINGO Social Lab cur­rent­ly has 95 con­trib­u­tors.

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.

For our orig­i­nal cohort, we sought par­tic­i­pants who could bring in dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, who are strate­gic thinkers, and who will be able to influ­ence change.

When review­ing appli­ca­tions to the Lab, peo­ple were asked about:

• lead­er­ship expe­ri­ence,
• expe­ri­ence of work­ing in or in col­lab­o­ra­tion with INGOs,
• and some expe­ri­ence of work­ing from an inter­na­tion­al and local per­spec­tive.

We looked for those indi­vid­u­als who have influ­ence with a wider group of stake­hold­ers that they inter­act with (e.g. INGOs, social move­ments, fun­ders etc.), and who can advo­cate for change or are in a posi­tion to influ­ence change. We want­ed peo­ple in the Lab who would be pre­pared to engage in out­reach with stake­hold­ers through­out the process, and who would take the ini­tia­tive to do so.

We looked for strate­gic thinkers, who are:

• impa­tient for change and uneasy with the sta­tus quo,
• and who have a keen inter­est in being part of a pos­i­tive change and con­tribut­ing to and imple­ment­ing solu­tions to the prob­lem.

Hav­ing screened appli­cants against these cri­te­ria, we then delib­er­ate­ly sought to bal­ance out the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• Geo­graph­ic dis­tri­b­u­tion – we aimed to have bal­anced par­tic­i­pa­tion from non-west­ern INGO host coun­tries
• Organ­i­sa­tion­al dis­tri­b­u­tion – we sought a diverse cross-sec­tion of organ­i­sa­tion­al, the­mat­ic and sec­toral expe­ri­ence ‘in the room’, e.g. devel­op­ment, human­i­tar­i­an, envi­ron­ment, peace-build­ing etc.
• Out­siders – we searched for a small num­ber of par­tic­i­pants from ‘out­side’ of civ­il soci­ety who are still part of the ‘sys­tem’, i.e. those from social enter­prise, aca­d­e­mics, donors etc.
• Final­ly, when curat­ing and bal­anc­ing the group, we con­sid­ered the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of youth, gen­der, race and eth­nic­i­ty, to ensure that the Lab would include diverse voic­es.

The charts below give a snap­shot of the orig­i­nal Lab in terms of its diver­si­ty and rep­re­sen­ta­tion. (We are still gath­er­ing data from the new­er Lab mem­bers)

*This is a reflec­tion of where mem­bers are based, rather than their nation­al­i­ty; a num­ber of those based in the Glob­al North are mem­bers of dif­fer­ent dias­po­ra from oth­er regions