Insights & Reflections

Thoughts on digital strategy, program design, and the future of civil society.

Beyond the Digital Divide: How Civil Society in Uganda Is Pioneering AI Adoption at the Grassroots Level

Reflections from Managing a Groundbreaking AI Baseline Study in Central and Southwestern Uganda

Building Digital Capacity: Two Days That Transformed How Uganda's CSOs Think About AI

Forty participants. Two days. One mission: demystifying artificial intelligence for the organizations doing grassroots development work.

Communications Is Not Visibility - It Is Institutional Legitimacy Infrastructure

When organizations hire communications staff, they often imagine someone who will make them "more visible." They want more social media followers, higher website traffic, press mentions that prove the organization exists. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what communications does in knowledge-producing institutions.

Engagement Is Not Participation: Why Well-Attended Programs Still Produce No Change

The workshop had excellent attendance. Seventy people showed up, representing government agencies, civil society organizations, technology companies, and community groups. The venue was full. The photographs were shared widely on social media. The organizers marked the event as a success in their quarterly report. Six months later, none of the recommendations from that workshop had been implemented. The policies discussed remained unchanged. The partnerships proposed never materialized. The participants who offered to contribute their expertise were never contacted again.

The Handbooks We Needed But Couldn't Find: Creating AI Literacy Resources for Uganda's Civil Society

When you can't find the right resource, sometimes you have to build it yourself.

Project Thinking Is Slowly Killing Institutional Strategy

There's a pattern I've watched repeat itself across dozens of organizations over the past several years. A nonprofit secures a significant grant - eighteen months, maybe two years of funding for digital capacity building or community engagement or research infrastructure. The leadership is energized. Staff are mobilized. New tools are procured, new workflows designed, training sessions scheduled. Six months in, the work is humming. Twelve months in, reports are being written. Eighteen months in, everyone is applying for the next grant. And when that next grant comes - as it sometimes does - it arrives with its own logic, its own platforms, its own reporting templates, its own theory of change.

We Keep Building Digital Projects. We Never Build Digital Organizations.

I've spent the last several years working with civil society organizations across East Africa - nonprofits, think tanks, advocacy groups, cultural institutions - helping them think through what they call "digital transformation." I've sat in strategy sessions, facilitated workshops, reviewed monitoring dashboards, and watched Slack workspaces go silent three months after launch.

When AI Meets Grassroots Impact: Managing Three Days That Changed How We Think About Civic Innovation

Thirty-five participants. Three days. Three winning teams. �30,000 in grants. And lessons that every CSO leader needs to hear.

Why Impact Organizations Struggle With Money - Even When Funding Exists

There is a particular kind of frustration that settles over nonprofit leadership teams sometime around month eight of a twelve-month grant cycle. The program is running well. Deliverables are on track. The work matters. But the conversation has already shifted to what happens next - what to apply for, which donor to cultivate, whether the team will still exist in six months. The work continues, but it does so under a shadow.

Organizations Don't Forget Because People Leave - They Forget Because Systems Don't Remember

There's a moment that happens in nearly every organization I've worked with. Someone in a meeting says, "Didn't we do something like this before?" and the room goes quiet. A few people nod uncertainly. Someone mentions a former staff member who might have led it. Another person thinks they saw a report about it once. Eventually, someone volunteers to "look into it" - which usually means searching through email archives and shared drives, finding fragments, and ultimately deciding it's easier to start fresh.

Beyond the Project Economy: Rethinking Civil Society Sustainability Through Digital Infrastructure

The scenario is familiar to anyone who has worked in civil society for more than a few years. An organization secures a grant, assembles a team, launches an ambitious program, builds momentum, produces reports, and then watches as everything slows to a crawl when the funding cycle ends. Staff are let go or reassigned. Institutional knowledge fragments. Digital systems fall into disrepair. The work continues, but always with the anxious awareness that sustainability depends on the next successful application, the next donor alignment, the next window of opportunity.