Our Approach

Cadence centers communities at the driving seat of grant-making. We do this by advising donors, philanthropists and philanthropic institutions on which investments to make based on a two-step community consultation process.

Firstly, we assist donors shortlist grant applications. Our shortlisting process relies on rigorous triangulation of the grantee’s existing portfolio. This means investigating their reported impact, reach and programs thus far. If the proposed technique truly builds on lessons learned and gains made by prior interventions and most importantly, if the interventions proposed truly respond to real community needs. We prioritize local actors who have sustained impact and ties to communities over large-scale organizations with well-financed media coverage.

Shortlisted grant applications are progressed to step two. Step Two is a highly participatory community consultative process. All shortlisted applications are anonymized and converted into rich illustrations. This is to remove any preferential evaluation of organizations in the consultative process and provide a shared visual guide accessible to non-academic audiences. Through Cadence’s network of academic institutions rooted in the intended geography, community members and actors which constitute an intervention’s intended community are engaged for consultations. Consultative processes follow Cadence’s unique methodology which relies on principles of visual based research methods and art-based evaluation such as photo elicitation. We utilize these spaces to listen to communities’ critique of the relevance and social value of proposed interventions. We challenge communities to debate the sustainability of proposed interventions free of any potential bias towards specific organizations.

Community feedback is then consolidated and conveyed to the donor. Through this, donors are made aware of which interventions intended communities’ evaluate as relevant, sustainable and socially valuable.