Fail Festivals are a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in philanthropy.

In the spirit of examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple, the Florida Philanthropic Forum recently hosted at Fail Festival at their Statewide Summit on Philanthropy.

Philanthropy Feedback Problem

One theme that cut across all the presentations is a lack of honest feedback in philanthropy.  There are often several layers of power dynamics and cultural norms that inhibit honest feedback, including:

• Grantees scared of offending a major donor
• Staff not wanting to share negative news
• Peers unwilling to tell friends the truth

It takes an open mind and an open personality that embraces failure as a normal business experience to solicit and accept feedback as a true sign of caring and involvement.

How to Encourage Philanthropy Feedback

Soliciting and listening to feedback is a critical strategy in philanthropy. It is the first step in integrating feedback to enhance program effectiveness and fostering a more inclusive and impactful form of philanthropy.

1. Listen to Front Line Staff

The people closest to a problem are often closest to the solution. Actively engage with staff and community leaders and solicit their insights through various feedback mechanisms. Listen to the needs and challenges within a community with direct conversations and indirect  surveys and feedback forms.

2. Address Power Dynamics

Power dynamics can inhibit open communication. Approach feedback sessions as equal partners in the development process. This is one reason why leaders always go first in Fail Festivals – to show everyone that failure happens to everyone, and that’s okay.

3. Act on Feedback

Effective philanthropic feedback isn’t just about collecting ideas. It’s also about actively incorporating  the input into the program planning, implementation, and evaluation phases of projects.  Then ensuring that interventions are responsive and adaptive to changing contexts.

4. Showcase Changes

The final step is very important. Once programs change based on feedback, makes sure those who gave the feedback are aware that they effected the changes. This builds trust that feedback is listened to and acted upon, promotes transparency and collaboration, and creates meaningful engagement and feedback in future efforts.

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I recently led a Fail Festival for Grantmakers In Aging’s annual conference. It was wonderful to participate in-person again after hosting virtual Fail Fests during the pandemic.

GIA is a community of funders mobilizing money and ideas to strengthen resources for us, as we age. They were excited for their members to speak about their failures in supporting older adults and how we can all learn to speak about failure in our organizations.

5 Ways to Talk About Failure at Work

I was honored when their CEO brought forth four ideas from the Fail Festival in her keynote presentation to close the conference. She inspired many members to reflect on their organization’s culture and adopt these themes.

1. Recognize and Accept Failure

Life and Fail Festivals teach us that failure happens. Failure is multifaceted, nuanced, and occurring right now in each of our organizations. We all know it. Now accept it. Then talk about it and learn from it.

Your organization does not need to have a Fail Fest each year to recognize that failure happens and to learn from it. The point is not to celebrate failure for the sake of a good laugh. We want to celebrate failure as innovation and learning.

2. Honestly Talk About Failure

We should all do a better job of talking about failure openly in our organizations. There are many ways to do this.

• We can start by being more honest with our staff.
• We can be more accepting with grantees and partners.
• We can even have our own internal Fail Fests.

Whatever method we choose, the Fail Fest concept should give you strength to take calculated risks, to think big, invest in the big leaps moving us all in a new direction.

3. Encourage Innovations

How can we encourage innovation in our own organizations? In our partners and grantees? Here is an idea: fail small, fast, and open.

Set up and fund experiments – too small for log frames or onerous reporting requirements, but large enough to try out an idea. Then shower your innovators with these grants. The only requirement is to honestly, openly test a specific theory of change and document the results.

Do not anticipate success with all the ideas that you invest in. In fact, expect multiple failures, just like a venture capitalist. Invest in the ideas that work, don’t sweat the ideas that do not.

Crucially, have everyone present their idea and result publicly – so we can also learn faster.

4. Demand a Minimum Level of Failure

If failure is a mark of innovation and risk taking, then we should be demanding a minimum level of failure as a proxy for how innovative an organization is.

Say something like a 10% of projects by number or value.

This is large enough to get staff attention and motivation, new enough that donors and funders will want to support it, but small enough that failure of any one project, or even groups of them, will not cause undue stress for organizational leadership.

5. Make Learning from Failure a Norm

Now along with accepting failure, we should expect the organization to show it learned from that failure – in that project and in their activities overall. And be public about it.

The goal is to establish a level of failure as healthy for the overall philanthropic community – for us, and for donors, and the public in general. So we can get past failure-as-catastrophic mindset and into thinking of failure as risk tolerance in innovation.

In fact, the point of Fail Festival events is to show that failure is an option and it is acceptable – today and throughout the year

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It’s time for a Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible and profitable.

The 10th Annual Small Business Leadership Conference, presented by the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship, part of the Florida State University College of Business, is on a mission to make failure acceptable in small business discussions.

There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Three panelists will join Keynote Speaker Wayan Vota to talk about their past business fails and lessons learned for future success at the Thursday Keynote Session.

Then we’ll open up the discussion for audience participation and hear about failure they have had in business either before or during the pandemic, how they overcame, and why their failure shaped them for success in their current or new business.

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Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2017. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Join us for the 7th annual event, and expect much laughter as 300 of your peers and colleagues navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learn how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival 2017 will be hosted by the Digital Impact Alliance, Plan International, TechChange, and FHI 360 on Thursday, December 7th, in Academy Hall. We will have an open bar and tasty nibbles to lubricate the conversation and celebrate the capstone ICT4Drinks event of the year.

Sign up now to attend – a ticket is mandatory for attendance.

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Featured Presenters (so far!)

• Jacob Korenblum, Souktel Digital Solutions
• Tessie San Martin, Plan International USA
• Peter Benjamin, HealthEnabled
• Laura Walker McDonald, Social Impact Lab
• Imani Cheers, The George Washington University
• Nick Martin, TechChange
• Joan Parker, Counterpart International
• Robert Salerno, DAI
• DK Gurung, The Be Well Initiative
• Wayan Vota, Kurante
• And you? Apply now to present!

Agenda

• 5:30-6:45pm – Open Bar Happy Hour
• 6:45-8:00pm – Fail Festival
• 8:00-8:30pm – Applause and Last Call

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Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2016. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Join us for the 6th annual event, and expect much laughter as 300 of your peers and colleagues navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learn how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival 2016 will be hosted by FHI 360 on Thursday, December 1st, in Academy Hall. We will have an open bar and tasty nibbles to lubricate the conversation and celebrate the capstone ICT4Drinks event of the year.

Sign up now to attend – a ticket is mandatory for attendance.

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Featured Presenters

• Jacob Korenblum, Souktel Digital Solutions
• Ann Hudock, Plan International USA
• Dean Karlan, Innovations for Poverty Action
• Fiona Macaulay, Equal Means
• Nick Martin, TechChange
• David Ratliff, USAID
• Teresa Crawford, Social Sector Accelerator
• Wayan Vota, FHI 360
• Merrick Schaefer, USAID
• And you? Apply now to present!

Agenda

• 5:30-6:45pm – Open Bar Happy Hour
• 6:45-8:00pm – Fail Festival
• 8:00-8:30pm – Applause and Last Call

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Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why its time for Fail Festival 2015. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

Join us for the 5th annual event, and expect much laughter as 300 of your peers and colleagues navel-gaze at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learn how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival 2015 will be hosted by FHI360 on Thursday, December 10th, in Academy Hall.  We will have an open bar and tasty nibbles to lubricate the conversation and celebrate the capstone ICT4Drinks event of the year.

Sign up now to attend – a ticket is mandatory for attendance.

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Featured Presenters

• Ann Hudock, Senior VP, Plan International USA
• Patrick Fine, CEO, FHI 360
• Susan Davis, Executive Director, Improve International
• Jacob Korenblum, CEO, Souktel Digital Solutions
• Winston Carroo, Director, Agricultural Missions
• Nick Martin CEO, TechChange
• Karen Snyder, Director, Free the Slaves
• Piers Bocock, Chief of Party, USAID LEARN
• Tova Scherr, Independent Consultant
• Robert Salerno, Development Specialist, DAI

Agenda

• 5:30-6:45pm – Open Bar Happy Hour
• 6:45-8:00pm – Fail Festival
• 8:00-8:30pm – Applause and Last Call

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Fail Festival – a celebration of failure as a mark of leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why it was time for Fail Festival 2014, our 4th annual event, where we had much laughter as 300 of our peers and colleagues navel-gazed at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learned how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival 2014 was hosted by FHI360 on Thursday, December 11th, in Academy Hall. 

Featured Presenters

• Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
• Patrick Fine, CEO, FHI 360
• Ian Schuler, CEO, Development Seed
• Siobhan Green, CEO, Sonjara
• Nick Oatley, COO, Partners for Democratic Change
• Neelley Hicks, Director, United Methodist Communications
• John Hecklinger, CPO, GlobalGiving Foundation
• Nick Martin, President, TechChange
• Anahi Ayala Iacucci, Sr. Innovation Advisor, Internews
• Marcie Cook, Regional Director, PSI
• Robert Salerno, Development Specialist, DAI

And we celebrated in style!

See Chris Neu’s photos and Wayan Vota’s photos of the event.

Failure Happens and Flowers Grow From It

At a typical development meeting, the person responsible for an epic fail would slip into a trapdoor and be consumed by sharks with freakin’ lasers. Yet at Fail Festival 2014, work-related failures from the spectacular to the personal, were proudly shared in laughter with more than 300 international development professionals.

The night started with balls – big beach balls – launched across the massive conference hall by Fail Festival organizer and ringmaster Wayan Vota, dressed in crushed red velvet.

“So I’ve been standing up here, four years now, talking about failure. When I first started, it was just about failure. We’re now going from just failure, to ‘Ah-Ha’: this is what works and this is what doesn’t, and finding guidelines for ICT4D success,” he said. “And I’m really excited about that, because we can move past just the concept of failure in ICT, and now actually talk about how do we improve development overall.”

With eleven presenters Fail Festival calls to mind a USO production with sharp-witted comedy and musical performances, mixed with the self-deprecating insightfulness of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential – a nimble mélange focused on learning from the tragedy of defeat!

Patrick Fine, CEO of FHI360, described his time as a USAID education officer in Swaziland, collaborating with the Ministry of Education. Despite a successful interactive radio program that taught English, which was loved by both students and teachers, Fine expressed how issues of cost and how the program consumed primetime hours for radio stations led to the pilot project ending.

“I though the role of the external educator, like I was coming into the country, was to bring new ideas and to promote innovation,” Fine said. “And the Ministry had the idea that really what we needed to be focused on was country ownership.”

When Fine asked FHI360 colleagues for examples of failures for the festival, he received similar tales of promising projects that collapsed due to external factors; yet, how there was always a silver lining despite the failure.

“It really was an example of how difficult it is to talk about failure, and that inspired a song.” Fine proceeded to play guitar and sing a comedic rendition of Failure Is Not an Option. Soon available for purchase on iTunes, I’m sure.

Read the full summary of Fail Festival DC 2014, “Failue Happens and Flowers Grow from It” by Corey Quinlan Taylor, on ICTworks

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Failure is the f-word of international development. Unspoken in polite company, but a reality in our work. We’re often in market failure environments, so who are we to expect success 100% of the time?

That’s why we had Fail Festival DC 2013. We are on a mission to make failure acceptable in development discussions. There is great value in examining our mistakes and learning from failure as we go beyond the easy and the simple.

We had much laughter as we navel-gazed at where we have all gone wrong in international development… and learned how not to star in next year’s Fail Festival.

Fail Festival DC 2013 was hosted by FHI360 on Thursday, December 5th, in Academy Hall.

Featured Presenters

• Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
• Sean McDonald, CEO, FrontlineSMS
• Diane Griffin, Executive Director, Mercedes Parra Foundation
• Nick Martin, President, TechChange
• Anahi Ayala Iacucci, Senior Innovation Advisor, Internews
• Kristen Roggemann, Strategic Partnership Manager, GSMA
• Wade Channell, Advisor, USAID
• Siobhan Green, CEO, Sonjara
• Robert Salerno, Global Practice Specialist, DAI
• Katherine Townsend, Open Gov
• Azin Mehrnoosh, Founder, CauseLabs
• Ashley Good, CEO, Fail Forward
• Josh Haynes, Senior Development Technologist, USAID
• Ian Schuler, Founder, New Rights Group

And we celebrated in style!

See the photographic proof here.

TechChange went all out with a sing-along-song on how there are no shortcut keys in online learning (watch the video) and Anahi Ayala Iacucci made the key point that sometimes we have to give the finger to our coworkers and funders to keep projects focused.

But the subtle star of the night was Wade Channell’s satire of Paternalist Anonymous, which ended with this great Contractor Prayer:

“Grant me serenity to accept things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the COR who knows the difference.”

All throughout the night, I was impressed by all the presenters’ candor and comedy. Congrats to Dr. Tessie San Martin, Sean McDonald, Diane Griffin, Nick Martin, Anahi Ayala Iacucci, Kristen Roggemann, Wade Channell, Siobhan Green, Robert Salerno, Katherine Townsend, Azin Mehrnoosh, Ashley Good, Josh Haynes, and Ian Schuler for a damn good time.

Overall, I think my favorite presenter was Kristen Roggemann. Kristen reminded me why I love doing Fail Fests to begin with. She decided to present just the day before, as a way to find closure to a traumatic fail she had when she totally bombed a live demo and training with a client.

At first, she wasn’t comfortable talking about the event, but as we discussed it more the day of Fail Fest, she was able to talk through the event with acceptance, then confidence, and finally humor, finding the lessons in what was an open physiological wound. And after presenting at Fail Fest? She loved it, “catharsis all around:, she says.

You may not know this, but the first time I presented at a Fail event, I was scared I’d get fired for talking about how I was failing at two projects. Yet I wanted to admit my errors so badly, I went for it. When my boss found out, she was only mad that I had not included her, which led me to cry with relief that she would accept that I could fail.

The next year, we presented our fails together.

The post Fail Festival DC 2013 appeared first on Fail Festival.

Audience participation was not only encouraged, it was mandatory! We are all peers and none of us is perfect. We had much laughter as we navel-gazed at where we have all gone wrong in ICT and international development.

Yet don’t forget that we are all here to LEARN from failure. Failure is no reason to be ashamed. Failure shows leadership, innovation, and risk-taking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ideas from pilots to global programs.

At Fail Faire DC 2012, there was great value in examining our mistakes as we go beyond the easy and the simple. So while we encouraged irreverence and humor, we didn’t forget to learn something too. Fail Faire DC 2012 was hosted by the World Bank on Friday, November 16, in downtown Washington, DC.

Featured Speakers

• Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
• Aleem Walji, Director, Innovation Labs, World Bank Institute
• Patty Mechael, Executive Director, mHealth Alliance
• Sean McDonald, CEO, FrontlineSMS
• Christine Prefontaine, Founder, Facilitating Change
• James Bontempo, Director of ICT & Innovation, JHU-CCP
• Carol Waters, Technical Advisor, Internews
• Merrick Schaefer, Senior Innovation Specialist, World Bank
• Neelley Hicks, Special Projects Manager, United Methodist Communications
• Dustin Homer, Associate, Development Gateway

Event Photos

Wondering how it went? Check out the photo stream from the event.

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Projects succeed, projects fail. The successes are reported on, the failures are filed away. Or, in the case of most international development and ICT4D projects, pushed under the proverbial rug. Well, its time to bring out the failures, with a sense of humor, and with an honest look at ourselves. Hence was born Fail Faire.

Fail Faire DC featured projects using ICT in international development that have, to put it simply, been a #FAIL. Busted, kaputt. Tongue firmly in cheek, we take a close look at what didn’t work and why projects fail amidst the ICTD hype.

We believe that only if we understand what DOESN’T WORK in this field and stop pushing our failures under the rug, can we collectively learn and get better, more effective, and have greater impact as we go forward.

Fail Faire DC 2011 happened on October 13th at the World Bank and was brought to you by the World Bank, Development Gateway, Inveneo, and Jphiego.

Featured Speakers

• Dr. Tessie San Martin, CEO, Plan International USA
• Ian Schuler, Internet Freedom Programs, U.S. Department of State
• Erin Mote, Chief of Party, USAID Global Broadband and Innovations Alliance
• Andrea Bosch, ICT Advisor and Chief of Party, TILO Egypt, Creative Associates
• Dr. Harshad Sanghvi, Vice President of Innovations & Medical Director, Jhpiego
• Kristin Peterson, CEO & Co-founder, Inveneo
• Brian Forde, President, Llamadas, S.A.
• Allison Stone, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
• Peter Bauman, Conflict Specialist, International Relief & Development
• Jacobo Quintanilla, Director of Humanitarian Media, Internews Network
• Ed Anderson, World Bank, on their 70% ICT4D failure rate
• Sean DeWitt, Technology Programs Manager, Grameen Foundation
• Gerhard Pohl, Senior Director, Development Gateway

Post-Event Coverage

The learning was more than just in the room too. Online and in-person, here are several ways to stay in the FailFaireDC theme:

1. Read Plan’s CEO on her experience. Dr. Tessie San Martin has a great write up of her thoughts on FailFaireDc and failure in general.
2. Read the Slate.com article. We had deep coverage, complete with the academic underpinnings to our erstwhile activities.
3. Join Admitting Aid Failure, the second Aid Blog Forum. The aid bloggers are taking our idea to the Internets.
4. Check out the FailFaireDC photos on Flickr. Relive your favorite slides and remember your favorite presenters.
5. Engage via the #FailFaireDC hashtag on Twitter. During and after the event, #FailFaireDC was trending on Twitter as we discussed the larger themes and issues to improve ICT4D
6. Look for a FailFaireNYC. Mobile Active is teaming with Unicef to have a FailFaire in New York City this December.

Most of all, remember to fail in everything you do. Only then are you showing leadership and innovation in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in scaling ICT and international development.

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