Impact Slack Channel

What is the #acled-impact Slack Channel?

The #acled-impact Slack channel is a place where you can drop a cool citation/media mention, quote, example of use, or insight highlighting your work and ACLED data & analysis at large! 

This is something that many of you are already doing, within your teams or by sending messages directly to the DMEL team. We thought that having one place to share the success stories would be beneficial to all: we at Grands & Development will have material for reporting, fundraising, and outreach all in one place; colleagues at External Affairs will be able to quickly react and showcase your work at ACLED’s social media and networks, while you can observe, celebrate, and hopefully get motivated by your colleagues’ achievements! 

Who is meant to post on the impact Slack channel?

As of September 2024, the impact Slack channel is open and welcomes contributions from everyone at ACLED, following its successful pilot phase from February 2024 - August 2024 with a smaller group of ACLED staff.

What are some examples of contributions to the impact Slack channel?

I will proceed by sharing some examples of cool stuff I have received from some of you to help showcase what we are more or less looking for. In addition, feel free to scroll through past entries and check out what your colleagues have been posting!

• Citations / Media Mentions 

Jalale reached out to note the following: 

Here is a report by DW Amharic which integrated an interview with Braden Fuller about the current situation in Ethiopia. The report is from 34 to 47 minutes - the main report of today's DW Amharic news. The report is in Amharic. This report used last week's EPO weekly and its numbers as an introduction to the topic. Braden discussed the current PV in Amhara and Oromia regions and what to expect in the coming few months, including possible peace talks between the government and OLA and Fano militia.

Andrea shared the following insightful citation: 

Hi there, just wanted to mention that the UN has adopted our imperfect fatality estimates for Sudan and is citing them in their statements. Not unlike what ACLED did for other conflicts in the past, we have been able to assert ourselves as a reliable organization and while we know that our estimates are unlikely to be 100% accurate, they are likely the least bad guess that is available out there. 

It is highly unlikely that we at G&D would have managed to spot those two very important citations! Jalale’s input is in video format & Amharic - our citation tracking software would have never caught it. Andrea’s linked statement does not include an actual mention of ACLED and requires intimate knowledge of the Sudan dataset to spot - which we definitely don’t have. 

• Quotes 

Peter usually comes back from meetings with quotes like this:

Just had a very useful call with the EU Training Mission in Mozambique. Their new head of intelligence is very switched on. French military; has worked in Lake Chad and also the Middle East. Big ACLED reader in the past. High praise - 'conscientious and cautious'.

• Examples of use

Juliet highlighted this incredibly interesting use case for our reporting - take a look for yourselves: 

This seems to be the part of the International Crime Court that is using the data. It's very interesting and should definitely be a featured use case for the dataset, particularly when it says that in the summary on the website, it is the only prosecutor's office that has the mandate to select cases for prosecution and they are using ACLED data to monitor.

• Insights

Lastly, here is Ladd with some very intriguing insights - where starting from something small such as multiple email back-and-forths can lead to fundraising opportunities or even policy changes! 

I just had a few exchanges with the Canadian immigration office that would be interesting to note (and also potentially interesting to pursue as a donor if they keep wanting our info?). 

After numerous citations of our reports, the UK proscribed Wagner Group as a terrorist organization https://www.gov.uk/government/news/wagner-group-proscribed    

At G&D, we particularly liked this second example! Change in decision-making, especially in the realm of policy, is an extremely lengthy and painful process that requires close monitoring and frequent follow-ups. Being able to collect more examples where consistent collaboration with key stakeholders contributed to such changes is truly the holy grail of impact stories we can tell.