Measuring the impact of knowledge management is a hot topic in international development circles and many of us are trying to find ways to effectively measure and demonstrate the results of our investments in knowledge and learning to understand how these investments help us achieve our development objectives faster, more effectively, more efficiently, and/or with greater impact. We all know that there are no simple answers or one-size-fits-all approaches but there is increasing consensus that we need to work together to address these challenges by asking ourselves difficult questions and exploring the context of emerging solutions.

The Knowledge Management Impact Challenge, sponsored by USAID and conducted in collaboration with KM4Dev, aims to accelerate this discovery process by creating a space where this dialogue can thrive and we can gather and exchange stories and explore different avenues of what works and what doesn't. Over the coming months we invite you to share how you tackle this challenge, reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the tools used, and compare lessons learned across an international community.

From December 1, 2010 through January 30, 2011 we will be collecting case stories to capture the diversity of practitioner experience in this area. To get the Challenge moving we are offering an early entry award. Case stories submitted by December 31 are eligible for a USD $1,000 professional development grant. In addition at least five case story authors will receive a travel award to share their experience at the upcoming KM Impact Challenge unConference in Washington, DC

We know that this is a busy period for everyone but hopefully it is also a time of reflection, as you write your end of year reports think about the types of data and evidence you would like to have at your fingertips and please share your thoughts on this topic with us. Case stories collected will be featured on the Challenge web site and reviewed by a diverse Technical Advisory Group to help make sense of what’s happening in practice. Discoveries from the review of case stories and pre-existing literature will feed the peer-learning process both online and at the KM Impact Challenge unConference proposed for March, 2011. We also invite you to explore a growing online Library and welcome your contributions of relevant documents that you feel are particularly pertinent to these questions.

We invite you to learn more about the KM Impact Challenge site at http://kdid.org/kmic. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter using the #KMImpact tag. For any questions please feel free contact us at kmicinfo@kdid.org. We look forward to hearing from you.