Are Convenings More Effective in the Post-Pandemic World?

A Conversation with TCC Group’s Jared Raynor 

Q: In 2020, you authored a pioneering report on understanding the value and effectiveness of convenings for the philanthropic and nonprofit sector, A Framework For the Effective Evaluation of Convenings. Why did you choose to focus on convenings, and which findings surprised you most?

I was participating in a lot of convenings, often for programs I was evaluating. I began to think about all of the resources philanthropy and nonprofits put into them, which can amount to tens of millions of dollars, and what the sector was getting out of them. And when I asked informally about the return on investment for convenings, I got back responses ranging from, “Of course bringing people together is a good thing” to “We’re just ‘greasing the wheels’” to “We’d like to know the answer but don’t know how you’d measure that.” So, what really surprised me was how little had been done to assess the effectiveness of convenings and how much they existed in an untested, “obviously they’re worthwhile” space. 

One key question for me was, if you put a bunch of people in a room, do they actually make worthwhile connections? The underlying assumption is that you are going to spark new conversations and connections, which is true to a certain extent. But could you get that same result using less expensive interventions that have a higher probability of success in creating deep relationships? Because, beyond the dollars, you’re talking about people’s time. There’s time spent at convenings, as well as the time traveling to and from them. It’s also a question whether people are encountering any new faces at convenings, or whether it’s just the same people moving around from meeting to meeting.

Q: Your report was released during the “lockdown” phase of the pandemic, when in-person convenings were cancelled and virtual gatherings filled the void. What was the initial response to your findings? And did funders and nonprofits fully appreciate their relevance to virtual convenings?  

When we released the report, people were thinking only about supporting basic needs, which is what they needed to be doing. No one thought about whether virtual convenings were the right thing. It was only several months later, after the technology improved and isolation started to wear on people, that the idea of the virtual convenings began to gain traction. 

I was fortunate to have a couple of colleagues who were interested in assessing the role of virtual convenings, and we looked very systematically at a couple of them. What we found was a very mixed bag. They worked for some people. For others, virtual convenings were not needed. Those individuals were focused on other priorities, had their own networks, and were already meeting so much in a virtual environment. So, a virtual convening was just another meeting for them to go to. Organizers hadn’t yet figured out how to make them truly interactive in the same way as in-person convenings.

Q: Four years later, in-person convenings have made a remarkable comeback. Virtual convenings have also come a long way from the early days of the pandemic. From your perspective, has the sector learned the lessons outlined in the report? Where has there been the most productive change, and how can funders and nonprofits continue to improve their practice?

Not to overstate this, but I think one of the interesting things about the pandemic is that it created a “deliberateness” in all sorts of areas. There was an immediate need to provide support related to the impact of the pandemic, which highlighted existing economic and social inequities. Then came the racial reckoning in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I feel like I now do see more consideration and intentionality around determining who gets a platform at convenings. There’s certainly been an increased focus on centering diverse voices. 

Another change I’ve noticed is that people have pulled back on travel for climate-related reasons and financial reasons. Virtual convenings also got better from a technical perspective during the pandemic, so people have felt less need to travel once it was over. These factors should raise the bar for the quality of in-person convenings. They have to offer greater value to get people to participate.     

At the same time, it feels in some ways like we just came back to convening in the way we always have. A colleague in the sector, Rasmus Heltberg, Lead Evaluation Officer, IEDG Human Development & Corporate Programs, at the World Bank Group and I authored an SSIR article in the Fall of 2022 entitled Convening Effectiveness Matters. We wanted to leverage insights from the pandemic to help make in-person convenings more impactful as people in the sector began meeting in person again. But I’m not sure whether the lessons have been learned by anyone, or whether everyone believes there are lessons to be learned. There seem to be many in the sector who continue to believe that all convenings are inherently valuable.

Q: The pandemic years offered numerous examples of convenings traditionally conducted in person that also worked well as virtual events. Have the last few years provided you with any insights on when convening face-to-face remains essential?

I think we need to answer this question through the lens of intended outcomes. We’ve identified virtual convenings as being more efficient for knowledge transfer. If you want to share information, they are excellent. In terms of generating excitement, virtual convenings can also work fine. A dynamic speaker or a well-designed virtual breakout session can generate excitement and energy. Although, it may not be exactly the same as experiencing that excitement in a room filled with 50 or 500 people. 

Where we consistently find that virtual convenings do not hold up as well is in building deliberate relationships. And by deliberate, I mean relationships that are critical to your mission and not simply transactional. These are relationships that require trust, commonality, an understanding of shared purpose, and empathy, in the sense of being able to see things through the lens of someone else. These are the relationships that lead to ongoing work and rarely get established in virtual environments.  

People need to be able see the full range of nonverbal cues to establish deep relationships, and unplanned interactions can enhance that. This undoubtedly is part of why we find that people’s satisfaction is higher with in-person convenings than it is with virtual convenings. But if we hang our hopes on these chance encounters or relationship-building, will we get what we think is important for all of the monetary and non-monetary costs convenings require?? Which brings me full circle to what brought me on this journey—we need to get better at articulating intent.  

To help accomplish that, we created a Convenings Pre-Conditions Diagnostic Tool that can generate helpful insights on whether a convening may be needed. If it is, the tool helps ensure that planners are considering and planning for all of the elements of a productive convening. At a minimum, the paper provides a list of different kinds of outcomes that can spark clearer intentionality. Taking this step to first test whether a convening could help to achieve your intent, rather than simply assuming it will, goes a long way toward ensuring that convenings generate a meaningful impact.