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This handbook aims to provide practical advice for people who may be commissioning or funding projects, developing projects within an organisation, or starting up something new.

From our research and experience, we’ve identified what we think are the main areas of work involved in developing a ‘social by social’ project. It isn’t a straight-path routemap though: as you’ll see, you have to be flexible in your work plan. We would love to be able to say: here’s a set of guidelines for using new technologies for social good; here’s precisely what works, and here are the action-plan checklists for a detailed process. But it’s a bit more complicated than that – which is why a high proportion of technology projects fail.

Yes, there are some recipes ... but you first have to learn to cook, assemble the ingredients, decide who and what you want to serve, and be clear whether you are preparing a healthy snack or for a more substantial festive occasion. If it is a big do, will you hire caterers, or do it yourself? And to push the metaphor even further, what good is a delicious meal if there’s no-one around to eat it?

So this chapter is designed as a kit from which you can assemble what’s appropriate to your situation.
It contains:

  • Directions – some suggested routes and actions to take at each stage
  • Insights – practical advice and comments from successful (and unsuccessful) projects
  • How-tos – some recipes for achieving specific goals, once you know what you want to do
  • See also – further reading and places to go if you want more advice about each section

We suggest you also read it together with the Propositions the A-Z of key terms, and the practical Companion that follow, where we’ve defined the jargon we’re using and described the key tools and concepts in more detail.