About Us

We research digital communications for the social sector and develop tools for you to use.

The betterplace lab in 318 seconds

(Note: Video in German. English subtitles coming soon...)

• What is the betterplace lab?
• How do we work?
• Who is the betterplace lab?
• Our Partners
• How are we financed?
• Our Workshops & Presentations

What is the betterplace lab?

The betterplace lab is a networking organization.  While there’s a core group of team members that work in our betterplace office, others take part as well – thanks to digital media – from elsewhere, regularly or sporadically, in our think and do tank.

How do we work?

The betterplace lab follows an application- and output-oriented approach that is further fine-tuned by feedback loops. We identify relevant themes and develop concepts through previously available studies as well as with our own independent research. Whenever possible, we then conduct pilot studies with chosen users (from the betterplace.org community) to empircally and quickly test our applications in order to discover the best possible methods. This form of "rapid prototyping" allows us to make any necessary adjustments to our results and tools so that we can offer them to a larger user group. The cycle is closed with a project evaluation phase, from which further pilot tests are run and the process is repeated. This methodological approach is reflected in our individual projects as well.

We inlist participants from research and practice to join in our work, through workshops or other events.

The betterplace lab is output-oriented and therefore offers studies, guides, visualisations, presentations and an abundance of other informational tools to the largest possible public use.

Who is the betterplace lab?

Joana Breidenbach is a doctor of cultural anthropology and author of numerous publications on the cultural consequences of globalization, migration, and tourism.  Including: Dance of Cultures, published by Antje Kunstmann 1998, Rowohlt 2000, Maxikulti, Campus 2008, and Seeing Culture Everywhere, University of Washington Press 2009.  Joana Breidenbach is a founder of betterplace.org and leads the betterplace lab.

Dennis Buchmann has degrees in Biology and Journalism from the German School of Journalism.  After founding the Human Globaler Zufall magazine and working as editor in chief, he decided to move into the social sector.  Initially he took over the editing of “betterplace works!” before he became a part of the betterplace lab.  Here he is the 35-year-old creative editor, which means he works on projects both editorial and conceptual.  Since October of 2010 he has also been working on his Master in Public Policy from the Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance using the framework of his Sausage-Project, Meinekleinefarm.org.

Julia Eisenberg is a biologist and film producer.  Among other things, she works as the community manager for Think Big and studied Public Policy at Humboldt-Viadrina School of Governance.  Julia designs visual concepts and videos for the betterplace lab and takes care of the continued development of the website.

Medje Prahm is Mistress of Arts in Philosophy & Economics and has concentrated so far on how Nonprofits can learn and improve their social impact. Therefore, the 28-year-old has already designed and implemented a social impact measurement concept for the think tank stiftung neue verantwortung. Medje is the betterplace lab's minister of the interior and keeps together the networking organization as well as she supports Joana in leading the lab.

Angela Ullrich is a doctor in economics initially worked for the Univerity of Cologne. Subsequently she worked for the German Central Cooperative Bank in Frankfurt and London as an analyst.  She analyses the German donor market for the betterplace lab, supports the NGO-Meter team and is responsible for the internal metrics – including our monthly updated transparency panel http://www.betterplace-lab.org/de/dashboard.

Kathleen Ziemann studied Politics and Cultural Sciences and wrote her Master's Thesis about Minority Languages on Facebook at the Europa Universität Viadrina. As a Research Assistant, Kathleen dived deeply into the field of computermediated Interview-Analysis. In 2004, Kathleen worked as volunteer in India and developed a passion for health-projects in developing countries. This topic is also linked to her previous work as an editor at Doctors Without Borders. In July 2012, Kathleen graduated as a Design Thinker at the HPI Potsdam.

Anja Adler pursues online trends among foundations for the betterplace lab.  After getting her MA in Communication and American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and a post at the Robert Bosch Foundation, she spent two years as the community manager of the Mercator Foundation.  At the moment she works as a freelance communications and social media consultant and is getting a doctorate at the NRW School of Governance on the political roll of digital communication.

Daniel Harbig is part of the NGO-Meter team. He has busied himself for more than 10 years with the medium of the Internet and online communication.  He studied international information management at the University of Hildesheim as well as international marketing at the Copenhagen School of Business.  His experience includes working for an international IT business consultancy firm.  Through whose environment he got involved with Save the Children’s German branch.  Since 2009, he has been working as an online marketing manager active in the areas of marketing and fundraising for Save the Children.

Susanna Krüger founded the goodroot agency after years of practical developmental cooperation.  She tested and implemented monitoring and evaluation processes for foundations, NGOs and international organizations and developed technology-based feedback processes with the betterplace lab, with which direct recipients of aid can evaluate the effect of different projects. Find out more about Stakeholder Feeback.

Silke Penner heads the NGO-Meter team. Silke has a degree in business administration and is on the staff at University Viadrina (Frankfurt/Oder)  as a research assistant at the chair for finance and environmental economics.  She also lectures on business administration at the University of Applied Sciences in Brandenburg.  As part of her dissertation she researched the areas of benchmarking and performance measurement optimization of NGOs.  Before taking up an academic career, she held several diverse positions in the private sector including tax consultancy (FALK GmbH & Co KG) and auditing (PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, Frankfurt und Berlin) as well as freelance business consultancy in renewable energies and other fields.

In addition, betterplace lab is supported by various partners as well as betterplace.org, with its shareholders and board members.

As a network organization, many people support us for various amounts of time, some more, some less.  We are specially grateful for:

Stephan Breidenbach

Becky Crook

Zoltan Ferenci

Hannelore Knott

John Mills

Martin Pape

Jörg Rheinboldt

Marc Sasserath

Stephan Schwahlen

How are we financed?

We are a financially independent institution roofed under gut.org Inc. Our goal is to stand on our own two feet financially. To that end, our strategic and project partners support us with expert know-how, money and material needs. We seek for long-term partnerships however, depending on project-length, we are also open to short-term cooperations. We account for our work time transparently in each of our projects, as well as in our core lab team. The application of our funds and our management is further regulated through our annually published report.