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10 Great Social Innovation Reads: December

Nell Edgington — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 18:32:07 +0000

Although December was a “shorter” month because of the holidays, there was still much to read, particularly about what the new year might bring. Below are my 10 favorite reads from the past month, but as always, please tell me what I missed in the comments. And you can read other months’ 10 Great Reads lists here.

Since December was the last month of the year, there were lots of look back and look ahead posts. The PhilanTopic blog did a whole series of posts on 2011 Year in Review: What To Expect in 2012. And there is also 50 Economic Numbers from 2011 Too Crazy to Believe. And best of all, the Chronicle of Philanthropy launched a whole Outlook 2012 section of their site.

A follow up to the Money for Good report released a couple of years ago, the new Money for Good II report finds that donors would shift $15 billion to more effective nonprofits if they had better information. This is food for thought for the growing efforts (GuideStar, GiveWell, CharityNavigator, to name a few) to track and report on nonprofit results.

We are two years into the 5-year Social Innovation Fund experiment launched by the Obama Administration and what have we learned? Carla Javits from REDF and Lisa Jackson from New Profit, two recipients of SIF intermediary funding, offer their views.

From Capital Institute, an impassioned plea for foundations to make use of mission-related investments in order to tap into their (much larger) endowment assets and create even more social impact.

Rebecca Thomas and Rodney Christopher of the Nonprofit Finance Fund provide a fabulous description of how general operating support, capacity building grants and change capital differ in the nonprofit world. These are distinctions that every nonprofit leader should understand and employ.

A new group, Insight Labs in Chicago, provides nonprofits with a roomful of big thinking volunteers to hash out solutions to challenges the nonprofit is facing. Kind of a cool approach.

The Dowser blog profiles Project Interaction, a really interesting approach to educating kids. It is design thinking meets public education meets social problem solving. I love it.

Jessamyn Lau from the Peery Foundation writes a provocative post on their blog arguing that we need more patient changemakers in the social entrepreneurship field.

In the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, Lisa Witter and Courtney Martin argue that we need to make a distinction between cultural and social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship, they argue, changes markets and systems, whereas cultural entrepreneurship changes hearts and minds. Fascinating.

I always like finding a new “tell it like it is” blog, and so I was happy to find Nonprofit Nate, and his post Thank You For Your Trash, about how nonprofits need to take a step back and weigh the costs/benefits of in-kind gifts.

Photo Credit: Kenski1970

About the Author: Nell Edgington is President of Social Velocity (www.socialvelocity.net), a management consulting firm leading nonprofits to greater social impact and financial sustainability. Social Velocity helps nonprofits grow their programs, bring more money in the door, and use resources more effectively. For more information, check out Social Velocity consulting services and clients.

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The Next Generation of Philanthropy: An Interview with Jessamyn Lau

Nell Edgington — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:41:30 +0000

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Jessamyn Lau. As Program Leader of the innovative Peery Foundation, Jessamyn helps shape the foundation’s strategy, develops programs, strengthens the foundation’s portfolio, and supports existing grantees. Jessamyn’s MBA from Brigham Young University and time spent with Ashoka U have given her the perspective and skill-set to help the foundation develop new methods to support and build the field of social entrepreneurship. Jessamyn is currently working with BYU’s Ballard Center to create the Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program (PSEP), a cross campus initiative providing opportunities for students and faculty to engage with social entrepreneurship through curriculum, experiential learning, and research.

You can read past interviews in our Social Innovation Interview Series here.

Nell: At the Peery Foundation you have done some really interesting experiments with social media, even adding an element of crowd-sourcing via Twitter to your strategic planning process. But recently you have gone back and forth about whether you want to continue your PFWhiteboard blog. What has your thinking been about how social media fits into the overall work of the Peery Foundation?

Jessamyn: One thing we know about social media is that it’s a good tool for is spreading the word about our partners and their work. 90% of what we post/tweet is about our portfolio partners. Every now and then we try to figure out how else to deliberately use social media. We’ve tried stuff that hasn’t worked (so we stopped doing it), and we’ve tried stuff that did seem to yield value for us and others. In general it’s still throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks. Intuitively we think social media is a good thing for our creativity, learning, and listening, however, we don’t feel tied to it as a core part of our strategy or practice. When it makes sense we use it, when it doesn’t we don’t.

Nell: What do you think holds foundations back from using social media and embracing greater transparency? What do you think will make that change?

Jessamyn: The tricky thing with social media is it’s really hard to link it to outcomes. Even when tangible examples of outcomes are illustrated it’s often a first-mover advantage and not something that will produce the same results if everyone did the same thing. If foundations could see how social media directly led to more impact it would be an easier sell. It’s a similar story with transparency. Being transparent requires change, time, dedication and a certain amount of risk. Without a clear and strong argument for how that leads to more impact it’s easier not to take the risk and stay quiet.

Another issue is strategic planning, which, at times, can become more of a bane than a boon to foundations. When it comes to social media many foundations think they need a strategy and a full blown plan before they will start using it. As with many things it’s hard to know exactly how Twitter or Facebook will be useful until you give it a go and play around a
little.

For the most part I think the change will only come with an increase of millennial philanthropists, foundation ED’s and program officers who come with a share-as-default mentality and bias towards creative experimentation in public.

Nell: You recently did a fascinating blog post about how the social entrepreneurship movement is encouraging young people to think they can solve the world’s problems, without much real world experience. How do we balance Generation Y’s zeal to find solutions with their youth and lack of experience?

Jessamyn: I don’t think I know the full answer to that, yet. My opinions on this point are still developing as the Peery Foundation works closely with BYU to build a cross-campus social entrepreneurship program. I’m not sure the overall problem is too much zeal or youth, or even too little experience -all of these things provide incredible value in the right context. I think what’s lacking are clearer expectations and support for students to build self-awareness and deliberate preparation in their development as social innovators. As I said, I’m still figuring it out -watch the PF Whiteboard over the coming months for more on this.

Nell: The Peery Foundation is one of few foundations that do mission-related investments. How did you decide to move into that realm and what do you think holds other foundation back from MRIs?

Jessamyn: Our primary function is to support and serve the social entrepreneurs we work with. We try to keep our funding as flexible as possible. Peery Foundation funding is generally unrestricted and the structure of a grant is often co-crafted with the entrepreneur. We have come to realize that entrepreneurs with differing business models, or at differing life-cycle stages, need different types of capital. Once we believe in a SE and their model for addressing poverty we want to always be open to providing the type of capital that they need at the time they need it.

We’re still at an early stage in developing our capacity to provide debt and other funding outside of philanthropy. In our philanthropic funding we’re not paper heavy and our agreements are very trust-based. It was definitely daunting to explore this new realm of traditional investment due diligence and contractual agreements. So far we’ve found the kind of support we need to help us make the leap fairly painlessly through the Toniic Network, and from sources such as Silicon Valley Community Foundation and University Impact Fund, and still feel like we’re able to retain our low-paper, trust based partnership approach to the extent that makes sense.

Nell: In some ways philanthropy has been a bit left behind by the impact investing movement. Why do you think that is and do you think philanthropic giving and impact investing will become more integrated?

Jessamyn: The potential of impact investing is huge, though I’m not sure I agree with the statement that impact investing (ii) has left behind philanthropy (charitable giving from individuals, corporations and foundations totaled over $290B in the US alone for 2010, impact investing is estimated at $50-100B in 2011). Though there is a lot of attention and discussion surrounding impact investing, there are still relatively few organizations actively channeling dollars to ii. Even in the future (when I think ii will absolutely eclipse philanthropy by the numbers), I see ii and philanthropy as very complimentary. In many cases philanthropic capital prepares the way for ii dollars, or continues to fund pieces of a model (overhead or continuing innovation) that ii capital can not.

Indeed, there are many incredibly efficient and effective models of social entrepreneurship with models not conducive to impact investment capital – they will probably always rely on philanthropic dollars. There will always be an important role for philanthropy to play. Philanthropy is the ultimate risk-taking capital. We should not lose sight of this or think that ii is here to replace philanthropy.

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10 Great Social Innovation Reads: November

Nell Edgington — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:55:47 +0000

November was another great month in the world of social innovation. Here is my pick of the top 10 posts, articles, graphics, and discussions. As always, please add your favorites from the month to the comments. And if you want to see a longer list of what catches my eye, follow me on Twitter @nedgington. You can also read past months’ 10 Great Reads lists here.

Some very interesting reports and predictions on how nonprofits and philanthropy are changing. First, the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation predicts a pretty exciting future for philanthropy. And Blackbaud released a report on what 35 experts think it will take to grow philanthropic giving in the US. And finally the 2011 Nonprofit Almanac is out. The annual report shows the nonprofit sector growing and that giving is back to 2000 levels

DC Central Kitchen founder and nonprofit sector advocate Robert Egger launched a new group called CForward to help nonprofits fight for their rightful place at the political table.

The Washington Post gets into the social innovation business by launching a new “On Giving” section to discuss philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, socially responsible business and much more.

The Nonprofit Finance Fund offers a great worksheet to assess a nonprofit’s strengths and weaknesses in order to link their financial health to their impact. Love it!

HubSpot offers a great infographic on pull vs. push marketing, but I’d argue it applies to fundraising as well.

The Alliance for Global Good is launching a $10 million fund to promote innovation in philanthropy. The new fund will “draw attention to charities that have found new approaches to tough problems and provide money to help them expand their work.”

On the Unsectored blog Jeff Raderstrong encourages us to start asking the right questions about the charitable deduction currently the focus of so much debate.

Always one to tell it like it is, Mario Morino from Venture Philanthropy Partners offers 6 Wrenching Questions Every Board Member Must Answer.

Jim Kucher argues on his blog that there is a bipolar disorder in social entrepreneurship, between the competing, and sometimes conflicting, social and business perspectives.

Tom Tierney, chairman of Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consultancy, has written a paper, “The Donor-Grantee Trap, about the dangers of the nonprofit starvation cycle. In a recent interview about it, he argues “Nonprofits should be clear about their definition of success, articulate their strategy for achieving success and be up front about what that costs. That includes understanding the organization’s true overhead costs and making a case for funding good overhead.” Amen to that!

Photo Credit: Sim Van Gyseghem

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Financing Not Fundraising Webinar Series

Nell Edgington — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:18:36 +0000

Because of the popularity of the past two Financing Not Fundraising overview webinars in October and November, I’ve decided to launch a webinar series that breaks the Financing Not Fundraising concept into its various parts and expands on how to approach each element.

I will kick off this new webinar series in January with a new webinar each month. Some of the webinar topics will be:

Creating a Financing Plan
Finding Individual Donors
Developing a Message of Social Impact
Raising Capacity Capital
Evaluating Earned Income
Calculating the Cost of Fundraising
Moving from Push to Pull
Getting Your Board to Raise Money

If you want to find out when those webinars get scheduled in the new year, sign up for our the Social Velocity e-newsletter.

But in the meantime, if you want to get up to speed on the overall concept of Financing Not Fundraising, I’m doing one more overview Financing Not Fundraising webinar on December 6th.

This webinar, based on our popular Financing Not Fundraising ongoing blog series will show nonprofits what a broader approach to securing the overall financing necessary to create social change looks like, including:

How to align your nonprofit’s mission with the money needed to deliver on it
Why a message of impact results in more money
Understanding the critical difference between revenue and capital
Why overhead isn’t a dirty word anymore
How and why to calculate the net revenue of money raising activities
When to explore new revenue streams

If you’ve been following the Social Velocity Financing Not Fundraising blog series and you want to learn more, or if the series has brought up some burning questions that you’d like to have answered, join us for this interactive webinar.

If your staff, your board, and your donors are worn out, rest assured, there is a better way. Join this webinar to find out how. I hope to see you there!

Financing Not Fundraising: Rethinking How Nonprofits Bring Money in the Door
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM (Eastern Time)
$40.00
Register Now

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10 Great Social Innovation Reads: October

Nell Edgington — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:03:06 +0000

I think it gets harder and harder every month to narrow down to a list of only 10 great reads in social innovation. October was no exception. Here are my top 10 of the last month (but actually more like 13 if you’re counting). As always, please add what I missed to the comments. And if you want to see the expanded list of what catches my eye, follow me on Twitter @nedgington.

You can also read the lists of Great Reads from previous months here.

Marketing is a brave new world these days, and so is fundraising. Replace “customer” with “donor” and “We’re All Marketers Now” from McKinsey Quarterly applies to nonprofits as well.

A new Chronicle of Philanthropy blog launched recently that focuses on innovation in the nonprofit world. One of the first posts is about how the U.S. Army’s practice of using a “devil’s advocate” in their decision-making processes is something that some philanthropists are copying in order to come up with better solutions.

Occupy Wall Street and the other protests in cities around the country was a big topic this month. Some of the most interesting were Who are the 99 percent? from Ezra Klein in The Washington Post and The Demographics of Occupy Wall Street from Fast Company.

From the Harvard Business Review blog comes an argument that I completely agree with. Nonprofits that are struggling lack a “strategy for connecting their mission with their ability to deliver.”

I know infographics are becoming overused, but this one is pretty cool: How the Top 50 Nonprofits Do Social Media.

And speaking of the top nonprofits, the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Philanthropy 400 is out, all about what the 400 wealthiest nonprofits are up to.

The Alliance for Children and Families, a membership group for human-service charities, released a new report identifying the emerging trends social service organizations must embrace in order to succeed.

If you missed the live-streaming from the White House last week on social impact bonds, Pay for Success: Investing in What Works, you can still watch archived recordings, or check out the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s great resources on the topic here.

As usual, Lucy Bernholz tells it like it is, in her argument that the current debate in American politics about shifting more of the burden of funding for core public services to private philanthropy is undemocratic.

Jennifer Landres from the Center for High Impact Philanthropy finds some lessons for philanthropy in the movie “Moneyball.”

Photo Credit: JeffersonDavis

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Financing Not Fundraising E-Book

Nell Edgington — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 18:40:04 +0000

I’m delighted to announce that, by popular demand, we are releasing today the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book. This 27-page e-book is a compilation and expansion on the 11 blog posts from 2011 in the Social Velocity Financing Not Fundraising blog series.

In the midst of an incredibly challenging economic situation that is not getting better any time soon, the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book outlines a new vision for how the nonprofit sector gets funded. Fundraising in its current form just doesn’t work anymore. Indeed, traditional fundraising is holding the sector back by keeping nonprofits in the starvation cycle of trying to do more and more with less and less.

What the sector needs is a financing strategy not a fundraising strategy. Nonprofits have to break out of the narrow view that traditional FUNDRAISING (individual donor appeals, events, foundation grants) will completely fund all of their activities. Instead, nonprofits must work to create a broader approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change.

This 27-page e-book is a compilation and expansion of the Social Velocity blog series Financing Not Fundraising from 2011. The blog series is ongoing, with new posts added throughout each year. We’ll begin adding new posts to the series in the new year, but in the meantime, this e-book captures and expands on the posts from 2011 in one place.

The 12 chapters of the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book are:

What is Financing Not Fundraising?
Create A Financial Strategy
Align Money and Mission
Find Individual Donors
Develop a Message of Impact
Raise Money for Building Capacity
Explore New Types of Money
Evaluate Earned Income
Calculate Net Revenue
Move From Push to Pull
Stop Lying to Donors
Getting Started

You can download the Financing Not Fundraising, 2011 e-book here.

If you want to learn more about how to apply the concepts of Financing Not Fundraising to your nonprofit, check out our Financing Not Fundraising Webinar Series

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Financing Not Fundraising: 5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors

Nell Edgington — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 17:07:47 +0000

In part 11 of our ongoing blog series, Financing Not Fundraising, we are talking about being brutally honest with your donors. If nonprofits are going to truly break free from the vicious fundraising cycle, they must find the courage to tell funders how it really is. And since board members are a nonprofit’s closest supporters and (I hope) donors, you need to stop telling them these lies as well.

If you are new to our Financing Not Fundraising blog series, the series is about how nonprofits must break out of the narrow view that traditional FUNDRAISING (individual donor appeals, events, foundation grants) will completely fund all of their activities. Instead, they must create a broader, more strategic approach to securing the overall FINANCING necessary to create social change. You can read the entire series here.

If you want to learn more about how to apply the concepts of Financing Not Fundraising to your nonprofit, check out our Financing Not Fundraising Webinar Series

If you want to break free of the exhausting cycle of fundraising, a key step is to start being brutally honest with funders. Here are the top 5 lies you have to stop telling donors:

X% of your donation goes to the program
The distinction between “program expenses” and “overhead” is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, destructive. You cannot have a program without staff, technology, space, systems, evaluation, research and development. It is magical thinking to say that you can separate money spent on programs from money spent on the support of programs. Donors need to understand, and you need to explain to them, that “overhead” is not a dirty word. A nonprofit exists to deliver programs. And everything the organization does helps to make those programs better, stronger, bigger, more effective.

We can do the same program with less money
No you can’t. You know you can’t. You are already scraping by. Don’t accept a check from a donor who wants all the bells and whistles you explained in your pitch, but at a lower cost. Explain the true costs, including administrative costs, of getting results. Politely, but firmly, explain to them that an inferior investment will yield an inferior result. If they simply can’t afford the price tag, then encourage them to find fellow funders to co-invest with.

We can start a new program that doesn’t fit with our mission or strategy
Yes that big, fat check a donor is holding in front of you looks very appealing. But if it takes your organization in a different direction than your strategy or your core competencies require, accepting it is a huge mistake. Nonprofits must constantly ensure that money and mission are aligned. Otherwise the organization will be scattered in countless directions with an exhausted staff and confused donor base. Don’t let a donor take you down that road.

We can grow without additional staff or other resources
Nonprofit staff truly excel at working endless hours with very few resources. They have perfected the concept of doing more and more with less and less. But someday that road must end. Nonprofit leaders have to be honest with donors when their staff and resources are at capacity. Because eventually program results will suffer and the donor will receive little in return for their investment.

100% of our board is committed to our organization
If that’s true, then you are a true minority in the nonprofit sector. Every nonprofit board I know has some dead wood. Members who ignore fundraising duties, don’t contribute to meetings, miss meetings, take the organization on tangents are always present. It’s a fact that funders want to see every board member contributing. But instead of perpetuating the myth that 100% is an achievable reality, be honest with funders. Tell them that you continually analyze each individual board member’s contributions (financial, intellectual, time) and have a clear plan for addressing deficiency, including: coaching, peer pressure, training, asking for resignations. Getting to 100% is probably never realistic, it is far better to demonstrate that you are tirelessly working toward 90%.

Stop the madness. We need to stop telling funders what they want to hear and then cursing them behind their backs when they set unrealistic expectations. Funders must be made to understand the harsh realities of the nonprofit sector if they are ever to be expected to help bring change.

To download the 27-page Financing Not Fundraising e-book, click here.

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Financing Not Fundraising: Finding Individual Donors

Financing Not Fundraising E-Book

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We Should Expect More From Nonprofit Donors

Nell Edgington — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:17:42 +0000

Many of the ills of the nonprofit sector can and should be solved by educating and strengthening nonprofit leaders, staffs and boards, but there is also work to be done with nonprofit donors. Those private individuals, foundations and corporations that support the nonprofit sector also need to change their approach if nonprofits are ever going to emerge from the starvation cycle.

There are some key things nonprofit donors need to do differently in order to make their gifts go farther:

If you want something, fund it. Over and over again a foundation or individual donor will tell a nonprofit that they want to see a program evaluation, or a strategic plan, or a stronger financial model, but they refuse to fund it. This automatically puts a nonprofit into a catch-22 of needing a key element to get funding, but not having the funding to get the key element. It’s an unwinnable situation and no donor should put a nonprofit in that position.

Invest in a management team you believe in, then back off. Foundations in particular tend to attach unnecessary strings (endless reporting requirements, benchmarks) to the grants they make. In theory, these strings exist in order to ensure a good investment. But in reality, the only way results will happen is if there is a great plan and a talented team to execute on it. If you are worried about a nonprofit’s ability to execute, then you probably aren’t comfortable with an investment in that team. Either invest elsewhere, or back off and let them perform.

Don’t expect big things from a little gift. Donors sometimes get a big head about the gifts they make. They expect a nonprofit to expand a $1 million program with a $5,000 gift, or create a brand new program from one donor’s one-year investment. Those are ridiculous, and possibly hubris-filled, expectations. You get what you pay for. Invest accordingly.

Understand that you hold the power and use it benevolently. Because you are writing the checks, you have the power in this funder/fundee relationship. A nonprofit leader will never be able to be completely open and honest with you for fear that you will take your money elsewhere. Recognize that fact. Don’t put undue pressure on the organization, don’t ask for special favors, and be as hands-off as possible.

Don’t just buy services, build organizations. It might seem more exciting to have all your gifts go to support direct services, but realize that those services will be stronger and more sustainable if there is a healthy, effective organization behind them. That means a nonprofit needs a capable, well-trained and paid staff; adequate equipment, systems and space; and efficient technology. Occasionally think about supporting those infrastructure items so that your program gifts can go even further.

Get others to give. If you are a philanthropist, chances are you know other philanthropists. Share your knowledge of the great management teams and infrastructure gifts you make. Don’t invest in a vacuum. Actively recruit your friends and colleagues to build on your investments.

If we really want to change the nonprofit sector we have to change the donors who support it. It is no longer enough just to write a check and be done with it. If you really care about the organizations you support, you’ve got to step up and make more thoughtful, necessary, smarter investments.

Photo Credit: HikingArtist.com

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Next Generation of High Engagagement Philanthropy: An Interview with Carol Thompson Cole

Nell Edgington — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 16:14:41 +0000

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Carol Thompson Cole. Carol is President & CEO of Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), a philanthropic investment organization (co-founded by Mario Morino) that helps great leaders build strong, high-performing nonprofit institutions. She has over thirty years of management experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. She served as Special Advisor to President Clinton on the District of Columbia and was the Vice President for Government and Environmental Affairs at RJR Nabisco.

You can read past interviews in our Social Innovation Interview Series here.

Nell: This year marks Venture Philanthropy Partners’ 10 year anniversary. And in fact, venture philanthropy itself is only a little bit older. How has the concept of venture philanthropy changed since it first came on the scene?

Carol: People began talking about “venture philanthropy” about 11-12 years ago. Back then, it meant many different things, depending on who was speaking. Today, it still means many different things, but those organizations that work within this philanthropic mindset, like Venture Philanthropy Partners, have learned some important lessons along the way and share some common characteristics like a focus on performance, long-term financial commitments, investing in capacity and building infrastructure, and bringing resources in addition to capital to the table, to name a few.

At VPP, we actually moved away from using the term “venture philanthropy” a number of years ago as we realized that our approach was not a strictly “venture” approach. We are much more about blending some of the ways private equity firms approach their financial investments with many of the lessons learned and techniques developed by philanthropists through the years. We usually call ourselves a “philanthropic investment organization,” and we work to maximize all available resources, including capital, time, the skills and experience of our team, and the power of our network, to improve the lives of low-income children and youth in the National Capital Region.

Venture philanthropy arose out of the tech boom in the late 1990s, when many young entrepreneurs making their fortunes online decided to shift their resources into philanthropy. They saw a real opportunity to apply their business and management knowledge to nonprofits to create real, sustainable change for our society. These entrepreneurs decided to take the principles of venture capital that helped them become successful and shift that over into philanthropy.

Of course, the main strategies of venture philanthropy have been used, in some form or another, by grantmakers long before the late 90s. Venture philanthropists focus on high-engagement approaches to their grants, work to build capacity of organizations to scale their programs, and seek measured and proven outcomes as a result of their investment. Above all else, venture philanthropists use high-engagement techniques to bring more than just money to their partnership with nonprofits. Different grantmakers have refined their own ways of implementing these strategies, but they remain at the core of venture philanthropy, even a decade later.

Nell: When venture philanthropy started in the late 1990s it was thought to be a true innovation that could transform the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. Has it lived up to those original ideas?

Carol: Venture philanthropy is a true innovation, but the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors are large and complicated systems. Venture philanthropy is an effective tool that has helped us deliver strong results for the children and youth in the National Capital Region. VPP is focused on identifying outstanding nonprofit leaders with strong programs and bold ambitions to grow. We give them growth capital to build their infrastructure and scale their organizations through serving more children and youth, by increasing their outcomes and impact, or through influence – making systemic change that ultimately allows for many more lives to be changed. Our first fund has grown to serve an additional 16,000 youth.

Clearly, venture philanthropy has worked for us, but it is not the only answer for the nonprofit sector. It can be a useful tool to deliver results, but creating those results is more important than the way those results are created.

Nell: Venture philanthropy was in many ways the precursor to what has now become the social innovation movement. How do you think venture philanthropy fits into these new worlds of social investing, for-profit social entrepreneurship, and other areas where the public, private and nonprofit sectors are converging?

Carol: Again, venture philanthropy is a tool to be deployed in grantmaking. At VPP, we are focused on bringing a high-engagement model to our nonprofit partners and delivering results for the children and youth of the region. Social investing, social entrepreneurship, and other innovations coming out of the convergence of sectors are examples of similar tools to drive results. At the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference in March, where I spoke along side Paul Carttar of the Social Innovation Fund, there was a lot of discussion about what type of organizational structure is best to create social change and what type of funding an organization should seek out to achieve its mission. What became clear is that people need to focus on goals and strategy, not methods. Venture philanthropy complements programmatic sources of funding because it can help some organizations scale very effectively to help those who need it.

Nell: The federal government took a step into the world of social innovation last year with the Social Innovation Fund, which was based largely on the venture philanthropy model. What do you think of the SIF and how do you see government’s role (at both the local and federal levels) evolving from this?

Carol: VPP is a member of the inaugural portfolio of the Social Innovation Fund, and we are honored to be included among the other intermediary funders. We applied to SIF because the challenges in our community are too big and complex to be met by a single funder, a single nonprofit, or a single sector. What we need now is a “network” of nonprofits, funders, corporations, local governments, and the federal government working together to solve our most intractable problems.

SIF represents the first step towards that new form of collaboration. Speaking at the Harvard conference, Paul Carttar said that SIF was about much more than money, and it would be a success if the public-private partnership model was adopted by others across the country. In these lean times for funding, it is important that we work together to encourage social innovation where it is needed. SIF, as well as the other public-private innovations launched by the Obama administration, like Investing in Innovation and Race to the Top, are developments that should be encouraged. If we can continue to push local and federal government to take on this role as collaborator, we will be able to achieve much higher levels of impact in our communities.

Even the largest philanthropic investments are dwarfed by public funding and are often deeply effected by availability of public funding as well as how and when it is allocated. Not every partnership needs to be as formal as SIF, but I would urge all philanthropic and nonprofit organizations to look for ways to seek alignment with local, state, and federal government efforts.

Nell: What’s next for venture philanthropy? Where does it go from here? How do you continue to reinvigorate or adapt the model?

Carol: I strongly believe that SIF represents the next step for VPP, and for all of venture philanthropy. We feel our model of philanthropy works and our first investments were successful, but we also feel like there is potential to dramatically improve the lives of the most vulnerable children and youth in our regions through intense and intentional collaboration. Because of this, we applied to SIF.

Our SIF initiative, youthCONNECT, represents the next phase of our work. Instead of single investments, we are investing in a network of high-performing nonprofits that provide a number of different services to young people from low-income families to help them thrive in adulthood. All the nonprofits in the network share the goal of bringing education, job training, and social services to at least 20,000 low-income youth, ages 14-24, in our region over 5 years. As we demonstrate success, this approach can be replicated or adapted by others around the region and the country. We will still make high-impact, long-term investments in single organizations, but we are exploring the transformative power of a network approach.

It is too early to tell the effectiveness of youthCONNECT and SIF, but I think these developments are pushing us into the next generation of high-engagement philanthropy. At VPP, we are committed to evaluation, sharing, and transparency so we can learn from each other as we work in these unexplored areas.

Nell: One of the criticisms of venture philanthropy is that it is only accessible to the largest and most successful of nonprofits. Do you see smaller nonprofits being able to access the ideas of growth capital? And if so, how will this evolve?

Carol: VPP focuses on organizations with strong leaders that deliver results. We have historically focused on organizations with budgets of $3-$50 million, but in our youthCONNECT initiative we have invested in organizations that fall below that monetary requirement but still have a proven track record in the area. Investing in smaller organizations is a different approach than some venture philanthropists have used, but these smaller nonprofits should have opportunities to access growth capital. What is most important to VPP is that an organization, regardless of size, can deliver lasting and meaningful results for children and youth in our region. Change in the lives of those who need it most will always remain our priority.

Related posts:

The Next Generation of Philanthropy: An Interview with Jessamyn Lau

Financing Nonprofit Growth: An Interview with Susan Comfort

Connecting Government & Philanthropy: An Interview with Rene Cabral-Daniels

Overcoming the Catch-22 of Nonprofit Capacity

Nell Edgington — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 18:45:19 +0000

Ask a nonprofit executive director their biggest challenge and most will say securing enough resources. It can seem a vicious cycle: a struggling nonprofit needs to raise money to build their capacity, but they have to have enough capacity in place to raise that money. So they continue to struggle.

A reader of the Social Velocity blog, an executive director of a smaller nonprofit, recently emailed me interested in Social Velocity’s consulting help to grow their ability to bring money in the door. However, the organization is so strapped that they don’t currently have the money to hire Social Velocity. So they are stuck in the vicious cycle: not enough money to raise enough money.

But there is a way out.

The clients we work with are all small and medium nonprofits that are at some sort of inflection point. They too have realized they need to do something different in order to grow their impact and/or become more financially sustainable. Yet, the trouble is they can’t make that change without some outside help.

So they have gotten smart. They have embarked on a series of steps to secure enough investments to hire Social Velocity to help them create a stronger, more effective nonprofit. These are the steps they went through:

Gather Champions: The executive director identifies a few board members who believe as strongly as they do in the desire for some sort of change to the organization and the need for help to get there.

Create a Vision for Change: Together these few leaders agree on their vision for change, for example: stronger financial footing for the organization, expanded programs, a more effective board. They may have no idea how to get there, but they all agree on a desired change.

Make a Roadmap: They meet with Social Velocity to get more clarity around the kind of change they want and what it would take to get there. Once I have a clear sense of where the organization is and what it would take to get them to their vision for change, I put together a detailed proposal listing activities, deliverables, timeline and cost so that they have a very clear roadmap for the investment required to make change happen.

Find Prospects: The small group identifies 3-5 people (board members, current major donors, volunteers or other friends of the organization) as potential investors in securing Social Velocity’s assistance. These people possess 3 key criteria that make them likely prospects to fund this capacity-building effort:

Connection: They are already close to the organization, whether as a current donor, volunteer, board member or friend. They know the organization well.
Concern: They strongly believe in the organization and the work it is doing and want to see the organization do more and better.
Capacity: They have the capacity to make at least a $3-5,000, one-time investment in the organization so that it can get to the next level.

Secure Investments: Once the nonprofit identifies this list of prospects, they go out and start meeting with prospects to discuss:

The nonprofit’s vision for change
The plan (Social Velocity proposal) for getting to that vision for change
The investment required
Whether they would like to make an investment

The end result has been nonprofit organizations, that had for years been stuck in the vicious cycle of never having enough money to do enough, finally breaking free with a plan and the investment to make some significant changes to their organizations. You can read our ongoing blog series, Raising Money to Grow On, about one of these clients who did exactly what I’ve outlined above. And you can also read a past blog post about how you can make your donors organization builders.

Nonprofits must break free from the idea that they just have to hobble along with dwindling resources, continuing to squeeze another drop out of a completely dry rock. If you have a core group of people who love your work and want to see you do more, you possess the key to building your own capacity.

Photo Credit: HikingArtist.com

Related posts:

Overcoming the Bias Against Nonprofit Capacity

Changing the Nonprofit Sector

Raising Money to Grow On: Putting the Strategic Plan in Place