Creating UnSectored Social Innovation: An Interview with Jeff Raderstrong

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Jeff Raderstrong, founder and editor of UnSectored, an online platform for people interested in developing collaborative efforts to create social change. In addition to the online platform, the UnSectored community uses offline events and activities to identify intersections, facilitate discussions, encourage cross-sector collaboration, and promote cross-sector change efforts. Jeff is also a community engagement consultant and has worked for Venture Philanthropy Partners, among other organizations on the front lines of social innovation.

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

Nell: You and some friends started the UnSectored blog a year ago to encourage the nonprofit, public and private sectors to break down their walls and work together on social change. How has it worked so far? What are you seeing?

Jeff: The blog was a first step in changing the conversation around social change to focus not on individual components—social enterprise, nonprofit, corporation social responsibility, government innovation, etc—but to consider the entire ecosystem. Social change is a complex task and, to us, it seemed silly to have all these conversations separately, with people not really paying attention to what those with similar (or identical) goals were doing.

In that way, the blog has been successful in providing that space. The response we received was way more positive than we were expecting, because our core message is a pretty simple one—that social change is the responsibility of all individuals, organizations, and sectors, and that everyone should work together. But there had not been a place for discussion around that idea, so it resonated with people.

There’s still a lot more work to do, obviously, and UnSectored can’t do all of it. We are providing the platform for the community that believes in this idea—what’s next is up to the people who join that community.

Nell: Your fellow bloggers at UnSectored are all part of the Millennial generation. Do you think the notion of “unsectoredness” (is that a word?) is a particularly Millennial one?

Jeff: Answer to first question: Yes! You just put it on the internet, so it’s now a word!

Second question: I do not think there is anything inherent about the ideas behind UnSectored that make it explicitly a millennial endeavor. The work on UnSectored has been done primarily by millennials, but I think that’s just a function of the people I reached out to (my peers) rather than who the idea resonates with most. We have gotten response on this from people of all ages and backgrounds—I think it’s a universal idea.

That being said, I do think it’s a relatively new idea, born out of the more collaborative and connected nature of the brave new world we live in. The new tools available to people make it much more easier now than ever before to work together. For millennials, this isn’t “new,” this is the way we were raised. Because of that, we get it a little quicker than others, but I don’t think that makes it “ours” at all.

Nell: In addition to the blog you are also doing UnSectored Talks and Working Group Actions. What are these and what are you hoping they will accomplish?

Jeff: We have four components to UnSectored: Blog, Talks, Actions, Campaigns. The blog is relatively straightforward, as are the Talks: Both are ways to engage with open and intentional conversations around social change. The Talks are offline, the blog is online.

The other two components are trying to leverage the power of the UnSectored community to move from discussion to action. The Actions are the offline, coordinated version of this, and the Campaigns leverage the online platform of UnSectored. By giving people the option to engage in discussion and action, both online and offline, we hope to meet people where they are and get them to engage the best they can.

Nell: How geographic is your movement? Is it growing beyond the D.C. Metro area?

Jeff: It’s centered on DC, but we’ve been talking to people around the country. Because we aren’t funded and rely on volunteer time, it’s hard for us to have events in other places. But, we are looking for creative ways to partner with other organizations around the country. If you have some ideas, let us know!

Nell: Many of your fellow bloggers work for high-profile organizations within the social sector space (Venture Philanthropy Partners, Calvert Foundation, Council on Foundations, etc.). Do you find that your employers buy into the UnSectored idea and if so what are they doing to make it a reality?

Jeff: They definitely do. I think we all get inspiration for UnSectored from our other work. More and more, people at all types of organizations—high profile or not—are beginning to see how working together can produce better outcomes and create more transformative change. Personally, I’ve worked on the Social Innovation Fund initiative from the Obama administration, a great example of “unsectoredness” at work: The federal government partnering with funders and service providers to better leverage resources and encourage innovation. This initiative, which many of your readers are probably familiar with, is a great example of UnSectored’s core principle: That by working together, we can do much more than working alone.

Tags: Calvert Foundation, Convergence, corporate social responsibility, Council on Foundations, government innovation, Millennial generation, nonprofit, Obama Administration, social change, social entrepreneurs, social innovation, Social Innovation Fund, Unsectored, Venture Philanthropy Partners

A Career Guide For a New Generation of Change Makers

Billy Parish and Dev Aujla’s new book, Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money and Community in a Changing World, is a career guide for the generation that finds themselves on the precipice of some pretty monumental global challenges.

Parish and Aujla argue that 3 major trends are creating an unprecedented opportunity for people to find “the sweet spot between altruism and selfishness.” The trends are:

• A rise in global empathy, or the ability for people separated geographically to be bound by common desires and goals
• The Internet as a platform for global collaboration
• Breakthrough smarter and greener technologies

These trends have resulted in “enormous new opportunities to change the world.” Far from the bleak unemployment picture facing the Millennial generation, this book turns that challenge into an enormous opportunity. This generation won’t enjoy the same careers that those who came before them did. They will create their own careers by combining the need for an income with a desire to make the world a better place.

Part self-help book, part social entrepreneurship primer, Making Good at times verges on the feel good, but for a generation faced with staggering unemployment, a really messed up global economy, and the inheritance of other equally crippling social and political problems, they probably need a little hand holding.

The authors start by laying out the opportunities that exist within seven major industries that are undergoing tremendous turmoil (crumbling education system, weak transportation infrastructure, inadequate healthcare system, broken food chain, to start.). It seems there is an endless list from which this new generation could carve out solutions.

Then they go into the 6 steps for moving from idea to action (Reflect, Adapt, Connect, Design, Launch, Organize), which is sort of like the What Color is My Parachute for the social change set. The book is a nice companion to the more case-study heavy Echoing Green book, Work on Purpose. But what is interesting about Making Good‘s approach and different than most social entrepreneurship books, is that these authors see social change work in a broad spectrum, from new start up companies and nonprofits, to freelancing, to being a social intrapreneur (within an established company).

Perhaps in some ways, though, this book is trying to cover too much ground. Probably because it is one of only a few books in the emerging social change career genre. My hope is that as social change becomes a more established industry there will be many more books like Making Change that help those entering the working world and those trying to make a move within it to embrace social change careers.

In the Introduction to the book, Van Jones, special advisor to Obama on Green Jobs, writes “”We don’t know yet if we are going to be in a continued vicious downward cycle politically, economically, culturally, and spiritually–or whether this is just volatility preceding a beautiful rebirth and rebuilding…we could be seeing the beginnings of a positive ecological U-turn, one in which democracy is renewed by a new generation taking the stage with new information technology and cooperation tools and the economy is renewed by new models of commerce that respect people and the earth.”

The authors of Making Good seem to think that by giving the Millennial generation a road map for translating their desire for change into a sustainable way to make a living we will find that ecological U-turn. I tend to agree.

Tags: Billy Parish, Dev Aujla, Echoing Green, Making Good, Millennial generation, nonprofit, nonprofit careers, social change, social change careers, Social Entrepreneurship, social intrapreneurship, Van Jones, Work on Purpose