10 Great Social Innovation Reads: November

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.

1. 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




2. 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.




3. 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.




4. 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!




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




6. 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.”




7. 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.




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




9. 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.




10. 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

Tags: charitable deduction, Nonprofit Almanac, nonprofit board members, nonprofit trends, Philanthropy, Social Enterprise, Social Entrepreneurship, social innovation

Nonprofits as Equal Partners in the Economy: An Interview with Robert Egger

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with Robert Egger. Robert is the Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first “community kitchen”, where food donated by hospitality businesses and farms is used to fuel a nationally recognized culinary arts job training program. In addition, Robert is the Founder and President of the just launched CForward, an advocacy organization that rallies employees of nonprofits to educate candidates about the economic role that nonprofits play in every community, and to support candidates who have detailed plans to strengthen the economy that includes nonprofits. Robert was included in the Non Profit Times list of the “50 Most Powerful and Influential” nonprofit leaders from 2006-2009, and speaks throughout the country and internationally on the subjects of hunger, sustainability, nonprofit political engagement and social enterprise.

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

Nell: You have argued that nonprofits need to more assertively demonstrate how they are changing things (jobs created, dollars saved by society, etc), but this necessitates an understanding of and ability to articulate and track performance. Do you think the nonprofit sector as a whole is ready for that?

Robert: I don’t think we have a choice. There are external forces that will not allow organizations to go-it-alone, or do what they’ve always done, indefinitely, any longer. The “era of extra” in America, when our manufacturing economy produced enough extra money to sustain (however anemically) the hundreds of thousands of nonprofits, has passed. Plus, donors are more and more demanding of groups now. They want results.

And while many groups may struggle to move beyond antidotes to better articulate their already amazing economic results, there are assets available in every community that can help speed up the transition.

EVERY university and college is brimming with a generation raised doing service, and they would readily embrace the opportunity to help groups measure, and then use new media outlets to market themselves, with gusto.

There are also well-skilled Baby Boomers surging into the sector, equally anxious to be part of rocking their community. The only thing we have to fear is the fear of opening up to change and embracing new ideas. That will be particularly hard for older leaders, or founders who have so much invested in their vision or systems. I understand that trepidation… up to a point.

To be honest, human service nonprofits ask for that kind of courage everyday from the people we serve. Since 1989, we at the DC Central Kitchen have asked that of the recovering addicts and ex-cons who come looking for a second or third chance at change. Shouldn’t we in the sector be equally willing to let go of old habits and be open to new ways of making money? I think so.

Nell: You have worked in social services, feeding and finding jobs for the homeless. Are social problems like hunger, homelessness, poverty ever solvable without fixing the underlying infrastructure inequalities that caused them in the first place? How can and should a nonprofit work to solve something that has a much larger underlying cause?

Robert: I divide my time 49/51.

49% is spent helping colleagues at The Kitchen, or any nonprofit, work stronger, better, faster. But that’s all I’ll give to traditional charity, no matter how bold the effort.

Why? Because grant-funded charity cannot solve the problem. It’s beyond the ability of nonprofits—socially, politically and economically.

That’s why I devote 51% of my energy to forwarding tactics and strategies that help us as a sector (and we as a country) develop the civic courage, economic open-mindedness and political will required to finally root out, root causes.

That was why I Co-Convened the first Nonprofit Congress in 2006. I wanted to challenge the canard that the sector is too diverse to find common ground. I wanted to help inspire groups to climb out of their individual silos and embrace our shared opportunity to change the rules of the game, versus continuing to play by outdated (and economically flawed) dictates.

Most of all, I wanted us to be directly involved in the wide-open Presidential race of 2007 and the dozens of Governor’s races of 2010. I wanted to challenge candidates to vie for our votes, not take them for granted. I still believe that this is the strategy we need to take.

That is why, on Nov 4th, I launched CForward, a PAC (political action committee) for nonprofits. Our goal—to openly support and help elect a new generation of legislators who show up on day one, fully invested in partnering with nonprofits to strengthen the economy.

Admittedly, CForward is a long term strategy for change, but I advance immediate, on-the-ground tactics with equal audacity.

One of many ideas I think could move the dime involves mergers. Not in the two-become-one model, although that’s essential in the current economic climate. No, I’m talking about merging things that matter. If, for example, the top 25 nonprofits in any town merged their banking business and shopped their combined cash-flow, they could leverage their assets and advocate for seats on the board of the bank and work for access to capital (rather than remain encumbered by the grant system).

Another version–what if we developed a “nonprofit seal of approval” for businesses? We could suggest that if citizens wanted to decrease the need for charity, or lower taxes—they could support businesses that we identified as providing good wages, healthcare or other benefits that would decrease demand for services and increase independence. Imagine if we directed our 90 million volunteers to see daily commerce as philanthropy!!

That’s what interests me. What resources do we have and how we can use them differently?

Nell: You are sometimes viewed as a renegade in the nonprofit sector, in that you are not happy with the status quo and you challenge nonprofits to do more and better. Since the nonprofit sector is such a consensus-driven, collaboration-oriented one, have your opinions served you and your work well or ill?

Robert: The better question is; “Has consensus served the sector well?” I genuflect to the power of being open and inclusive, but I think consensus has been used as an excuse for inactivity. Fraternity has been used as a shield to stifle critical review of groups or ideas whose time has passed. The perceived lack of unifying forces has left us fighting each other for scraps. And our silo mentality has left us politically weak at the very moment we should be advocating for a more pronounced role in strengthening the economy. We are 10% of America’s economy. There are 100 million people who work at, or volunteer with, a nonprofit. Of greater potential is the 90 million strong Millennial generation that has been raised doing service and who are now beginning to flood out of schools. They are out of work. They are poor, pissed-off and plugged in. And they are our natural allies in pursuing new policies.

In short—why should we occupy the streets when we can take over the town.

If the organizations that purport to lead the sector can’t bridge the barriers that divide us and help us find common ground to build upon, then I say it’s time for new leadership.

Nell: You have strong opinions about what nonprofits should do differently, but what about philanthropists and government? Where do they fit into what needs to change in the social sector?

Robert: We are ALL trapped by charity.

It is rooted in all faith traditions and deeply ingrained in the American experience. Yet, it is driven by the “redemption of the giver, versus the liberation of the receiver” power dynamic. That flawed flow cascades down from government and foundations to nonprofits, and from nonprofits down to those we “serve”. None are truly liberated, and each resents the other. What’s important to recognize is that it’s not the players who are flawed, it’s the game itself.

I work for the day when nonprofits are viewed, rightly, as equal partners in the American economy. For those who would scoff at that idea, I suggest they ask any Chamber of Commerce what makes a town or state attractive to business. You know what they will include on ANY list? Quality healthcare. Vibrant arts & culture. Access to higher education. Strong communities of faith. A clean environment and recreational space for families.

ALL nonprofits!!

Our work enables businesses to make profit, yet, we settle with token grants. We are told that we cannot be openly political when businesses can post placards in their windows for candidates who they feel represent their interests. I say it’s time to re-negotiate.

I believe our country’s economic future rests on re-aligning the sectors, and being bold enough to see opportunity beyond current constraints or lines of demarcation that divide our resources when we should be aligning our assets.

Nell: What do you think about the recent growth of double-bottomline investing and for-profit social enterprises? Do you view for-profit social entrepreneurs, and those who invest in them, as competitive or additive to the nonprofit sector?

Robert: I believe the only sustainable future for philanthropy is for cause and commerce to be interwoven.

We still cling to two ideas about money—Friedman’s notion that business exists to make money for investors, and Carnegie’s idea (still foolishly forwarded by Gates and Buffet) that you should give money back at the end of your life, often attempting to offset the damage made by the very pursuit of profit.

Both are boring, outdated, and flawed ideas…and each rests on the participation of a benign consumer, blinded by the role their purchases make in maintaining the status quo of the day.

For me, social enterprise isn’t about nonprofits making money; it’s about consumers awakening to the power of pennies. It’s Capitalism 2.0.

Gandhi used the boycott of table salt to get the British crown to the negotiating table. Dr King used the boycott of the dimes it took to ride the busses of Montgomery to crack racism in America. Chavez used the boycott of table grapes to finally get land owners to give migrant workers basic sanitation and access to education for their children.

Social enterprise builds on that proven power but flips the energy to a “buy-cott” , where we reward and incentivize corporate behavior we know will begin to offset the need for charity. It uses market forces to compel other businesses, however reluctant, to follow suit or fail based on how they make their money everyday.

Social enterprise opens that door.

But I’m also very deeply invested in new ideas about how we incentivize investment and performance in nonprofits.

For example, If you invested $1,000 in Microsoft in 1986, you now have over $500K in the bank. Yet, if you invested that same sum in the Grameen Bank, which has elevated millions of people out of poverty with micro-loans, all you were eligible for was a one-time tax deduction, because it’s a charity. Why not a new tax system where you could earn an increasing tax deduction based on the same return-on-investment formula as a dividend check if an organization can show verifiable economic return? Imagine regular people being able to attain wealth by investing in groups that make the community economically stronger or more civically secure? I do…and that’s why I think social enterprise is so exciting. It says you can develop a strong society and a vibrant, open economy at the same time.

But to move beyond social enterprise or micro-credit or empowerment driven nonprofits being a novelty, we need to elect people who understand that power, and turn to the nonprofit sector and offer opportunities and partnerships to see it grow.

That’s why I launched CForward…to work with other citizens who work at nonprofits to elect people who have that kind of foresight and courage. It’s not as hard as you might imagine, and it is so much closer than you think.

Tags: CForward, DC Central Kitchen, homelessness, Nonprofit Congress, NonProfit Times, Philanthropy, poverty, Robert Egger, Social Enterprise

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: October

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.

1. 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.




2. 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.




3. 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.




4. 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.”




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




6. 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.




7. 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.




8. 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.




9. 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.




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

Photo Credit: JeffersonDavis

Tags: Fundraising, nonprofit innovation, nonprofit social media, Occupy Wall Street, Philanthropy, social impact bonds, social service charities

Financing Not Fundraising E-Book

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:

1. What is Financing Not Fundraising?
2. Create A Financial Strategy
3. Align Money and Mission
4. Find Individual Donors
5. Develop a Message of Impact
6. Raise Money for Building Capacity
7. Explore New Types of Money
8. Evaluate Earned Income
9. Calculate Net Revenue
10. Move From Push to Pull
11. Stop Lying to Donors
12. 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

Tags: earned income, financing not fundraising, individual donors, nonprofit capacity, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit growth capital, nonprofit strategic plan, Philanthropy

A Monster List of Social Innovation Books, Blogs, Conferences, Funders

Since today is Halloween, I thought I’d offer a monster list of resources for nonprofit leaders, social entrepreneurs, philanthropists, board members and others involved in creating social change.

The following list comes from the Resources page of the Social Velocity web site. The page includes social innovation conferences, organizations, funders, blogs, books and other things that anyone involved in the social change space should be aware of. It could be a starting point or an ongoing exploration of what’s going on in the space.

We are constantly adding to the Resources page, so if we are missing something, let us know in the comments.

Organizations Moving Social Innovation Forward

Funders

• 130 Ways to Fund Your Social Venture
• Center for Effective Philanthropy
• Dell Social Innovation Competition
• Echoing Green
• New Profit
• Nonprofit Finance Fund
• Public-Philanthropic Partnerships at the Council on Foundations
• Robert Wood Johnson’s Pioneer Portfolio
• Sea Change Capital
• Unreasonable Institute
• Venture Philanthropy Partners

Conferences

• Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship in the Age of Austerity
• Bottom Billions Bottom Line
• Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting
• Conference on Scaling Impact (by Social Impact Exchange)
• FSG and SSIR Collective Impact Conference
• Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Conference
• Harvard Social Enterprise Conference
• Net Change Week
• Net Impact 2011 Conference
• NextGen: Charity
• The Nonprofit Management Institute (by Stanford Social Innovation Review)
• Opportunity Collaboration
• ReVisioning Value
• Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship
• Social Capital Markets Conference
• Social Enterprise Summit
• Social Enterprise World Forum
• Social Good Summit
• Social Venture Capital / Social Enterprise (Miami)
• Social Venture Network Conference
• Social Venture Partners International Annual Conference
• Sustainatopia
• The Feast
• UST Symposium on Social Entrepreneurship

Philanthropic Thought Leaders

• Blue Print Research and Design
• The J.W. McConnell Family Foundation
• Tactical Philanthropy Advisors

Things to Read

Blogs

• A Smart Bear: Startups & Marketing for Geeks
• About.com Nonprofit Charitable Orgs
• Against the Grain
• Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits are Using Social Media to Power Change
• Dan Pallotta: Harvard Business Review
• Deep Social Impact
• Dowser
• Full Contact Philanthropy
• GuideStar: Bob Ottenhoff Blog
• Money and Mission
• New Philanthropy Capital's Blog
• NFF's Social Currency Blog
• Philanthropy 2173
• PhilanTopic
• SocialEarth
• SSIR Opinion Blog: Nonprofit Management
• SSIR Opinion Blog: Social Entrepreneurship
• UnSectored

Financing Impact

• Beyond Fundraising
• Nonprofit Growth Capital, Building is not Buying
• The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle
• Social Finance
• Social Impact Bonds
• The Task Force on Social Finance
• Understanding Nonprofit Financial Statements

Using Social Media

• The Dragonfly Effect
• The Networked Nonprofit

Being Strategic

• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
• Creating Public Value
• Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits
• Good to Great
• Good to Great and the Social Sector
• Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity
• Strategic Management of Charter Schools

Finding Inspiration

• Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed
• How to Change the World
• One Day, All Children…: The Unlikely Triumph Of Teach For America And What I Learned Along The Way
• Social Innovation Generation
• The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World
• The Social Innovation Dynamic
• Work on Purpose

Growing Solutions

• Franchise Organizations
• Scaling Social Impact: Strategies for Spreading Social Innovations. Stanford Social Innovation Review
• The Five Meanings of Scale
• The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox

Leading Well

• Leadership Without Easy Answers
• Real Change Leaders

Photo Credit: annabellaphoto

Tags: funding for social entrepreneurship, nonprofit, nonprofit financing, nonprofit funders, nonprofit leadership, nonprofit strategy, Philanthropy, social change funders, Social Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship conferences, social innovation, social innovation blogs

What Nonprofits Can Learn From Netflix

Even if you aren’t a subscriber to Netflix (the DVD and online streaming video service) you have probably heard about how their bad decisions have cost them thousands of customers in recent months. Although a nonprofit might seem worlds apart from Netflix, there is still much to be learned from their debacle.

Unlike for-profit companies that have only one customer group, nonprofits actually have two. First are those customers to whom nonprofits provide services — their clients. For a homeless shelter these “customers” are their homeless clients. Their second customer group is those who pay for the services — their funders. So for nonprofits, customer management is much more complex. I would argue that nonprofits generally do a good job of understanding and taking care of their client customers. But their second customer group, funders, can sometimes get lost in the shuffle.

Which makes the lessons from Netflix even more important. Here’s what Netflix teaches us about taking care of your supporters:

Listen to Your Supporters
Netflix assumed that their customers were so in love with their services that a 60% price hike wouldn’t phase them. When customers flooded the Netflix blog and took to Twitter to complain, Netflix largely ignored their customer’s anger. Then Netflix was  shocked when customers started leaving in droves. Organizations make mistakes and will at times irritate their customers, the trick is to listen to your customers and quickly correct any missteps. This is particularly important now that social media is so prevalent and is often the first place people go to vent about an organization. Listen to your funders, volunteers, supporters and other community advocates wherever they are and respond to their feedback, concerns, ideas. Don’t build walls around your nonprofit and ignore the outside world. Meet people where they are talking about you and listen and engage in a conversation with them.

Understand How Your Supporters Tick
It’s not enough, however, to simply listen to your customers, you have to understand what they want and need. Netflix assumed that separating DVD rentals from online video streaming was no big deal to customers. Boy were they wrong. The introduction of Qwikster, a separate DVD-only service from Netflix, threw an already angered customer base into a tailspin. Netflix failed to understand how their customers operate. Having two separate websites, two separate passwords and two separate queues for movies was completely untenable to their customers. As a nonprofit you have to understand how your supporters operate and what makes them tick. What about your mission and programs appeals to your supporters? How do they want to be involved? Invest some time in getting to know your donors, volunteers, board members, friends, advocates and what makes them passionate about your nonprofit, how best to engage them, what they’d like to do to support the cause, and how to make it easy for them to do so.

Acknowledge That Your Supporters Ultimately Run Your Business
Netflix forgot that their customers run their business. Without customers, there is no Netflix. Similarly for nonprofits, you may like to think that you exist solely to achieve your mission, but you have no mission without a way to fund it. You cannot separate your mission from how you financially support it. You need to take a step back and understand what types of funding and funders your mission would appeal to (Is your organization a good sell to individuals? Is there an opportunity for school or other government contracts? Is earned income an option?) and then develop a plan for going after and sustaining those funders.

Figure Out a Viable Business Model
Netflix used to have a very viable, profitable business model. But movie studios have realized that there is more money to be made in content, so their financial demands on Netflix have increased dramatically. Which pushed Netflix to increase customer prices. Now Netflix’s business model is out of whack. I’m not a media content expert, so I have no idea what a viable business model is for Netflix, but I don’t think they do either. The trick is to figure out how to get revenue and expenses to create a net positive. For nonprofits, the same is true. Funders will be more likely to support a viable entity with a bright future. Get your financial house in order by aligning your mission with a way to bring sustainable money in the door and funders will be more likely to support you.

Netflix’s missteps have almost been painful to watch. But watch we must if we are going to learn how to avoid their pitfalls. Whether you run a for-profit or nonprofit organization, you must be ever-cognizant of your customers and constantly work to fully integrate them into a successful, viable financial model.

Tags: individual donors, Netflix, nonprofit earned income, nonprofit funders, nonprofit fundraising, nonprofit strategy, Philanthropy

The Simplicity of Telling the Truth

There was an overwhelming reaction to my post last week, 5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors. I received more comments on that post than any other blog post in the 3 year history of the Social Velocity blog.

It seems there was a sort of collective sigh of relief in being told that it’s ok to be honest with donors. There were some amazing comments from readers, you can read all of the comments here. But I wanted to highlight a few in particular.

Some readers have been telling their donors the truth for awhile, like Sharon:

I have been honest with my donors for years, but I know I am in the minority, because some of my donors appear shocked when I explain the truth. I hope many more non profits accept this truth, because it’s only when the majority of us pull together that we will see real change.

And this from Linda,

Thank you so very much. This is a conversation that we often have in our world. Amen to transparency and truth. Well done!

And others recounted their own experiences of working with donors who don’t get it, like Curtis:

We recently had someone offer us $1,400 and they had this huge laundry list of expectations. At our new location $1,400 barely covers the electric bill for a single month.

And Kelly:

I am so on board with being real with funders and board members about what it takes to run our program! I had to inform my board that my staff can not be paid with in-kind donations!

I get the sense that there are many nonprofit leaders out there who want to be up front and honest with donors. Maybe they just need permission to do so.

Perhaps Marjorie says it best. The nonprofit sector needs to stand up for what they really need in order to be successful at solving social problems:

In an era of shrinking federal & state funding for human services, it’s tempting to feel relieved at “flat funding”. Trying to make that work just leads to substandard services delivered (in the case of nursing homes, day care, etc) by front-line staff without a living wage or health insurance. Rather than enable the illusion that the nonprofit sector can miraculously make it work, there are times we need to say that WE CAN’T DO IT without appropriate funding … and let public funders and policy-makers deal with the consequences of their budget decisions.

Thanks so much for the comments, everyone, and keep them coming! You are an inspiration to me. Stand up for your work, for your organizations, for your staff, and tell donors what they really need to hear.

Tags: Fundraising, nonprofit board of directors, nonprofit donors, Philanthropy

Using Data to Solve Social Problems: An Interview with David Henderson

In this month’s Social Velocity blog interview, we’re talking with David Henderson. David is the founder of Idealistics Inc., a social sector consulting firm that helps organizations increase outcomes, demonstrate results, and organize information. He has worked in the social sector for the last decade providing direct services to low-income and unhoused adults and families, operating a non-profit organization, and consulting with various social sector organizations. David’s professional focus is on improving the way social sector organizations use information to address poverty.

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

Nell: On your blog, Full Contact Philanthropy, you write a lot about making program evaluation accessible to all nonprofits, even small and under-resourced ones, which is something that a lot of those pushing for evaluation neglect to address. Evaluation can be expensive, time-consuming and poorly executed. What is the essence of good evaluation, and, at a minimum, what should all nonprofits be doing to evaluate their work?

David: Whatever the price tag, a good evaluation helps you make better decisions, a bad evaluation does not. If an organization is not open to changing its course of action regardless of what the data suggest, then evaluation has no meaning. Therefore, the most important step in any evaluation is knowing what you want to evaluate and why.

While some evaluations are expensive, they don’t all have to be. Evaluation does not mean just one thing. There is no one right way to do evaluation. Instead, there are a number of ways organizations can use outcomes metrics to inform their work, ranging from randomized control trials (most accurate and most expensive) to simply monitoring whether a few key indicators are getting better or worse.

More important than the certitude of any one evaluation is the regularity with which an organization uses metrics in decision making. It’s not terribly costly to start every staff meeting with an update on how the people you are helping are doing. But this discipline helps create cultural commitment to using outcomes data in decision making, which is really at the core of any good evaluation strategy.

Nell: Is everything in the social change arena measurable? Are their some public good efforts that are so complex or have so many variables that we cannot measure them, yet they still need to happen?

David: When we think about measurement, we tend to imagine a numeric, linear scale with start and end points. Not everything is quantifiable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not measurable.

Organizations collect information all the time. Some of that data is quantifiable and gets stored in spreadsheets and databases. But we also get a lot of important information through visual observations and conversations.

All of this information, quantitative and qualitative, objective and subjective, helps inform decision making. Taking the information we have and establishing evaluative frameworks that help us make systematic program decisions is the real challenge.

Nell: How does government fit into the effort for social change? Can and is government changing quickly enough to keep up and to have a relevant place?

David: Ideally, the non-profit sector would innovate and test social interventions, and governments would take the best innovations to scale. But successful social innovation requires cultural commitment to both evaluation and failure. And in the current funding environment, failure is not an option. That’s a big problem.

With so much pressure on organizations to show evidence of impact, instead of investing in innovating new social solutions, non-profits are hiring marketing consultants shrouded as evaluation experts to help them tell their stories.

If the government is to invest in and scale what works, as the federal Social Innovation Fund purports to do, organizations have to be free to report what does and what does not work. So long as our focus is on story telling instead of truth telling, it’ll be difficult for non-profits to have the latitude to experiment and evaluate freely, leaving the government precious little worth scaling.

Nell: Your particular interest is social change efforts to alleviate poverty. But since poverty is the result of some very serious failures in America’s infrastructure (inadequate education system, broken health care system, etc) is it possible to fix the results of those inadequacies without addressing those much larger structural deficiencies? Or can social entrepreneurs do both?

David: Poverty eradication has to be the goal, but alleviation is pretty darn important to the 43.6 million Americans and billions more worldwide living in poverty today. Social entrepreneurs as well as a myriad of government efforts address both structural causes and the many harms resulting from poverty.

Regardless of a particular intervention’s focus, every effort is more likely to succeed when informed by regular outcomes assessments. Since my firm’s focus is helping organizations use client metrics to make higher impact program decisions, we work with all types of organizations across the anti-poverty spectrum.

Nell: How does your company Idealistics fit into the solution to poverty?

David: Our practice is about helping organizations make smart, high impact decisions that increase social outcomes. Everything we do is underscored by a vision of a social sector that uses evidence in the crafting, implementation, and iterative evaluation of its interventions.

Probably the most important thing we do toward that end is helping organizations establish decision frameworks. A decision framework converts an agency’s theory of change into a tool, or a mathematical model as we think about it, that organizations can test, update, and use in the design and execution of their interventions.

With a solid decision framework in place, we provide analytically oriented consulting and technology systems that help organizations establish data collection pipelines to make sense of their information.

While a lot of our customers hire us so they can better prove to their funders that they’re making a difference, that isn’t our objective. But the fact is our customers do very well with their funders.

Our clients are able to uniquely demonstrate an analytical approach to their work, and have the evidence they need to back their claims of progress, which makes them very competitive in the evidence-deficient social sector landscape. However, for me and my team, the real gratification is not that our customers impress their funders, but that they are better positioned to change the lives of the people they serve.

Tags: David Henderson, homelessness, Idealistics, nonprofit outcomes, nonprofit performance measurement, nonprofit program evaluation, Philanthropy, poverty, program data, social entrepreneurs, Social Innovation Fund, theory of change