The Next Generation of Philanthropy: An Interview with Jessamyn Lau

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.

Tags: Ashoka U, impact investing, Jessamyn Lau, Mission-Related Investing, Peery Foundation, Peery Social Entrepreneurship Program, PFWhiteboard, Philanthropy, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, social entrepreneurs, social media, Toniic Network, University Impact Fund

Are You the Next Echoing Green Fellow?

Echoing Green has launched their annual search for social entrepreneurs. Each year, Echoing Green identifies promising social entrepreneurs with bold ideas to solve society’s most pressing problems and provides them with up to $90,000 in seed funding, strategic support, leadership development, and a powerful community of nearly 500 other Fellows and alumni. To date, Echoing Green has invested nearly $30 million in seed funding to almost 500 social entrepreneurs and their organizations.

Echoing Green is a great organization and a real pioneer in the social entrepreneurship space. To find out more, you can read my interview with Lara Galinsky, SVP at Echoing Green, and read about English at Work an Echoing Green fellow and Social Velocity client transforming the lives of ESL service workers.

Echoing Green’s online Fellowship application will be open from December 5, 2011 to January 9, 2012. You can find out more about the Fellowship application process here and you can sign up to receive the latest news on the process here.

Good Luck!

Tags: Echoing Green, echoing green fellows, nonprofit, social entrepreneur competitions, social entrepreneur start up funding, social entrepreneurs

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

Finding Inspiration in the Leaders of Social Change

The news lately has been less than inspiring. The census data released yesterday reports that the economy may be worse than we thought, with 15% of Americans in poverty, and the median income decreasing. After an almost 3-year recession that followed two wars and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I sometimes dwell on the fact that my oldest son, who will turn 10 in November, has grown up in an era of nearly constant uncertainty and fear. But instead of wallowing in these dreary days, we must find in ourselves, and particularly in those working toward social change, the will and determination to lead ourselves, our organizations, our communities away from despair.

These times require leaders who face the uncertainty with optimism, innovation and sheer willpower. And I don’t mean government leaders, although that would be nice for a change. I mean the leaders of even the smallest social change organization. In many ways, I believe it is up to the nonprofit sector and the countless organizations and funders that make up that great sector, to face, rather than shrink away from, the many challenges facing our country. It is so easy to become overwhelmed by the big challenges and the littler ones. And the leaders of our nonprofit sector are already so worn down by continuously being forced to do more and more with less and less.

But when the constant barrage of bad news gets me down, and I struggle to understand what my son’s life will be when he is my age, I think of a blog post that Kjerstin Erickson wrote on Martin Luther King day 2010. Kjerstin is the executive director of FORGE, a nonprofit working in African refuge camps. In writing her post, she was overwhelmed by the devastation following the Haiti earthquake and struggled to return to the optimism that a social change leader must have:

For a few days, I admittedly found myself struggling with the question of whether the change I’m seeking is even pragmatically possible. I asked myself what all the struggle is for if it can all come crashing down in an ugly testimony to our global shortsightedness. In the midst of the shame and grief, I even asked myself if I may be happier by not even trying. In this world of optimism and change, those thoughts are sacrilege. And yet, we’ve all found ourselves in moments like these. It’s part of the process of reconciling the world we want with the world we live in.

Because, in reality, if you are a leader working towards fundamental change to a social problem you must be inherently optimistic. The beliefs that a better world is possible and that you can do something to make it happen are, by definition, optimistic ones. But Kjerstin, like so many working for a better world, has moments of deep despair when confronted with a growing and seemingly insurmountable list of problems.

However, for Kjerstin, and other leaders driving social change, it is untenable to remain in the grips of despair. It is up to those leaders like Kjerstin who have envisioned a world without poverty, or homelessness, or uninsured children, or crumbling schools to face the bad news head on, dust themselves off, and find inspiration wherever they can. Kjerstin’s inspiration came from the words of a great leader who came before her, Martin Luther King, Jr:

When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.

Now more than ever we need leaders who can point the way to brighter times ahead. And those leaders, that inspiration, I believe comes from the army of people leading social change: the inherently optimistic, passionate, driven, determined leaders who have never been content to sit idly by and watch problems go unsolved. They are the visionaries who believe, who have always believed, that there is still hope, that we can make something out of this mess. It is up to them to show us the way.

Photo Credit: kekecpp

Tags: FORGE, Jr., Kjerstin Erickson, Martin Luther King, nonprofit despair, nonprofit leaders, nonprofit response to economic recession, social change inspiration, social change leaders, social entrepreneurs

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

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.

Tags: Carol Thompson Cole, grantmakers, growth capital, Investing in Innovation, Mario Morino, nonprofit, nonprofit growth capital, Paul Carttar, Philanthropy, Race to the Top, social entrepreneurs, Social Innovation Fund, Venture Philanthropy, Venture Philanthropy Partners, youthCONNECT

The Balance of Heart and Head

In the work of social change there is a constant and necessary tension between heart–the human emotions of love, empathy, anger that force us to work for social change, and head–the strategy, systems, and measurement that demonstrate whether that change is happening. Two recent books provide a nice demonstration of this ongoing balancing act between head and heart. Work on Purpose by Lara Galinsky from Echoing Green describes how the early experiences of five social entrepreneurs shaped the social change careers they eventually were drawn to. And Robert Penna’s The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox, provides a great step-by-step guide for a nonprofit wanting to explore the increasingly necessary world of outcomes measurement. The two books taken together, although very different in tone, content and presentation, actually provide a nice reminder of the importance of balancing heart and head in social change efforts.

Work on Purpose chronicles five Echoing Green Fellows and the paths their lives took to eventually become social entrepreneurs. The stories are fascinating, inspiring and eye-opening. Any social entrepreneur will recognize their own journey here, from some pivotal moment in childhood when they felt empathy that drove them toward social change, to the frustrating pressure to stay with a more traditional career path, to eventually breaking free and melding their passion and talents to work for social change.

In writing this book, Lara hopes to encourage others who are just starting out, and perhaps those who have not yet found their right career, to reflect on their larger contribution and the role they want to play: “What social footprint do you want to make? What is your problem to own? What gifts do you have to offer to the world? What path do you want to take?” Indeed, there is increasing interest and energy among the millennial generation to create a career around solving social problems. This book encourages that trend and helps people make it a reality, as Lance Armstrong and Doug Ulman write in the introduction to the book: “We all have an obligation to bring positive change to our communities and our world. Fulfilling that obligation requires the boldness not only to envision a better world, but also to recognize your ability to to make that world a reality.”

But social change is not all about passion and the individual social entrepreneurs who bring their vision to reality. It also must be about measuring outcomes in order to determine if all of that effort is really resulting in anything. And to help bring clarity to the often misunderstood and muddy world of outcomes measurement, Robert Penna has written a new book. The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox, guides nonprofit leaders (but really, any social entrepreneur) through the process of understanding what outcomes are, how to create the right ones, and then how to measure them.

His book is a much-needed tool for social change efforts because although there is increasing interest in demonstrating outcomes, outcome measurement can be so difficult and costly to pursue. Many organizations have simply abandoned the effort because they can’t wrap their heads around it, let alone afford it. But Robert provides a step-by-step, practical, common-sense approach that allows organizations to understand the power of outcomes and create the right ones for them. Finally there is a tool that makes outcome measurement a potential reality for all social change organizations.

In any effort to create significant, sustainable social change you must balance an empathetic vision with a systematic, measurable way to execute on that vision. These two new books provide the social entrepreneur the tools to do both.

Tags: balance of heart and head, Doug Ulman, Echoing Green, Lance Armstrong, Lara Galinsky, outcomes measurement, Robert Penna, social change, social change careers, social entrepreneur careers, social entrepreneurs, The Nonprofit Outcomes Toolbox, theory of change, Work on Purpose

10 Great Social Innovation Reads: February

February was another great month in the world of social innovation reading. As I mentioned last month, I’ve started a new monthly series on the Social Velocity blog highlighting my favorite 10 reads in the world of social innovation over the past month. You can read the January list here.

There are many more than 10 great reads out there, but these were the ones that really challenged me and got me thinking. I hope they do for you as well. As always, please add to the list in the comments. I’d love to hear what got you thinking this past month.

1. Seedbeds for Social Innovation: The Echoing Green blog discusses a new Carnegie Mellon University report that details what it takes for a city to be a seedbed for social innovation.




2. Nonprofits need to stop begging for scraps From the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Money and Mission blog, authored by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, comes a great response to the Stanford Social Innovation Review article a couple of years ago about the nonprofit starvation cycle. This post discusses what nonprofits can do to break out of the cycle.




3. A 10 Year Lesson in How Not To Spend $200 Million The Northwest Area Foundation in Minnesota has declared it’s ten year philanthropic experiment a failure. An interesting study in the less talked about side of innovation (failure) and transparency.




4. Social Impact Bond Learning Group The Nonprofit Finance Fund has launched a learning and discussion group to explore the feasibility of social impact bonds (government bond funding for social impact organizations tied to outcomes) in the US. The UK has already experimented with similar kinds of bonds. If the US introduced these kinds of bonds it could be a revolutionary new tool for funding social innovation.




5. Wired and Shrewd, Young Egyptians Guide Revolt A fascinating look from the New York Times into the structure and tactics of the small group of young innovators who brought Egypt’s ruling dictator to his knees. A real study in social innovation.




6. To Collaborate or Compete? From New Philanthropy Capital comes a report studying when it makes sense for nonprofits to collaborate and when to compete. Such a framework could be a really helpful way to tackle to this burning question.




7. Q&A With Middle East Entrepreneur Habib Haddad And another view of what happened in Egypt, a fascinating interview with a young entrepreneur who discusses the role of social media in the uprising.




8. Stop Giving Donors What You Think They Want: Dan Pallotta challenges nonprofits to treat donors like adults and be upfront and honest with them.




9. Rethinking the State of the Sector: The Deep Social Impact blog encourages the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors to focus on assets instead of challenges.




10. Governmental “Crowding Out” in Philanthropy: Sean Stannard-Stockton argues that because of the arcane way nonprofit accounting is done, money from government sources might actually cripple the financial sustainability of a nonprofit.

Tags: donors, nonprofit begging, nonprofit collaborate or compete, nonprofit financial sustainability, philanthropic transparency, Philanthropy, social entrepreneurs, social innovation

What Social Value Do Nonprofits Really Create?

I have a new post up at the Change.org Social Entrepreneurship blog called “What Social Value Do Nonprofits Really Create?” Here is an excerpt:

There is a concept that good entrepreneurs know only too well, but nonprofits could stand to explore. A “value proposition” is the unique value a product or service provides a consumer. Without a value proposition a business has no place in the market. For a nonprofit, a social value proposition is just as critical to success, but often ignored. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, due in part to the growth of for-profit social entrepreneurs, nonprofits must analyze, articulate, and deliver on a social value proposition.

In the past, nonprofits could exist without a value proposition. Donors wouldn’t argue that a library, homeless shelter, food pantry or school provided a necessary service. But as we move further down the road of social innovation, the assumption that money will automatically follow good works is no longer valid…

You can read the entire post here.

Tags: nonprofit, social entrepreneurs, social value proposition