Natalie’s isn’t alone. There are increasing amounts of research on employee engagement and job satisfaction, and new research from Net Impact and Rutgers University indicates that employees who have the opportunity to address social or environmental issues while on the job are more satisfied than colleagues who don’t—by almost a 2:1 ratio.

Impact work can manifest itself in many ways—roles in corporate social responsibility departments at large companies or in mission-driven organizations like nonprofits are just a few. Supported by the John D. And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, we recently surveyed nearly 2,000 college students and currently employed workers across the country to see what they thought about impact work. The result of the study, “Net Impact’s Talent Report: What Workers Want in 2012,” suggests that employers who provide workers with tangible ways to make a positive social or environmental impact will find that it pays off in more than just good karma. Satisfied employees are often more engaged and, therefore, more productive.

Among the employees we surveyed, 45 percent of those who said they have impact opportunities at work also reported high job satisfaction levels, while only 29 percent of those who didn’t have such opportunities reported high job satisfaction.

Among students, we found that Natalie is indicative of her peer group because she wants to make an impact through her job; she’s also similar in her willingness to hold out for a job that will allow her to do so. Two-thirds of the graduating university students we surveyed said that making a difference in their next job was a priority, and 45 percent of them said they would accept a lower salary to do so. In fact, students considered finding such jobs even more important than having children, a prestigious career, or wealth (see graph). That’s a pretty serious commitment to impact work.

All of this is good news, because the world needs Natalie’s talent and the talent of others like her to solve problems like climate change, income inequality, and education. At Net Impact, we envision a future where all of us can go to work to make that difference, but to make it really happen, we, as employers, have work to do. Companies need to do a better job creating opportunity for employees to connect their day jobs to sustainability and social good. Nonprofits must do more to tie the daily grind of meetings and emails to a higher purpose.

Such efforts can take many forms, and there are already many organizations experimenting with ways to do this. PepsiCo, for example, established a leadership development program that sends employees to work on short-term projects in developing countries. Microsoft actually established its own internal Net Impact chapter led by employees. And national nonprofit KaBOOM! keeps its employees engaged with a daily practice of sharing written words of encouragement with colleagues.

The executive summary of “Net Impact’s Talent Report: What Workers Want 2012” includes some ways that employers can integrate impact opportunities into the workplace. Of course, it’s not always easy. But a more satisfied workforce—which translates to a more engaged and productive workforce—makes it well worth it.

Download the executive summary and full report.

To start, a good theory of change should answer six big questions:
1. Who are you seeking to influence or benefit (target population)?
2. What benefits are you seeking to achieve (results)?
3. When will you achieve them (time period)?
4. How will you and others make this happen (activities, strategies, resources, etc.)?
5. Where and under what circumstances will you do your work (context)?
6. Why do you believe your theory will bear out (assumptions)?

Theories of change come in all shapes and sizes, from “wiring diagrams” typically used by direct service organizations (see Nurse Family Partnership’s) to “systems maps,” typically used for more complex interventions that need to influence multiple actors (see Healthy Child Care Washington’s, page 36). Organizations sometimes use different versions for different audiences; for example, they may use a summary graphic for outside audiences, and a detailed prose version for leadership and staff.

In our ten-plus years of supporting clients in theory of change work, we’ve found six major pitfalls that, if avoided, can help nonprofits create actionable theories of change. 

1. Confusing accountability with hope. A theory of change must clarify what results a nonprofit will hold itself accountable for achieving; in other words, what results must it deliver to be successful. Defining results in this way will force your organization to get real about the impact you are signing up to create, not just what you hope will happen. While dreaming big and setting lofty goals, such as ending world hunger, can inspire your stakeholders, these are better left for your mission statement rather than your theory of change.

2. Creating a mirror instead of a target. A good theory of change doesn’t simply reflect what an organization is already doing; rather, it articulates what the organization wants to be held accountable for, and works backward to identify necessary activities, strategies, resources, capabilities, culture, and so on. If your theory of change work hasn’t led you to propose any changes to these elements, you probably haven’t taken a hard enough look.

3. Failing to take the external context into account. The best theories of change explicitly integrate the anticipated actions of regulators, the work of peer organizations, expected changes in the economic climate, and other factors. For example, if you are battling homelessness in a community, knowing that a coalition is soon forming to triage and coordinate the activities of providers may lead you to think differently about what activities you deliver and what results are achievable. A deep understanding of the external context will help you create a more realistic theory of change.

4. Not confirming the plausibility of your theory. While internal dialogue is a common starting point for theory of change development, the process should not conclude without a concerted effort to verify whether your “theory” is plausible. Consider the example of FIRST, a nonprofit that inspires young people to become science and technology leaders through hands-on, mentor-based programs. The organization’s recent effort to refine its theory of change included a thorough “literature review” of key evaluation studies and meta-analyses to determine what it takes to get youth into science and technology majors; discussions with evaluators and academics to assess whether FIRST’s activities were sufficient to generate its proposed results; and reviews of qualitative data from mentors, coaches, and alumni to understand what was most valued by the organization’s constituents. Though these efforts took time, they helped FIRST perfect their program model and program delivery practices in advance of implementing changes.

5. Creating a theory that isn’t measurable. To be able to test, refine, and improve your theory of change over time, you need to be able to measure its key elements. A common way to operationalize your theory of change is to get specific—articulate the input, output, and outcome indicators the theory of change suggests you should track (also known as creating a “logic model”). If you can’t actually gather these indicators at the right frequencies to learn what’s working, you may not be specifying your theory of change at a deep enough level (for example, you may need to define intermediate outcomes that are predictive of longer-term aspirations). 

6. Assuming you’ve figured it all out. To get the most out of your theory of change, you need to recognize and explicitly account for the uncertainties that underlie your plan. Learning organizations carefully specify their assumptions, regularly reflect on whether those assumptions are bearing out, and consider what new assumptions they might test to further improve impact. One simple but powerful mechanism to accomplish this is to create a “learning agenda”—a simple list of assumptions and hypotheses that your organization can test at some frequency. A learning agenda can help ensure that your organization’s theory of change is constantly revisited

Do these pitfalls resonate with your experience? Have you observed others?

These conclusions will come as no surprise to those acquainted with the Rodale Center’s Farming Systems Trial, the United States’ longest running side-by-side comparison of organic and conventional agricultural systems, which has been publishing its results since 1981 and  reported this year that corn and soybean yields are equivalent in both systems (after the three-year conversion period). Indeed, organic yields are significantly higher in drought years when compared both to conventional seeds and to seeds that have been genetically altered for drought resistance.

The 2011 Iowa State study also analyzed what these yields mean for on-farm income. It concluded that on average over the period of the study an organic farmer was receiving $200 more per acre than his conventional counterpart. With time, this divide is likely to widen, as the costs of synthetic inputs increase and as weeds and pests develop greater resistance.

So why aren’t more people shifting to organic agricultural systems? Although the amount of certified organic farmland worldwide has increased steadily over the past decade, at 37 million hectares it represents only 0.9 percent of the total. One reason for this slow increase is that organic agriculture tends to be more labor intensive. In the developing world, this is a positive factor, since organic farming creates employment in the rural communities where work is most needed and acts as a brake on urban migration. This point is stressed in a report by Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, which calls for the massive adoption of agro-ecological techniques as the best means to address hunger and poverty in the developing world. In the developed world, however, there is reluctance to do something oneself if a pot of synthetic chemicals can do it for you. 

Organic farming is also knowledge intensive, and while a properly functioning agro-ecological system will generate superior returns and inbuilt resilience, a poorly managed conversion can harm a farm’s productivity. If farmers don’t have access to the appropriate knowledge, then it is simpler to stick with industrial agricultural techniques—plant a genetically modified crop, apply synthetic fertilizer, and spray it with a store-bought chemical—even if this condemns the farmer to sub-optimum returns and leaves her exposed to rising input prices. 

At the recent Secretary of State’s Impact Economy Forum, which brought together leaders from the corporate, government, and NGO sectors to discuss sustainable development, it occurred to me that there is another factor holding back the transition to organic agriculture: differing conceptions of sustainability. For environmentalists, sustainability is a fairly easy concept to define: Don’t jeopardize the future on behalf of the present. What I realized in Washington is that many corporations, particularly food corporations, think about sustainability differently. 

Today there is so much pressure on the global food supply that the vast majority—in fact, I would say all—of the big food companies are having a hard time filling orders. Thanks to changing weather patterns, they barely have enough coffee, cocoa, and peanuts as it is and oilseeds such as soy, canola, and rapeseed are all trading at or near the all-time highs they touched in 2008. For a food company, sustainability first means corporate sustainability. And since these companies cannot afford to see any dip in yields—even if that dip is temporary and, over time, will create a cheaper and more resilient source of raw materials—they are prevented from taking actions that would be both better for the environment and better for business.

My aim is not to finger point or corporate bash. Quite the opposite: I think programs such as Mars’ Sustainable Cocoa Initiative are commendable and a fine example of what can be done in the field of stakeholder collaboration. But we need to be clear about what Mars’ use of  “sustainable” means. It is not as sustainable as the planet would like it to be. And it is probably not even as sustainable as people at Mars and its collaborators would like it to be, if they didn’t have their hands tied by short-term problems.   

As I say, I am not interested in finger pointing and wouldn’t expect a cat to bark like a dog. A corporation will and should protect its and its shareholders’ interests. What I do want to say is that there is a clear opportunity here for investors who are not constrained by supply chain issues and who are willing to tie up their capital for a certain number of years to make very good money. 

For those with a long-term investment horizon, investing in organic agriculture will provide above-market returns, demonstrable environmental impact, and—in the case of the developing world—enormous social impact, too. There is often a tradeoff among the three bottom lines of impact investing—financial, social, and environmental—but in the case of organic agriculture, a sector that is materially undersupplied and that has seen demand grow year after year, even during the financial crisis, you really can have your cake and eat it too.

Onie, Farmer and Behforouz also propose that we need to look beyond our shores and borders for models for how to do so, pointing out that “in the developing world, there is no choice but to design health care systems that account for limited financial resources, scarce health care professionals and significant poverty.”

We couldn’t agree more.

Since 2009, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has supported Health Leads, the organization led by Rebecca Onie. Health Leads enables physicians and other health care providers in six U.S. cities to prescribe basic resources, such as food and heat, for their low-income patients—just as they would medication. The model recognizes that, too often, the fact that a family lives in a mold-infested apartment or doesn’t have enough food holds greater influence over whether they can improve their health than medical care or prescriptions. As Onie, Farmer and Behforouz explain, in addition to broadening the scope of health care, Health Leads broadens where it is delivered by using family resource desks in hospital waiting rooms to connect patients with these social resources. And it extends the health care workforce by relying on passionate and skilled college volunteers to work with patients to make those connections.

In addition, the Foundation’s Pioneer team has begun to look overseas for health care solutions that have the potential to be adapted here in the United States. We’re starting off slowly, trying to learn as much as possible from our peers at other foundations who have been funding health care programs overseas for years. For example, we’ve brainstormed with colleagues at the Center for Health Market Innovations, a program funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, about scaling and replicating innovative programs and policies that are already improving health care delivery in low- and middle-income countries. 

With this same strategy in mind, we partnered with Ashoka Changemakers to conduct a competition to seek out health care solutions from abroad, announcing the winners last month. In fact, Onie, Farmer and Behforouz highlight one of the winners of the competition in their article: Brazil’s Associação Saúde Criança. Saude Crianca—like Health Leads—recognizes that health care goes beyond the doctor’s office; to be healthy, children under their care need to be able to live in safe homes where they are well-fed and the whole family is supported on a path out of poverty.

We’re also working with the International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery to explore how health care could be delivered at lower cost by using different models of where health care is delivered and by whom. As Onie, Farmer and Behforouz point out, the United States health care system often relies too heavily on doctors in circumstances where nurses or even community health care workers are skilled to be delivering services more efficiently and at lower cost.

Despite our agreement with Onie, Farmer and Behforouz, we see challenges ahead. To begin with, we need more champions—across all sectors—for programs such as Health Leads, Saude Crianca, or any other model that addresses the gap between a patient’s medical and social needs. To increase awareness and understanding and expand the pool of those willing to advocate for changes in the health care system, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in partnership with Harris Interactive, released the results of a poll late last year highlighting the fact that the vast majority of physicians believe unmet social needs are leading directly to worse health for all Americans. In early April, we hosted an online discussion asking people to share their ideas on bridging the gap between physicians’ desire to address their patients’ social needs and their lack of time or sufficient staff to do so effectively.

In addition to finding champions, we need to continue to eliminate silos that make it difficult for health care providers to address the social factors that are defining their patients’ health outcomes. Hospitals are never going to become social service agencies and they shouldn’t; that's not their expertise. We need to “properly execute the solutions we already have” by building more successful integration between health care providers and those who have the know-how and capacity to respond to patients’ social needs.

As a foundation, we will continue to seek out innovative solutions—overseas and in the United States—and to evaluate the most promising to establish that they are effective and can be spread. Just because it works in Haiti does not mean it will work in Hartford. For those models and approaches we believe can be scaled, we will provide support to enable them to develop strategies for growth that reflect an understanding of which elements of the model or approach are essential for success.

We hope you’ll join us by sharing your ideas, partnering with us to help the most effective ideas achieve the scale they need to transform health on a major scale, and to champion efforts to “make sure that what we call ‘health care’ is broad enough to get the job done.”

As Rebecca Onie, Paul Farmer and Heidi Behforouz make clear, the time to do so is now.

KoAnn Skrzyniarz, founder and CEO of Sustainable Brands, sees a business revolution happening. I recently asked her how strategic branding could redefine the value of business.

Nayelli Gonzalez: We continue to witness social and economic unrest bubbling up around the world—and this year’s rallying cry for the Sustainable Brands conference is “The Revolution will be Branded.” What does “revolution” mean to you, and what’s the connection between the 99 percent and sustainability?

KoAnn Skrzyniarz: We are in the midst of a global revolution driven by a growing understanding of the impact of business and consumption on the future health and wellbeing of our lives, our families, and our communities. The revolution is one in which individuals and societies around the world are recognizing the need for a change in business as usual. They are asking business to lead the way to a better future—and are beginning to demonstrate their commitment to reward brands that do better by increasing their loyalty and support for those brands. Consumers are increasingly recognizing their power to affect change. Brands will need to show how they are helping lead the way toward an economic system that serves society as a whole, or risk becoming irrelevant. Brands that demonstrate this kind of shared value will benefit by taking a leadership position in their industry.

Why do you think sustainable business leaders are equipped to lead this movement?

In the case of sustainability, these leaders have a unique vantage point from which to track many of the global macroeconomic and resource issues that are at the heart of the sustainability revolution today. Because of their perspective and vast resources, they can be first to both deeply understand future problems and to contemplate how to turn these problems into business opportunities. They have access to economists who are looking at risks related to commodity price fluctuations and climate change-related disruptions to their business. They get it. This is why we see CEOs of some of the world’s biggest companies—Lee Scott of Walmart, Paul Polman of Unilever, Jeffrey Imelt of GE, and others—standing up and committing to setting bold goals for driving growth, while dramatically reducing environmental impact and improving service to society. These business leaders are actually key to driving the sustainability revolution because even the simplest of their commitments have the potential to create massive, scaled impact. The trickle-down-effect of some of the changes Wal-mart is making, for example, is enormous.

Sustainable products and services are viewed as better for society, the economy, and the environment, yet sustainable purchasing across industries is not yet the norm. What will it take for all businesses to offer sustainable products and services to consumers—and for consumers to pay for those options?

That’s one of the central questions of our community. How do we build bridges that support companies that want to add more sustainable options in the market? If a company commits to launching a more sustainable solution and nobody buys it, it can be a challenge—we have to figure this out, but it’s a challenge. It requires re-establishing trust in brands among a consumer base that has come to feel a bit used. And it requires finding ways to educate people about complex topics, while not beating people over the head and preaching to them. Narrative is certainly becoming more and more important in the way businesses communicate sustainability, and there’s a need to become more adept at telling stories, and creating dialogue between consumers and brands—and telling a good story in a way that’s interesting and easy to grasp. Some brands are doing this really well.

This year, for example, Patagonia has gotten attention with its Common Threads campaign. The reason the company pulled it off with credibility is that it have a history of commitment to sustainability issues. They were not seen as disingenuous. It’s a challenge for other companies to get there—it takes time. Chipotle, Airbnb, Method, and LUSH, all of which will also be at this year’s conference, are other great examples of companies that communicate sustainability to people in fun and delightful ways—ways that lead people to think differently without making them feel guilty.

What’s your advice for professionals who work in the social good and sustainability branding space?

My biggest piece of advice for professionals in this space is to engage in more cross-pollination of thinking. We still tend to view social good and business as two ends of the spectrum, and we need to eliminate that. It surprises me that we’re not farther along on this path. My hope is that in the coming years, as part of the re-boot of our economic systems for the future, we’ll see more “for purpose” organizations that are adept at creating and enjoying the rewards of creating real, meaningful value. Now that’s sustainable!

Things that add value in society aren’t always viewed as valuable in our world today—there’s something twisted and broken about that. We need to expect more accountability and results from nonprofits, and we need to value those businesses that can demonstrate a path toward sustainable value creation without the expectation of a 40x return to investors in 3 years. Our founding mission has been to be a ”bridge to better brands” by providing resources that help brands prosper, while leading the way to a better world. Just as brands/businesses need to become platforms for purpose, nonprofits need to be good brand builders too. Having more cross-pollination between the social good and nonprofit worlds, and the business world would be really valuable to both sides. We’re supporting this cross-pollination through our new CauseWay initiative, which will foster partnerships between brands and high-impact organizations—and we’re excited to see what great new impact comes out of that.

What has been lost in the Sturm und Drang is any concern about health. By focusing on the mandate, critics have taken attention away from other important aspects of the act, such as its efforts to get the health care system to focus more on keeping people healthy and less on treating disease.

In this issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review we are privileged to offer you a more thoughtful perspective on how to improve health care. Our cover story, “Realigning Health with Care,” is written by three prominent experts in the field—Rebecca Onie, co-founder and CEO of Health Leads and a Mac-Arthur Fellow; Paul Farmer, Harvard Medical School professor and co-founder of Partners in Health; and Heidi Behforouz, Harvard Medical School assistant professor and medical and executive director of the Prevention and Access to Care and Treatment Project.

The article makes a number of important points. The US health care system is in crisis. The United States spends far more on health care than any other country, yet Americans are among the least healthy people in the industrialized world. The United States ranks 36th in life expectancy and 46th in infant mortality. Health indicators in some US communities bear a striking resemblance to developing world nations like Bangladesh.

Two of the principal reasons that the US population is becoming less healthy, the authors assert, are a shortage of primary care doctors and rising poverty. Fewer medical students are becoming primary care physicians at the very time when more people are entering the health care system because of expanded insurance coverage. The number of people living in poverty, meanwhile, continues to climb. According to the US Census Bureau, an additional 2.6 million people fell below the poverty line in 2010, bringing the total number of people living in poverty to 46.2 million, the highest number in the 52 years that the bureau has been releasing figures on poverty. The links between poverty and poor health are direct and well known.

The situation looks dire, but Onie, Farmer, and Behforouz offer hope. As they point out, there are many examples around the world where innovative programs have improved health in the face of extreme poverty and limited resources. Partners in Health is a good example of what can be accomplished under dire conditions. Because there are so few doctors in Haiti, Partners in Health has trained other community members to act as health care liaisons. Health Leads, which operates in six US cities, has recruited 1,000 volunteers to work in hospitals and clinics, where they help low-income patients access resources such as food and housing, critical factors in people’s overall health.

The article is full of other examples of innovative approaches to health and a well-reasoned framework for how we can get our health care system back on track. Rather than retreat in the face of concerted attacks on efforts to expand health care to underserved people, it’s time for us to act.

I recently got a real taste of what this means as we looked at the social sector landscape in India.

As technology innovators, we are naturally excited by new ideas and, in India, my team was pushing for ground-breaking innovation in health care delivery. We wanted to integrate a new range of patient-centric home medical devices for monitoring and diagnosis using a hosted cloud-based service (built over a connected infrastructure), and to establish a centralized service for remote management. It was a rude shock to learn that while we were advocating the use of the latest cloud, M2M, and mobile technologies, the existing system had not yet applied even two-decade-old basic computing technologies. Many of the ongoing health care programs we observed still used hand-filled paper forms for data-entry and tracking. Within one organization, which ran a pre- and post-natal assessment program, it was open knowledge that data entered by community health workers was rarely monitored, compiled, or acted on.

No wonder it was not easy to measure the success or impact of the program, or to plan for improvements. Timing, resources, effort, and costs were far from optimal, and so much could change—both in quality and effectiveness—through better management of technology we already have available, such as mobile, real-time data entry applications connected to a central server or applications that extract data from central databases to create reports and dashboards.

In contrast, we also came across smaller initiatives that were using “the latest” technologies, including Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action (MAMA), which provides low-income new and expectant mothers in India, South Africa, and Bangladesh with vital health information via mobile phones using SMS and voicemail.

While immensely useful for MAMA participants, technologies like these are insufficient to radically impact the landscape. Technology is still in the hands of a limited few, and effort is needed to broaden the reach.

We are at an interesting stage of social evolution and technology maturity, and it’s time to step back and re-consider our priorities. While new technologies continue to surprise us with their vision and possibility, there is a great deal of untapped potential in consistently applying existing technologies to support, and in fact, direct social change.

Our focus needs to move away from technology innovation to technology application. We should look for solutions—tested and proven in other business sectors like finance, travel, retail, etc.—to build innovative applications for the social sector. This approach will save us from the overhead costs of introducing new technology, as well as temper the complexity and risk. However, this still requires a new outlook to service delivery and innovative business processes; more specifically, it requires a focused effort to manage and direct technology in areas that lead to effective, widespread social change.

The first step is to define a common framework for technology integration, and to apply that uniformly and consistently across all social initiatives. We should keep in mind that technology can emerge as a tool for social development only if it helps to achieve five goals for any social program—these parameters can be used to to gauge the readiness, relevance, and impact potential of new initiatives.

1. Extend reach. Access should extend beyond a limited few to millions through improved and diversified access technologies—for example, reach low-income users who have low-end feature phones with SMS and simple voice messaging, and reach smartphone users with existing apps.

2. Improve services. This can be done by driving new service delivery models that take advantage of geographical and resource gaps. For example, cloud and hosted services can deliver expertise and information to remote regions, providing accurate and otherwise unavailable diagnosis and treatment in health care.

3. Facilitate adoption. Build on convenience, and make it easier and more fun for users to employ technology anytime, anywhere; introduce easy-to-use mobile applications, one-click user interfaces, and other simply designed tools.

4. Deliver relevance. Provide targeted services that tailor to the specific needs of each group. For example, a service to remotely monitor the physiological symptoms for post-operative care reduces health care costs significantly while improving patient comfort and experience. (Note that a service like this requires an integrated arrangement between the patient and the service provider, where the needs and pain-points are well understood on both sides.)

5. Reduce cost. Introduce efficient, optimized processes. For example, use of digital forms  and implementation of real-time data mining and analytic applications can ensure timely action on data and improve the overall return on investment. Use of technology can facilitate automation and reduce overheads.

Internet communication is driving the creation of a connected society, and the growing reach of the mobile phone gives us the opportunity to integrate larger populations into our global, connected society. Together, Internet and mobile provide a platform that has the potential to drive rapid social change unlike any other in history. We can achieve far more than we have by using these technologies as an infrastrcuture to transform education, health care, energy, agriculture, and the environment.

A closing example: In a country like India, the biggest challenges to education are making skilled teachers available in remote areas, and addressing issues around geographical diversity, proximity, and access. Right now, no one is looking at creating a new education delivery channel to facilate virtual classrooms and long-distance learning—that’s despite a government initiative to put Aakash tablets (government-sponsored $50 tablets) into the hands of every one of India’s 220 million school and college students.

It is critical to ensure that we take full advantage of current technologies. It is time for us to recognize that it is in our hands to manage and make the most of existing technology to drive effective, widespread change. Simple ideas can drive local, regional, national, or even global impact on social issues.

I was a founding member of several civil society organizations and campaigns advocating change to Lebanese policies and practices in areas such as citizenship and accountability, electoral reform, women’s rights, information access, education systems, and anti-corruption. Still, reform in Lebanon remained impeded by the lack of political will among public officials and the weak capacities of Lebanon’s public sector. The impact of these organizations’ efforts was never up to our aspirations.

In 2009, a group of activists, including me, began to explore new ways of influencing change. We concluded that we were demanding change from a structure that could not do what we asked and came to the realization that three elements were necessary for successful reform: new, capable, progressive leadership; evidence-based policies and solutions; and a more responsive and inclusive public sector. With this in mind, we started a for-profit consulting firm and social business called Beyond Reform & Development, specializing in policy research, public management reform, and people development.

This move enabled us a take on a more professional, collaborative, and influential role with government institutions, political parties, and international organizations. Today, we offer policy advice, learning opportunities, and management solutions to governments in the Levant, the Gulf, and North Africa. This has allowed us, in many cases, to direct the path of reform in government institutions rather than simply demanding that someone else do it. As a business, we are more able to initiate change and provide solutions and build capacity where governments and international organizations need it. The move from non-governmental and nonprofit to a private sector, for-profit company was also a strategic choice to overcome donor reliance and agenda-driven funding.

Our business model has helped us expand and impact communities at an exceptional rate. The model invites like-minded individuals and groups to join and offer their expertise to support the work of public officials and compliment the work of international organizations. We are a social business for several reasons. First, the company is purpose-driven, and all of our projects and initiatives serve social, political, and economic development in the Arab World. Second, our consultants constitute the company's 14 legal and financial partners. All new employees have access to an incubation program through which they can own shares and contribute to the company’s growth and impact. The business is, therefore, owned by citizens who are engaged and willing to use their expertise in the service of reform and development in the Arab world. Third, our governance system is a partnership model based on equitable participation in decision-making rather than on financial equity. Fourth, our clients and beneficiaries are part of the decision-making process via internal and external consultations, and advisory board and feedback mechanisms.

Finally, 10 percent of our profit is reinvested in Lebanese social and political causes that we identify as a result of:

• Sectarian, unqualified political elite with a discriminatory discourse that can trigger civil violence
• Weak public institutions and low-quality public service
• Limited human capacities in government that are capable of providing solutions to citizen problems

I believe that social entrepreneurship in Lebanon can help overcome the government’s inability to ensure quality social and economic services for all citizens, civil society’s dependence on international funding, and the sustainability of private sector businesses threatened by economic challenges and financial crises. Our business has become increasingly involved in supporting social entrepreneurship, and now promotes the concept as a way of addressing Lebanon’s social, economic, and political challenges. Our initial motivation was our belief that any enterprise created to serve a social need deserves a fair, incentivizing, and innovative regulatory framework.

We have since embarked on a journey to identify the challenges to and opportunities for social entrepreneurship within the Lebanese context. Following two years of research and mapping, we issued a report entitled “The Social Entrepreneurship Momentum,” which contains definitions, criteria, and recommendations for understanding and enhancing social entrepreneurship within the Lebanese context (request a copy by email). There are social entrepreneurs across the country, but until recently, they did not identify themselves as such. There is currently no legal framework to categorize social enterprises, which means that social entrepreneurs are treated as any commercial business.

The report highlights focus areas for promoting social entrepreneurship in Lebanon, including:

• Regulating a new legal statute for social enterprises
• Developing tax incentives for social businesses to encourage social investments in sectors such as health, education, and the environment
• Improving the technological infrastructure and accessibility to the Internet in rural areas
• Creating collaborative platforms and networks among members of the social entrepreneurship ecosystem
• Integrating social entrepreneurship into Lebanon’s education sector

Social entrepreneurship is a new paradigm in Lebanon, and it is enabling us to shift from passively demanding to actively taking initiative and becoming part of the solution. We now work on political development, educational systems, women’s empowerment, constitutional development, Information and communication technology strategies, administrative decentralization, and local economic development in 12 Arab countries. Provided the framework, others in Lebanon will have the opportunity to take advantage of this new momentum in the region, and invite the private, public, and civil society sectors into collaborative platforms to solve economic and political challenges.

We once looked to charitable giving and philanthropy as the primary, perhaps even exclusive, sources of private money for public good. The last half-decade has seen significant growth in impact investing, a phenomenon—some would call it a movement—that is fundamentally changing capital markets for nonprofits and social enterprises. These investment dollars, which can come from endowments, venture capitalists, angel investors, private equity, and institutional asset managers are geared toward expanding the capital pool available for socially productive, financially positive endeavors. Estimates of the total assets available for impact investing vary significantly, with ten-year projections ranging from tens of billions to trillions of dollars.

Impact investors use a range of asset classes from debt to equity. The managers of these assets are increasingly visible, organizing themselves in industry-wide associations such as the Global Impact Investing Network, promoting shared standards such as the Global Impact Investing Reporting Standards, and building publicly accessible databases of managers and funds such as ImpactAssets. Impact investing includes not only a focus on expanding the pools of available capital, but expanding the range of investable enterprises as well. Three new corporate forms—benefit corporations, flexible purpose corporations, and low-profit limited liability companies (L3Cs)—have been chartered in a limited number of states across the US to help build this movement and put the investment assets to work.

Expanding the pool of private capital for social good—from the current $300 billion per year in US charitable giving to a pool that would count both charitable dollars and impact investments—is potentially game changing. Some see it as a welcome innovation in improving capital funding for organizations that produce social benefits. Others see it as a welcome response to enduring and deep state deficits and drained public coffers that will limit, for the foreseeable future, the amount of public funding for organizations that produce public good. It is fair to say that the impact investing movement, both capital and enterprises, is one of the biggest forces of change currently shaping the new social economy.

So how do we see nonprofits and philanthropy, social enterprises, and impact investing fitting together to produce the greatest public good from these private resources? A new report from The Monitor Institute and Acumen Fund (“From Blueprint to Scale”) notes that philanthropic investments are key to catalyzing both the impact investment movement and the enterprises that impact investments can scale. Similarly, the Omidyar Network has spent almost a decade learning about and improving its use of a range of investments, from grant dollars to risk-adjusted equity investments, to achieve its social mission. One possibility is the emergence of a tested sequence of investment types and opportunities along which donors, philanthropic endowments, and impact investors will array over time.

But we must also ask if, and where, these different types of capital inputs either work at cross purposes or cannot be easily sequenced. For example, are enterprise structures developed to use impact investments—such as benefit corporations or L3Cs—valuable complements to existing nonprofit structures, or does they somehow shift what we need traditional nonprofit corporations to do? Are the governance requirements that exist to protect the public purpose of these new enterprises up to the task, and are they consistent across enterprise forms? Should they be? In our dawning age of big and open data, do we have similar expectations of information sharing across enterprise forms or investment pools, and should we? Most important, are we holding each of these enterprises and investment forms to a comparable, fair, and meaningful set of outcomes and outcomes reporting? Are we tracking where the dollars invested are coming from and where they are being invested?

Some of these questions can only be answered with time. Some may be best addressed through industry norms and practices. And some may require new policies and regulations that consider the entire social economy and its contributions to public good, not just the individual segments of philanthropy and impact investments. These are the topics for discussion at the next charrette on Impact Investing, tomorrow, May 15.

All materials from and information about the project can be found at ReCoding Good and Stanford PACS. We invite you to join our email list, talk with us on Twitter (#ReCodeGood), and to share your thoughts with us.

At many universities, academic departments undergo periodic strategic assessments. Schools seek a clear-eyed look at the direction and priorities of each department so that they can assess practices and compare them to departments at other universities across the country.

The typical review includes an internal assessment conducted by a select group of internal stakeholders, which may include department coordinators, leading faculty, alumni, and administrative staff. Peers—faculty and staff from programs at other universities—then use this assessment as the basis for an external review. The external review team for a department at the University of Texas, for example, might include peers from the University of Alabama, Harvard University, Tulane, and New York University.

The external review team is recruited, reads the internal review, and then does a site visit, where they meet with a wide range of stakeholders—including students, faculty, and community members—over the course of several days. The team submits a report, which the head of the department uses to develop the strategic plan.

Coming from a nonprofit evaluation and strategic planning perspective, this seems a slow and expensive process that doesn’t necessarily focus on outcome measurement or performance metrics. But there is a nugget here that might make it a model worth considering despite the challenges.

Imagine a new nonprofit board governance practice where every three years, organizations engaged three to five leaders from peer organizations in other parts of the country to conduct an assessment of its work.

The external review team would look at all aspects of the organization, including program design, organizational structure, fundraising, and board engagement. The team members would also reflect on their own organizations’ experiences and share knowledge—what worked, what didn’t work, and what potential strategies that the organization under review might consider.

This approach could create a whole new level of accountability. Boards too often depend on the perspective of their organization’s executive director to define what is possible or effective. There are no activists yelling at them, and they rarely experience media scrutiny. Informed feedback from peer nonprofit executives would better enable boards to truly govern, and to set the vision and strategy for their organizations.

This could have some compelling secondary benefits as well. It likely would reenergize the nonprofit leaders who conduct the assessments, providing them with fresh perspective and new ideas. It would also create networks of support for these leaders and potentially lead to new partnerships.

Given the nonprofit sector’s tendency toward collaboration over competition, this approach has potential. Holding boards accountable to peers nationwide could enhance the cohesiveness of the sector as a whole, driving social progress in a more streamlined way.