Stanford Social Innovation Review : Informing and inspiring leaders of social change

Socially Responsible Business

Achieving Sustainability Through Integrated Reporting

Philanthropy

Can Stakeholder Reviews by Beneficiaries Bring New Perspectives to Philanthropy?

In a recent report listing its ten core beliefs about how foundations can increase the impact of their grants, McKinsey & Co. identified its number one core belief as follows:

“Hear the constituent voice.
Involve constituents at every stage of the assessment.”

One innovative way the philanthropic community might access the “constituent’s voice” is through user reviews... (continue reading this blog post)

Nonprofits

A Straw-Man Plan for Doing Good Better

In my last SSIR blog post, I mused about the potential for a Doing Good Better Initiative to find and nurture those positive-outlier nonprofits that are highly motivated to take the leap to managing to outcomes—and, over time, help make them the norm in our sector.

Here are some elements of what a “Doing Good Better” Initiative might look like... (continue reading blog post)

Nonprofits

Getting Results: Outputs, Outcomes and Impact

Professional philanthropy, like all professions, has built a special language to describe its work. This sort of language can be used to more precisely discuss issues of importance to a field or it can be jargon that obscures meaning and serves to identify professionals to each other while excluding “outsiders”.

Most donors, regardless of the vocabulary they use, want their donations to produce results. What characterizes “results” may be very different to various donors. Sometimes the desire to see results can lead donors to seek indicators... (continue reading this blog post)

Nonprofits

Every Nonprofit Deserves the Power of Information

All this year, I have been writing a blue streak — here, here, and here — on the topic of “managing to outcomes.”

Now, I want to offer some thoughts on what the nonprofit community and those that serve it can do to nurture and support the profound culture change that managing to outcomes requires.

In brief, I believe there are two overarching actions that the nonprofit community must take to change the norms in our sector. First, we must demonstrate the desirability of outcomes-based management to increase demand and acceptance. We can do this by showing what’s possible, illustrating how managing to outcomes helps nonprofits do what they do better, and rewarding successful adoption of outcomes-based management that leads to increased benefit for those served... (continue reading this blog post)

Nonprofits

The Future of Leadership Development: Groups, Networks and Partnerships

Whether we seek to eliminate health disparities or prepare all children to enter school ready to learn, we do not have the leadership we need. The heroic model of leadership blinds us to the fact that untapped leadership potential exists everywhere. The dominant leadership model assumes that training individuals will better prepare them to lead strong organizations; and in turn strong organizations will produce better community-level results, but this model falls well short. Reaching the scale and scope of leadership needed to address complex issues requires new approaches to leadership development... (continue reading this blog post)

Social Innovations

Catalytic Philanthropy Forces Collaboration in Leadership

The SSIR’s webinar, ‘Catalytic Philanthropy: 
A New Approach in Uncertain Times’ really got me thinking a lot about leadership in the social sector.

A catalytic philanthropist, as described by Mark Kramer in his article Catalytic Philanthropy is an individual who takes responsible for achieving actionable results, mobilizing a campaign for change, uses all available tools and creates actionable knowledge. Kramer argued that there was a need for philanthropists... (continue reading this blog post)

Philanthropy

Al Gore Calls on Foundations to Align Mission and Strategy

Al Gore at the Council on Foundations meeting today spoke passionately about the need for foundations to align their mission with their investing strategies.

The current economic crisis is the result of a huge misalignment of short term, personal benefits and long term sustainability, he said... (continue reading this blog post)

Nonprofits

Hitting Reset on ‘Outcomes’

Back in January, I wrote about my deep, nagging fear that many efforts to assess outcomes are woefully off track.

Not everyone agreed with my analysis. In fact, I got hard pushback on some points, and a few commentators wondered why it had taken me so long to own up to my own limitations in my approach over the years to the topic of outcomes… (continue reading this blog post)

Nonprofits

We’re Lost But Making Good Time

Despite my many years of stridently stressing the importance of outcomes and assessment for nonprofits, I have grown increasingly worried that the vast majority of outcomes efforts will yield, at best, marginal benefit.

Granted, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation and a few others have keenly focused on the challenge of social outcomes and have dealt with them well. Yet many other efforts may end up misdirecting, even wasting, precious time and financial resources… (continue reading this blog post)