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

Collective Impact: Embracing Emergence

Join us to explore how to address the next phase in the collective impact dialogue, complexity, and create an intentional process that allows for effective solutions. John Kania, coauthor of SSIR’s Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity, will discuss this next phase and define “emergence,” a term that describes events that are unpredictable and which no one organization or individual can control. He will be joined by Blair Taylor, who shares from experience the implications of complexity and emergence in Memphis Fast Forward’s work, and Mark Cabaj, who will cover developmental evaluation in collective impact. This lively discussion will focus on why collective impact is a relevant approach for complex problems and how leaders of successful collective impact initiatives have embraced a new way of collectively seeing, learning and doing that marries emergent solutions with intentional outcomes. The webinar will help participants understand the implications of complexity and emergence in their work and how developmental evaluation can advance collective learning to reach better and more robust outcomes.

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Related Story: Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity

Listening to Beneficiaries

To become more effective, nonprofits and foundations are turning to various sources for advice. Some look to experts, others turn to crowdsourcing. Experts and crowds can produce valuable insights, but too often nonprofits and funders ignore the constituents who matter most, the intended beneficiaries. Join Fay Twersky, Phil Buchanan, and Valerie Threlfall as they discuss the reasons why surveying beneficiaries is so important, how the feedback can be used, and some of the challenges to doing this and how to overcome them. They will also provide real-world examples of organizations that are effectively surveying beneficiaries, including their own experience trying to elicit the voices of high school students through YouthTruth, a nonprofit that the three of them co-founded. YouthTruth has gathered feedback from close to 150,000 students across the United States.

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Related Story: Listening to Those Who Matter Most, the Beneficiaries

How to Use Social Media to Engage Donors

Social media and the Internet have permanently disrupted the traditional donor-engagement process through online competitions, viral video campaigns, and mobile giving, to name a few. With each new way for organizations and donors to interact come increasingly complex entry points into the traditional models of donor engagement, greater variation in movement along the pathway to deeper engagement, and more opportunities for a person to be influenced by forces outside an organization’s control. Join Georgetown University’s Julie Dixon and Denise Keyes as they discuss this impact. They’ll also provide insights on these trends gleaned from a nationwide research project that their Center for Social Impact Communications conducted with Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, and will explain a new model of donor engagement they have created that takes advantage of social media and the Internet—one that is more fluid and continuous, and that better reflects the growing importance that a person’s influence plays in the process.

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Related Story: The Permanent Disruption of Social Media

How Successful Nonprofits Develop Their Future Leaders

On every CEO’s “worry list” is whether he or she has the leaders the organization needs to thrive in the future. Will current managers be ready to step up? If not, then what? In this webinar, Kramer and Nayak of The Bridgespan Group will share key findings in Plan A: How Successful Nonprofits Develop Their Future Leaders, a new Bridgespan guide that provides a step-by-step approach to creating and executing a leadership development program at nonprofits of any size and budget. The presenters will identify essential steps to develop and increase your organization’s talent and build a best practice.

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We’re Getting Data, Now What?

Thanks to rapid advances in computer and communication technologies, it is possible for stakeholders in the nonprofit sector to disclose more, to know more, and to demand more through increased transparency and collaboration. In October, a group of the largest US foundations committed to release their grant information in a consistent, open, and frequent manner. Dubbed the “Reporting Commitment,” 15 large foundations have agreed to report at least quarterly to the Foundation Center’s transparency-centered website, Glasspockets.org. In addition, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the financial firm LiquidNet announced in October a “New Markets for Good” effort, focused on helping donors—individuals and foundations—use data about different organizations to inform their giving choices. This webinar will explore the repercussions of these moves toward big and open data. Presenters will analyze how more timely grant reporting from foundations can allow other foundations and nonprofits to look for relevant patterns, identify potential partners, scan a field of activity, and potentially develop strategies that take into account other philanthropic resources.

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The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector

Join Christopher Stone and Nathalie Kylander Kylander from Harvard Kennedy School and the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations, and Emily Brew from the Nike Foundation and Girl Effect, as they discuss the changing role of brand in the nonprofit sector, and describe a new conceptual framework they have created—Nonprofit Brand IDEA—in which “IDEA” stands for brand integrity, brand democracy, brand ethics, and brand affinity. This new framework is designed to help nonprofit leaders create brands that contribute to sustaining their organization’s social impact, serving their organization’s mission, and staying true to their organization’s values and culture. The webinar will present the results of that research and the Nonprofit Brand IDEA framework.

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Related Story: The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector

Building the Right Funding Model for Your Organization

Nonprofit funding strategy and financial sustainability are central to creating a vibrant and effective sector. Yet our understanding about these issues remains far less sophisticated than our understanding of programs. Too often, conventional wisdom, such as “diversification is good,” substitutes for thoughtful planning. Building upon years of primary research and consulting experience with dozens of nonprofit clients, The Bridgespan Group has developed an approach for how an organization can identify and develop a funding model that will allow it to achieve its programmatic aspirations. In this webinar Peter Kim, a manager in Bridgespan’s New York City office, and Gihani Fernando, a manager in Bridgespan’s San Franscisco office, will provide practical guidance on the steps you need to take to create a funding model for your organization, and review the types of decisions and tradeoffs that nonprofit leaders need to make along the way.

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Related Story: Finding Your Funding Model

Implementing Organizational Learning

Join Katie Smith Milway and Ann Goggins Gregory, both from The Bridgespan Group, for a lively interactive dialogue about how your organization, small or large, can bridge the gaps between goals, incentives, and processes when it comes to organizational learning. Milway and Goggins will present examples of nonprofits that have successfully implemented organizational learning, such as the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), World Vision, the Arizona Children’s Association, and the Nature Conservancy. The dialogue will be based in part on Milway’s recent article about creating a knowledge-sharing process (see “The Challenges of Organizational Learning,” Summer 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review), and Gregory will present findings from a learning lab on incentives and processes that she and Milway held during the Stanford Nonprofit Management Institute in September.

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Related Story: The Challenge of Organizational Learning

Nonprofit, For-profit, or Something in Between?

Social entrepreneurs who want to start a new venture quickly confront an important question: What type of legal structure should I create? Should I start a traditional nonprofit, a for-profit, or something in between? This is not a simple question to answer. Join veteran social entrepreneur Jim Fruchterman, founder and CEO of Benetech, as he guides you through the issues you need to consider before choosing an attorney. He emphasizes that a legal structure is simply a tool for accomplishing your goals, and explains that first a social entrepreneur must explore four basic issues: the motivation for starting the venture, the market being targeted, how capital will be raised, and what type of control is wanted. He then reviews the five basic legal structures and analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of each. Fruchterman has unique insight into legal structures, having started successful and unsuccessful for-profit and nonprofit ventures.

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Related Story: For Love or Lucre

Collective Impact: Creating Large-Scale Social Change

The potential to create large-scale social change exists when multiple organizations can combine their efforts. Join as FSG’s John Kania and Mark Kramer speak with Strive Partnership’s Jeff Edmondson about the conditions of a collective impact initiative and present their argument that large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations.

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Related Story: Collective Impact