Bolder Goals, Bigger Breakthroughs

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This post originally appeared on the Stanford Social Innovation Review website and was authored by Amy Celep, Billy Shore of Share Our Strength, and James Siegal of KaBOOM!. To read the complete post, please visit SSIR.com’s “Bolder Goals, Bigger Breakthroughs.”

The past year has brought a chorus of cries challenging the status quo in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in pursuit of greater impact. Authors including Rob Reich and Edgar Villanueva challenged philanthropy to rethink power and privilege, while Leslie Crutchfield and Charlene Carruthers lifted up lessons from a range of social movements that nonprofit leaders can apply in their efforts. These and other authors are calling for folks working on the frontlines of social change to rethink their approaches and set their sights higher to achieve more meaningful outcomes. We could not agree more.

In 2013, we co-authored an article called “When Good is Not Good Enough.” In it, we argued that the sector needs to shift from setting modest goals that provide short-term results to setting bold goals that, while harder to achieve, tackle the root of social problems. We urged nonprofits to think bigger and strive for transformational change— achieving outcomes that align with the magnitude of the issues they seek to address. Share Our Strength set out to end childhood hunger in America by 2015, KaBOOM! aspired to create the conditions in which all kids get the play they need to become successful and healthy adults, and Community Wealth Partners aimed to help dozens of organizations set bolder goals and strategies for achieving them.

Six years later, we have not put ourselves out of business. The complex challenges we and our colleagues aim to solve every day persist. So what good is it to aim high? Was thinking big the right thing to do?

For all of us, aiming high led to breakthrough strategies that allowed us to achieve more than we would have otherwise. Setting bold goals and holding ourselves accountable to them pushed us to explore new approaches, foster new types of connections, and, most importantly, achieve greater impact.

Here, we offer reflections on our original three recommendations—setting a bold goal, opening your circle, and changing the conversation—to make significantly greater progress. …

Continue reading this post on SSIR.com

 

Creating a Partnership Strategy: A Field Guide

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To make real traction on complex social problems, we can’t go it alone. Organizations with ambitious goals, such as ending childhood hunger in a state or solving a city’s housing crisis, need partners in the work. Yet too often, organizations form partnerships without a clear purpose or focus, and the partnership eventually becomes more of a drain on resources than a lever for greater impact.

A partnership strategy can help. We created a field guide to guide you as you create a partnership strategy and grapple with questions about with whom to partner and how to make those partnerships meaningful and effective. In the field guide, we walk through common stages of a partnership and offer actionable tools, questions to explore, and examples of what this work looked like for the education nonprofit City Year.

Partnerships can be challenging, messy, and time-consuming, but they also can help us accomplish more than we could ever hope to achieve on our own. We hope this field guide can provide some structure as you think about how you can approach your partnerships more intentionally.

Download the field guide here.

2018 Must-Reads

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What is something you read, listened to, or watched this year (regardless of when it came out) that impacted the way you think about your work? And why? We asked folks across the social sector for recommendations and were thrilled to see the incredible list they put together. Here’s what they said. What would you add? Comment below or tweet us.

Recommended by Kerrien Suarez (Equity in the Center)Lupe Poblano (CompassPoint)Dr. John Jackson (Schott Foundation), and Elissa Sloan Perry (Management Assistance Group)

“’Decolonizing Wealth’ is brilliant and groundbreaking!” — Kerrien Suarez, Equity in the Center

Power Moves

Recommended by Jalisa Whitley (Unbound Impact) and Connor Daley (Talent Citizen)

“’Power Moves’ from NCRP reframed my thinking around leveraging and sharing power, and their webinar series was amazing.” — Jalisa Whitley, Unbound Impact

“’Power Moves’ from NCRP has been the most important resource for me this year! It has helped us understand our own power as a firm (a badly under-examined field) and provided our clients and partners with inclusive, equitable tools to gather feedback.” — Connor Daley, Talent Citizen

We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future

Recommended by Neesha Modi (Kresge Foundation)

“As an Indian American in this work, ‘We Too Sing America’ by Deepa Iyer has been personally profound.” — Neesha Modi, Kresge Foundation

The Mighty Miss Malone

Recommended by James Siegal (KaBOOM!)

“I read (with my 12-year-old daughter) ‘The Mighty Miss Malone’ by Christopher Paul Curtis. It’s a vivid, Depression-era portrait of 12-year-old Deza Malone, a girl with endless potential who is faced with challenges no kid should face – at the intersection of race, gender, class, and place.” — James Siegal, KaBOOM!

Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Recommended by Lupe Poblano (CompassPoint)Elissa Sloan Perry (Management Assistance Group), and Shawn Dove (Campaign for Black Male Achievement)

“Although I read adrienne maree brown’s ‘Emergent Strategy’ a couple years ago, it’s still active in my life and often in my suitcase!” — Elissa Sloan Perry, Management Assistance Group

“Introduced just this year to adrienne maree brown’s ‘Emergent Strategy.’ Been moving and marinating at a reflective pace! She says we should ‘see our own lives and work and relationships as a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the planet.’” — Shawn Dove, Campaign for Black Male Achievement

Early Learnings from the Reframing Washington Empowerment Fund: Part 1 and Part 2

Recommended by Jalisa Whitley (Unbound Impact)

“I love the Weissberg Foundation’s blog, in particular their learnings from their Reframing Washington Empowerment Fund. It’s a great model of funder transparency.” — Jalisa Whitley, Unbound Impact

Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families

Recommended by Alicia S. Guevara Warren (Michigan League for Public Policy)

“For me over the last year, I’ve done a lot of reading on the trauma caused by parental separation. I have been particularly moved by those who have been so courageous to share their stories—written and through video—to spur action and help people understand the impact the policy to separate families at the border was having. One report that I think is particularly helpful was from the Center for the Study of Social Policy called ‘Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families.’ It helps to show all of the systems where we have policies that separate children and the roots of racism in those policies. It includes actions and recommendations, which is always important in policy work!” — Alicia S. Guevara Warren, Michigan League for Public Policy

Scene on Radio: Seeing White Series

Recommended by Nicky Goren (Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation)

“The podcast series from ‘Scene on Radio’ called ‘Seeing White’ should be required listening for white people, particularly those embarking on racial equity work in philanthropy.” — Nicky Goren, Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation

“We need to correct and reframe our history.” — Nicky Goren, Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation; Relevant recommendations from Nicky: Doctrine of Discovery (video) and Uncivil (podcast)

Does Collective Impact Really Make an Impact?

Recommended by Sara Gibson (20 Degrees)

“This piece really got at the [heart] of collective impact—how hard it is and how it really works, if you give it enough time and really involve the right people.” — Sara Gibson, 20 Degrees

Toward One Oregon: Rural-Urban Interdependence and the Evolution of a State

Recommended by Colin Clemente Jones (Collins Foundation)

“My reading this year has really honed my thinking on power and place. For me, ‘Toward One Oregon’ from Oregon State University Press is at the top of the list. Definitely paradigm-shifting.” — Colin Clemente Jones, Collins Foundation

Additional recommendations by Colin: A Lot to Ask of a NameCity of Segregation: One Hundred Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles, and There Goes the Gayborhood?

“People follow you because of what you believe is possible, yes, for them as a team, and more importantly for each of them individually.” — MarkSteven Reardon, consultant; quote shared by Janice Johnson Dias, PhD (GrassROOTS Community Foundation) 

M Archive: After the End of the World

Recommended by Elissa Sloan Perry (Management Assistance Group)

Raising Kings: A year of love and struggle at Ron Brown College Prep

Recommended by Dale Erquiaga (Communities In Schools) — See also this follow-up episode

The Need to Double Down

Recommended by Darell Hammond (formerly of KaBOOM!)

What Every BODY is Saying

Recommended by Andres Gonzalez (Holistic Life Foundation)

“It greatly enhanced my ability to read people and to better communicate with them based on some of their non-verbal cues.” — Andres Gonzalez, Holistic Life Foundation

October Must-Reads 2018

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This month, we were challenged to examine our silence by The Heinz Endowments’ Grant Oliphant. We were encouraged and equipped to put decision-making power in the hands of people affected by those decisions through GrantCraft’s new participatory grantmaking guide (which includes the art in this blog post) and Jennifer Vanica’s twenty-year story about the Jacobs Family Foundation. We were inspired by the public policy wins supported by Meyer Memorial Trust. And we were reminded by the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies of the messiness and fruitfulness of striving to work more equitably.

What caught your attention this month?


1. Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking

GRANTMAKING STRATEGY | GrantCraft | 2-hour thorough read

This robust GrantCraft guide is great for funders looking to more deeply understand why and how they can cede decision-making power to the communities they seek to serve. It delves into what exactly participatory grantmaking is and the benefits, challenges and best practices. The guide is rooted in lived experience, drawing on more than a dozen examples to illustrate the mechanics of how decisions in participatory grantmaking can be made, what the process can look like and how it can differ from funder to funder.

2. Affordable Housing Initiative: Changing the statewide conversation around housing issues

PUBLIC POLICY & SYSTEMS CHANGE | Meyer Memorial Trust | 4-minute read

A recent evaluation of Meyer Memorial Trust’s 2017 efforts under their Affordable Housing Initiative offers three takeaways for funders:

  1. Funders can legally and successfully support policy and advocacy efforts
  2. Targeted grants have elevated and amplified the voices of low-income Oregonians most affected by housing issues
  3. It’s important to work on both longer-term and more immediate goals around policy and systems change

The evaluation goes on to share statewide and local public policy wins, what the foundation has learned, challenges it encountered along the way, and thoughts on how the foundation can better operate, such as collaborating more with other funders. Meyer’s choice to publish this report demonstrates how foundations can be transparent and support each other’s learning.

3. Wielding Philanthropic Leadership With, Not For

LEADERSHIP | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 6-minute read

At a time of frequent displays of hate, prejudice and discord, it can be tempting to think the role of philanthropy is to “stay above the fray,” as Grant Oliphant of The Heinz Endowments writes. Yet philanthropy has an obligation to use its voice, he argues. To be courageous and ethical leaders, grantmakers need to learn from, listen deeply to, and share their power with others—including the power of their voice.

4. BALLE–Racial Equity Change from the Outside In

EQUITY | Nonprofit Quarterly | 17-minute read

Seven years after deciding to center racial equity in its work, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) shares why and how it began making that change and where the organization is today. The article walks through the process of seeking to become a more equitable organization, the changes that developed organically and those that were made strategically, and the inevitable tensions and discomforts. BALLE team members offer advice for others on an equity journey and a reminder of the need for constant collective inquiry and learning.

5. Courageous Philanthropy: Going Public in a Closely Held World

GRANTMAKING STRATEGY | Jennifer Vanica | 534 pages

Over two decades, the Jacobs Family Foundation and residents of San Diego’s southeastern neighborhoods built a partnership that aimed to rest decisions in the hands of those affected by them. In this book, the foundation’s CEO, Jennifer Vanica, shares this story along with a broader one: “what can happen when philanthropy is aligned with community, determined to ensure equity, unafraid to share power, and committed to strengthening democracy by lifting the voice of those living change on the ground,” as PolicyLink’s Angela Glover Blackwell writes in the foreword. This book is for funders looking to work more equitably and forge more courageous relationships with the communities they seek to serve.

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September Must-Reads

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This month, we read transparent accounts from the Ford Foundation’s Megan Morrison and Chris Cardona, who shared the foundation’s journey addressing its flawed approach to collecting grantee diversity data, and Laura Weidman Powers, who wrote about why and how she stepped down as Code2040 CEO. We also read about the importance of getting out the vote, tensions in philanthropy and a report on young professionals in philanthropy.


1. Making It Count: The Evolution of the Ford Foundation’s Diversity Data Collection

EQUITY | Center for Effective Philanthropy | 10-minute read

When the Ford Foundation revisited its grantmaking process, it also revisited the questions it asks applicants and grantees about diversity. In this blog post, the foundation shares its journey identifying flaws in its previous approach to gathering grantee diversity data, how it now collects and analyzes the data, and what it’s learning. This journey also led the foundation to turn the spotlight on itself and begin an internal diversity, equity and inclusion audit.

2. How to Know When It’s Time to Go

LEADERSHIP | LinkedIn Pulse | 11-minute read

In a powerfully transparent blog post, Code2040 cofounder Laura Weidman Powers shares the story of why and how she stepped down as the organization’s CEO. She writes openly about the pressure and loneliness that can come with leadership, how she prepared for a successor and how she knew when the organization’s success no longer depended on her leadership.

3. Stop Sitting on the Sidelines, Nonprofits, and Get Out the Vote

ADVOCACY | The Chronicle of Philanthropy | 4-minute read

Outcomes of the November midterm elections will impact the work of nonprofits. More than ever, nonprofits should—and legally can—encourage and educate voters this year, argues Billy Shore, the founder of Share Our Strength and Community Wealth Partners. (For more resources on how foundations can effectively and legally support voting and advocacy, explore the Council on Foundations’ Advocacy Toolkit and Bolder Advocacy’s resources for foundations supporting advocacy.)

4. Gospels of Giving for the New Gilded Age

EQUITY | New Yorker | 15-minute read

Is philanthropy solving problems or creating new ones? Should philanthropists be focused on doing more good or doing less harm? Starting with a description of Andrew Carnegie’s approach to donating his wealth while cutting wages for employees, the writer of this article considers these questions through four pieces of literature, including the recently published “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas.

5. Dissonance & Disconnects: How entry- and mid-level foundation staff see their futures, their institutions and their field 

SECTOR TRENDS | Emerging Leaders in Philanthropy | 20-minute read 

This report by Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy shares findings from a 2017 survey about early- and mid-level foundation staff members’ thoughts, feelings and experiences in philanthropy. The survey results reveal that:

  • 55 percent of young professionals in philanthropy see themselves leaving philanthropy within the next five years
  • 6 percent see a clear path to advance from their current positions within their institutions
  • 51 percent think philanthropy is an effective player in social change
  • 21 percent think the culture of philanthropy is inclusive of all backgrounds
  • 40 percent think their institutions are in touch with the needs of the communities they support

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August Must-Reads 2018

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Each month, we gather five new resources that can help us work smarter, think more deeply, and more effectively contribute to the change we seek. This month’s reads include initial results from the Ford Foundation’s BUILD initiative, how Democracy Fund is adapting its strategies in changing times, the Meyer Foundation’s data showing the importance of leadership development, reasons that Native American organizations and causes are chronically underfunded, and economists’ arguments against randomized control trials.


 

1. One of the Country’s Largest Foundations is Trying to Change How Philanthropy Works

STRATEGY | Inside Philanthropy | 13-minute read

The Ford Foundation’s BUILD initiative is changing how the foundation works by providing social justice nonprofits with long-term grants for general operating support and organizational strengthening. Two years in, BUILD is starting to see positive results: organizations are planning and collaborating in ways they never could before. This blog post shares some early results and the BUILD director Kathy Reich’s hope to make this type of grantmaking the status quo not just for the foundation but for the whole philanthropic sector.

2. Adapting Long-term Strategies in Times of Profound Change

STRATEGY | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 6-minute read

Imagine you carefully crafted a set of long-term strategies, and then something happens to change the context in which you’re working. How can you shift your approach to this new context? After the U.S. presidential election, Democracy Fund—like many organizations—grappled with this situation. The foundation had just completed a two-year planning process when the election brought upheaval around the very issues they chose to focus on (elections, governance and the public square). In this blog post, Democracy Fund shares what they’ve learned and three ways other foundations can equip themselves to better respond to changing contexts.

3. How Investing in People Directly Supports Programs

CAPACITY BUILDING | Fund the People | 4-minute read

It may seem wise to prioritize capacity building for fundraising over leadership development, especially for organizations with tight budgets. And yet, data from the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation’s capacity-building investments show that non-financial related capacity building had a greater positive impact on organizations’ revenue. The Meyer Foundation president and CEO Nicky Goren shares why professional and leadership development is core to an organization’s ability to produce better and bigger results.

4. New First Nations Report Explores Why Philanthropy Continues to Underfund Native American Causes

EQUITY | Business Insider | 4-minute read

Large foundations’ giving to Native American organizations and causes is declining. This report by First Nations Development Institute shares what might be leading to the chronic underfunding of Native American communities and causes. In addition to elevating several underlying reasons and addressing common misconceptions about Native American communities, the report also includes recommendations for both foundations and nonprofits, including the importance of making site visits and supporting Native Americans’ careers in philanthropy.

5. The Foreign Aid System Is Broken. Randomized Control Trials Won’t Fix It.

EVALUATION | Bright Magazine | 8-minute read

Evaluating impact through randomized control trials may work well in medicine, but not in social change, argues Barbara Harriss-White, one of 15 leading economists—including three Nobel Prize winners—who wrote a letter speaking out against “aid effectiveness.” In this interview, she shares why the group thinks randomized control trials won’t help us address systemic root problems and might cause more harm than good.

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July Must-Reads

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Each month, we gather five new resources that can help us work smarter, think more deeply and more effectively contribute to the change we seek. This month’s reads cover what went wrong in a global effort to reduce open-fire cooking, a conversation about the role of data and foundations in fighting racism, how organizations can create a strong culture, trends in charitable giving, and how collaborations can navigate challenges in sharing data.


1. Undercooked: An Expensive Push to Save Lives and Protect the Planet Falls Short

STRATEGY | ProPublica | 18-minute read

After eight years and $75 million, efforts by the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves have seen only modest progress. The stoves distributed haven’t effectively reduced users’ risk of deadly illnesses, if they’re used at all, and the environmental impact of cooking fires has proven to be less harmful than initially thought. So what went wrong? And what can we learn from this effort? This article raises valuable questions we can ask ourselves as we seek to strengthen our own change efforts.

2. Conversation about Data and Racism

EQUITY | Chronicle of Philanthropy & Twitter Feed

Philanthropy’s Racism Problem Stems From Too Little Data

(4-minute read) To guide their actions on diversity, equity and inclusion, foundations need to understand the demographics of the organizations and communities they’re granting to (or not), say Michelle Greanias and Melissa Sines of PEAK Grantmaking.

Response from Jennifer Lentfer

(1-minute read) Yes, and while data is important, foundations must also question their power and how they might exacerbate inequalities in asking for this information, says Jennifer Lentfer of Thousand Currents.

3. How Leaders Can Strengthen Their Organizational Culture

CULTURE | Stanford Social Innovation Review | 7-minute read 

The social sector isn’t immune to toxic individuals and cultures. To counter that, we should not only hold ourselves accountable for what we accomplish, but also for how we accomplish it, argues Alexa Cortes Culwell of Open Impact. Leaders should ask four questions: 1) Are your organization’s values and cultural norms explicitly stated? 2) Does your organization have policies in place to ensure that everyone, especially top leadership, is held accountable? 3) Does your organization have policies in place to support diversity, equity and inclusion at all levels? And 4) Does your revenue model take into account fair and equitable employee compensation? For more on creating a strong culture, including 10 steps to guide your culture efforts, take a look at our article, “Cocreating a Change-Making Culture.”

4. 6 Signs of Trouble Ahead in Charitable Giving

SECTOR TRENDS | Chronicle of Philanthropy | 2-minute read 

Although charitable giving was at its highest in 2017, several trends suggest the future of philanthropy might be shaky. The percentage of Americans who donate is declining among every age group, income level and education level, leaving nonprofits to increasingly rely on wealthy individuals. At the same time, groups are getting creative in how they raise money.

5. Data Sharing Within Cross-Sector Collaborations

COLLABORATION | The BUILD Health Challenge | 51-minute read 

We know how important data is in collective efforts to improve community health, but we may not agree on how to use it. This report examines the five most common data challenges from the BUILD Health Challenge cohort: 1) HIPAA concerns, 2) logistics of sharing data across different data systems, 3) language differences between partners, 4) lack of experience with data, and 5) finding methods or metrics to evaluate interventions. It includes examples of how others tackled these challenges, takeaways, tools and best practices.

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June Must-Reads 2018

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Each month, we gather five new resources that can help us work smarter, think more deeply and more effectively create the change we want to see in this complex world. This month’s reads cover ways funders can support refugees and asylum seekers, equitable systems change, lessons from capacity-building cohorts, how grantmakers can help nonprofits measure impact and reflections on civil society today.


1. Philanthropic Strategies to Support Refugees and Asylum Seekers

STRATEGY | Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees

This new report comes at a crucial time as needs surge among refugees, asylum seekers and unaccompanied children. In it, you’ll find 10 case studies of how grantmakers—including Open Society Foundations, Weingart Foundation, Robin Hood and others of various structures, sizes and geographic priorities—are supporting newcomers. Their strategies shed light on the diverse ways grantmakers can take a more active role, while the lessons learned and recommendations highlight the need for grantmakers to collaborate, think systemically, take holistic approaches, leverage their convening power and more.

2. Systems Change with an Equity Lens: Community Interventions that Shift Power and Center Race

EQUITY | Management Assistance Group and Building Movement Project

As we see more attention to racism and other injustices, we’re also seeing greater urgency and commitment to not only improve systems but disrupt and transform them. Yet dominant approaches to systems change typically don’t integrate an intentional racial equity lens. This webinar introduces a framework with four key components that distinguish systems change with an equity lens from other systems change efforts and features speakers Lauren Padilla-Valverde, Senior Program Manager at the California Endowment, and Reverend Joan C. Ross of the North End Woodward Community Coalition.

3. Learning Together: Building Capacity and Relationships

CAPACITY BUILDING | David and Lucile Packard Foundation

For the past five years, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has worked with grantees and other funders to co-design capacity-building cohorts. Based on a recent evaluation, those cohorts are working: 99 percent of participants said their capacity in the focus area increased as a result of participating in the cohort project, and 100 percent of participants reported that they benefited from the peer-learning format. Along with their evaluation results, the foundation shares five recommendations that emerged for other funders planning cohort-based capacity building projects.

4. 8 Ways Grantmakers Can Help Nonprofits Measure Impact

LEARNING & EVALUATION | Chronicle of Philanthropy

Using evaluation data to assess long-term change and learn for improvement requires a shift for many grantmakers and nonprofits who are more accustomed to using data to report on programmatic outcomes as an accountability measure. Organizations need time, skill and money to make this shift, and experts say grantmakers aren’t providing the level of support that would help nonprofits use evaluation as a tool for learning and improvement. This resource shares eight ways grantmakers can help organizations measure—and maximize—their impact.

5. Civil Society for the 21st Century

SECTOR TRENDS | Stanford Social Innovation Review

In this new Independent Sector–led series, contributing authors share their thoughts on civil society, defined as the vast, undefined space between the individual and the state. What does it look like today for individuals to organize around the things that matter to them and advance shared goals? The series will explore civil society and its origins, evolution, boundaries, blind spots, values, variety, obstacles and opportunities.

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May Must-Reads 2018

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Each month, we’ll be gathering five new resources that can help us work smarter, think more deeply, and create the change we want to see in this complex world. This month’s reads cover equitable grantmaking, impact evaluations, capacity building in a time of disruption, an argument against fairness, and framing issues to make progress.


1. Power Moves

EQUITY | National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy

This toolkit is a very thorough, actionable resource to guide foundations in examining how well they build, share and wield power. To truly strive for and advance equity and justice, the toolkit states, you have to understand your own power and privilege. The toolkit includes best practices, sample questions to gather data and solicit feedback, discussion guides, and next steps and tools for implementing changes.

2. Bracing for a Downturn: Nonprofits, Charitable Deduction Worries, and How Foundations Can Help

STRATEGY | The Center for Effective Philanthropy

This survey shows how nonprofit and foundation leaders view the implications of the 2018 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. In short, most of them are concerned that charitable giving might go down. The survey also highlights suggestions for how foundations can help nonprofits such as supporting their efforts to raise money and be financially sustainable, helping them and their donors understand the effects of this legislation, and promoting the importance of nonprofits.

3. The New Normal: Capacity Building During a Time of Disruption

CAPACITY BUILDING | Open Impact 

How is the current economic and political environment impacting the capacity building needs of social change leaders, nonprofits, networks and movements? How are funders responding to these changing needs, and how can they better support this work going forward? This new report shares findings on what nonprofits need most right now and recommendations for how nonprofits and foundations can meet those needs.

4. Ten Reasons Not to Measure Impact—and What to Do Instead

LEARNING & EVALUATION | University of Washington and Northwestern University

Subscription Required – Impact evaluations—while important—are only a good investment in the right circumstances, argue the authors in this Stanford Social Innovation Review article. When circumstances aren’t right, organizations must build an internal culture in which the right data are regularly collected, analyzed and applied. For more on how to build this type of culture, take a look at our blog post on creating a culture of learning through evaluation.

5. Picture This: How We Frame Issues Matters for Social Change

STRATEGY | The Communications Network and FrameWorks Institute 

The way we frame issues profoundly influences our understanding of them and how we approach solutions. This Stanford Social Innovation Review series shares how framing issues of gun violence, sexual violence, immigration, climate change, aging, addiction and housing have helped spark meaningful dialogues and drive change. As we’ve found in our own research, communications must be viewed as a critical piece of strategy in order to make large-scale change.

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Strategies for Sustainability in Uncertain Times

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In a year filled with uncertainty, many social sector organizations are asking how they might successfully sustain their impact in the coming years. Changes to the federal budget are expected to increase need among vulnerable populations in the U.S. while simultaneously reducing federal funding for nonprofits delivering critical services. At the same time, individual activism is rising and the line between donor, volunteer and activist is blurring as individuals seek opportunities to get involved with the causes they care deeply about.

Add to this two key trends: a shift from sustaining incremental change to achieving transformational, scaled impact, and a growing understanding of what it takes to create resilient organizations and networks capable of sustaining the work required to make change. These colliding factors have left nonprofits questioning how they can scale their impact in a sustainable way.

When we talk about sustainability, we mean much more than financial sustainability. At Community Wealth Partners, we think of sustainability as an organization’s ability to create long-lasting, transformational impact. This requires funding, sure, but also a focused business strategy, a culture of adaptability and learning, strong partnerships, and the personal sustainability of individuals within that organization.

As organizations adopt new strategies and test ways to scale their impact, we are seeing three emerging themes across our work with partners and the field in general:

1. Creating a culture of innovation

Agility and innovation are key characteristics of successful organizations, regardless of tax status or sector. For commercial businesses, the ability to grow and meet financial goals depends on their ability to provide a unique, valuable service or product to customers. Doing so requires predicting how emerging trends will shift customer needs or upend the landscape of competitors.

The same principal applies for nonprofits and their ability to sustain their impact. As a recent Bridgespan survey highlights, nonprofit leaders feel urgency to innovate, yet also feel limited in their ability to do so. The most successful nonprofits can adapt to changes in the policy environment, rapidly capture new types and sources of funding, embrace and influence emerging social movements, and continuously build new partnerships and pathways to achieving impact. Cultivating an innovative culture, as we’ve found is the case with any culture, requires changing mindsets and behaviors across an organization.

We recently visited AARP’s innovation laboratory, The Hatchery, a start-up incubator and accelerator housed in a physical collaborative workspace, to get an inside look at how the organization is scaling transformative ideas that drive revenue while accelerating AARP’s mission to disrupt aging.

The innovation lab incubates up to three home-grown startups, including a website to help small businesses understand and select 401(k) options. Each new business idea goes through a rapid but rigorous process of coming up with ideas, modeling those ideas, and testing them in the market. Most importantly, The Hatchery and AARP follow a disciplined process to assess and shelve ideas within months if evidence doesn’t suggest they can rapidly grow into independent business opportunities that leverage market forces to drive impact at scale and generate significant earned revenue. The Hatchery also selects a few later-stage, mission-aligned technology startups—like a company developing a virtual reality–based system for remotely conducting physical therapy—and provides them with access to experts, potential customers or partners, and other resources on aging.

Beyond its role as an incubator, The Hatchery is designed to be the center of an innovation revolution within AARP. The open, creative space helps spur new ideas during meetings, and the team trains “Innovation Champions” from various departments across AARP in human-centered design and rapid prototyping methods so each department can apply those skills to their team’s work. The goal is to accelerate a culture of innovation across the entire AARP enterprise, enabling the organization to sustain its impact by staying ahead of emerging trends and designing solutions that meet society’s evolving aging needs.

2. Engaging donors as activists

Over the past year, many of our nonprofit partners have described a shift in their relationships with supporters and donors. Many donors are seeking a more active and engaged role in helping an organization deliver its mission. This is partially driven by the rise of technology that makes it easier for individuals to connect to, engage with and donate to organizations. It is also a result of increased competition for resources among nonprofits and the changing profile of donors—from baby boomers who are often interested in issue-focused membership organizations to millennials who more commonly seek opportunities to directly support specific causes. These factors, combined with a dramatic rise in civic activism, create opportunities for nonprofits to rethink the role donors play in their sustainability.

A leader in understanding and promoting new practices in nonprofit fundraising, The Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund has begun to define and elevate the concept of a “culture of philanthropy”—an organizational culture in which everyone has a part to play in raising resources for the organization. In their paper “Beyond Fundraising: What does it mean to build a culture of philanthropy?” The Haas Jr. Fund and author Cynthia M. Gibson explain that donors are looking to give to organizations not just because of the work these organizations do, but also because donors aspire to the same goals and want to engage with the organization to achieve those aspirations. The paper highlights four core, interrelated components of a culture of philanthropy:

  • Shared responsibility for development
  • Integration and alignment with mission
  • A focus on fundraising as engagement
  • Strong donor relationships

For example, another of The Haas Jr. Fund’s papers, “Fundraising Bright Spots,” highlights Fierce, a membership-based organization building the leadership and power of LGBTQ youth of color in New York City. Fierce’s former executive director, Angela Moreno, explains that when the organization’s donors attend its top fundraising event, the donors “feel connected to each other even though they’ve never met before.… The history and purpose of our organization is so clear and so deeply meaningful that it’s really easy for donors to say yes to us.”

Passive donors are becoming fewer and fewer. Creating authentic opportunities for donors to experience and contribute to the causes they care about most is essential to sustainability over the long run.

3. Adopting market-driven business models to accelerate impact and diversify funding

Shifts in the ways organizations bring in revenue and encouragement from grantmakers to diversify funding has led nonprofits to explore market-driven approaches and business models to achieving and sustaining their impact. One example of an organization experimenting with a new, market-driven model is the Center for Children’s Law and Policy (CCLP), an organization committed to ensuring the response to youth who get in trouble with the law is developmentally appropriate, free of racial and ethnic bias, and focused on building strengths that help youth avoid further involvement with the justice system.

Since its founding, CCLP has worked in counties, cities and states, delivering trainings, providing technical assistance and advocating on topics such as eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system, reducing unnecessary incarceration of youth, and improving the conditions of confinement for youth. Since its work was funded by grantmakers, the organization offered programs to populations and geographies that were priority for funders. When philanthropic and government funding streams changed, CCLP saw an opportunity to use their existing expertise and services and create a new business model to market their expertise directly to jurisdictions through trainings and consultation, regardless of whether those jurisdictions are a priority geography or population for grantmakers. Not only does this strategy generate revenue through a new source, but CCLP hopes it also creates stronger results and buy-in from stakeholders since they are putting more “skin in the game.”

Adopting this new model requires some organizational shifts. To respond to changing market needs, CCLP is adopting new cultural norms: nimbleness, flexibility and entrepreneurialism. As CCLP markets directly to jurisdictions, it is having new types of conversations that highlight the organization’s unique value. It also is creating business processes for more effective staff planning. While the new model requires new approaches, CCLP is already seeing the benefits: it has greater autonomy, it is better able to sustain its work, and it is now able to serve more young people across the country.

Prepared for the Unforeseeable

The only constant, as the saying goes, is change. To survive and thrive amidst changes, nonprofits and foundations must change the way they operate. In addition to AARP, The Haas Jr. Fund and CCLP, we see another great example of this in NeighborWorks America. The affordable housing and community development organization has invested heavily in equipping its network members to become market-driven, innovative organizations able to seize opportunities and weather changes. As profiled in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, NeighborWorks America is in the midst of implementing a multi-year pilot designed to cultivate innovation throughout its network, helping member organizations diversify revenue by adopting new, technology-enabled sustainable business practices.

As these organizations recognize, nonprofits and foundations must adopt new ways of working. We encourage all social sector organizations to explore new approaches to sustainability to ensure sustained impact over the coming years.