18,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Transform your nonprofit's ability to innovate for the future In Innovation for Social Change, distinguished author Leah Kral delivers a practical manual for nonprofits and charitable organizations seeking to innovate their way toward new and exciting possibilities. In the book, you'll explore hands-on design thinking strategies and techniques you can use as a disciplined process for exploring what's possible in your organization. You'll learn how to identify hidden needs, deal with the knock-on effects of your ideas, and focus your efforts where they can have the most impact. You'll also discover how to transform your ideas into action, building small experiments and learning from them before scaling them up organization-wide, and how to create an ecosystem for everyday innovation. Finally, the author explains what we can learn from social entrepreneurs as they boldly challenge the status quo. The book also includes: * Six basic and mutually reinforcing principles that will help you become more innovative today * Instructive and engaging case studies from nonprofits with a variety of missions, visions, and political backgrounds * Strategies for applying straightforward principles from economics to supercharge nonprofit innovation A can't-miss roadmap to creative innovation, Innovation for Social Change will earn a place in the libraries of nonprofit board members, managers, fundraisers, and other professionals in the charitable space.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 395
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Praise for
Innovation for Social Change
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Note
Introduction: Innovation and Nonprofits
The Plan of the Book
Notes
Chapter 1: A Story of Transformative Innovation
What St. Benedict's Can Teach Us About Innovation
Notes
Part 1: Tools for Sparking Innovative Ideas
Chapter 2: Surfacing Unmet Needs
A Thought Exercise: Exploring a Social Problem
Notes
Chapter 3: Stretching the Imagination
Asset Mapping
Mobilization of a Network
Achieve a Tipping Point for Change
Notes
Chapter 4: Stress Testing for Feasibility
Landscape Analysis
Surfacing Risks, Obstacles, and Unknowns
Prioritizing Our Best Opportunities: Two‐Step SWOT Exercise
Notes
Part 2: Transform Innovative Ideas into Action
Chapter 5: Designing Small Experiments
Trial and Error
Controlled Experiments
Wizard of Oz Tests
Notes
Chapter 6: Forming a Vision and Theory of Change
Habitat for Humanity
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Notes
Chapter 7: Evaluating, Learning, and Adjusting
How to Recognize “Evaluation” Practices That Stifle Innovation
Evaluation Should Be Actionable
Negotiate with Stakeholders Regarding Evaluation Approaches
Notes
Part 3: Build Innovation into Our Organizational DNA
Chapter 8: Encourage Creative Collaboration
Creative Collaborations and Strong Trust
Organizational Principles Set a Tone
Not Just Empty Platitudes
Team Leaders Walk the Talk
Notes
Chapter 9: Optimize Organizational Design for Innovators
Who Should Be Empowered to Make Decisions?
Budgeting and Trade‐Off Thinking Fuels Innovation
Getting Out of Innovation's Way
Notes
Chapter 10: Attract Donor‐Partners Who Fuel Social Change Breakthroughs
What Can Donor‐Nonprofit Partnerships Teach Us About Innovation?
How Do Nonprofits Navigate Donor Partnerships—Both Opportunities and Pitfalls—So That Teams Are Empowered to Innovate?
Notes
Part 4: Bring Your Innovation A Game
Chapter 11: Discover Your Superpower
Notes
Chapter 12: Challenging the Status Quo
Paving the Way for Collaborative Ideation
Why We Sometimes Hesitate to Be Contrarian
Methods for Coaxing Curious Contrarians Out of the Closet
Have Courage
Notes
Chapter 13: Win Others Over to Your Cause
Identify What Decision Makers Are Looking For
Bring Your Best Tough‐Minded Logic
Create a Compelling Elevator Pitch
Be Scrappy, Flexible, and Have a Thick Hide
Notes
Epilogue: What's at StakeWhat's at Stake
Note
References
About the Author
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 10
Table 10.1 Possible pitfalls of donor‐nonprofit relationships
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Figure 0.1 Wanchen Zhao
Part 1
Figure 1.1 Wanchen Zhao
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1 Wanchen Zhao
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1 Wanchen Zhao
Figure 7.2 Wanchen Zhao
Figure 7.3 Wanchen Zhao
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Wanchen Zhao
Figure 9.2 Wanchen Zhao
Guide
Cover Page
Praise for Innovation for Social Change
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Epilogue What's at Stake
References
About the Author
Index
Wiley End User License Agreement
Pages
i
ii
v
vi
vii
xi
xii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
17
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
57
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
173
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
Praise for Innovation for Social Change
“Chock‐full of real‐world examples, Kral goes way beyond the theoretical by drawing on her more than two decades of practical experience helping organizations achieve meaningful results. Innovation for Social Change shares sophisticated yet easy to follow lessons to help empower social entrepreneurs and the organizations they lead.”
—Brian Hooks,Chairman & CEO, Stand Together and coauthor, Believe in People: Bottom‐Up Solutions for a Top‐Down World
“A must‐read for every nonprofit organization wanting to thrive in the modern era. Innovation for Social Change highlights the benefits to humankind when nonprofits leverage innovation, and the consequences when they do not. Throughout, Kral helps nonprofits overcome innovation deficits by offering thoughtful principles and actionable practices to build an ecosystem that fosters a perpetual culture of innovation.”
—Nathan Chappell,Inventor for Social Good and author of The Generosity Crisis
“If your nonprofit needs a boost of innovation and inspiration. Leah Kral's Innovation for Social Change is just what the doctor ordered. Through practical examples and modern research, this book encourages nonprofit leaders to trust creativity, take risks, and, perhaps most importantly, learn from failure.”
—Arthur C. Brooks,Professor, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School, and #1 New York Times best‐selling author
“A brilliant combination of useful frameworks, practical advice, and real‐world stories that bring everything to life. Innovation for Social Change reflects many of the experiences we've had while building Recidiviz and shares new lessons that will continue to guide our growth. It's a must‐read for leaders, founders, and anybody who cares about high‐impact, creative solutions to pressing challenges.”
—Clementine Jacoby,Cofounder and CEO, Recidiviz
“This is an enormously helpful book, charting ways for us all toward real transformational change. Leah Kral helps us see nonprofit innovation as a way to imagine a circle of compassion, and then imagine no one standing outside that circle.”
—Fr. Greg Boyle,Founder of Homeboy Industries and best‐selling author, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
“Leah Kral has crafted an invaluable resource for philanthropic professionals of all levels to discover and apply best practices of innovation in their work. She draws together vivid examples from the nonprofit and for‐profit worlds to help practitioners find creative and innovative solutions to the problems their organizations face.”
—Heather Templeton Dill,President, John Templeton Foundation
“Radical impact to longstanding, deeply rooted social issues requires grit, ingenuity, and courage. We have to funnel the compassion often found in the nonprofit sector into true action for systemic change. Innovation for Social Change provides a roadmap to doing just that, transforming bold baby steps into sustainable, innovative practices that can change our work for the better.”
—Tina Postel, CEO,Loaves & Fishes/Friendship Trays
“Innovation is not just for commercial businesses. This fascinating book tells stories from innovative nonprofits, deriving vital lessons for how social entrepreneurs can and do turn new ideas into affordable, reliable, and available improvements in people's lives.”
—Matt Ridley,author of How Innovation Works
INNOVATION for SOCIAL CHANGE
How wildly successful nonprofits inspire and deliver results
LEAH KRAL
Copyright © 2023 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and other countries and may not be used without written permission. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Further, readers should be aware that websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Neither the publisher nor authors shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762‐2974, outside the United States at (317) 572‐3993 or fax (317) 572‐4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic formats. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data
Names: Kral, Leah, author.
Title: Innovation for social change : how wildly successful nonprofits inspire and deliver results / Leah Kral.
Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, Inc., [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029472 (print) | LCCN 2022029473 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119987468 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119987482 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119987475 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Nonprofit organizations‐‐Management | Social change.
Classification: LCC HD62.6 .K7275 2023 (print) | LCC HD62.6 (ebook) | DDC 658/.048—dc23/eng/20220624
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029472
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029473
Cover Design: Wiley
Cover Image: © natrot/Getty Images
This book is dedicated to all of the innovators with big hearts who make life better for others, through small acts of kindness or courageous deeds of justice.
I am especially thankful for Richard and Ethel, whose generosity and love have made all the difference in my life.
Acknowledgments
Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.
—Amy Poehler
I am grateful to the many practitioners who made time to talk with me, among them an executive at Justice Ventures International, whose team works to rescue victims of human trafficking, an evaluation expert at Maya Angelou Public Charter School, who works with teams that are pioneering new education best practices in the juvenile justice system, and many others. Many experts graciously took the time to share their stories and provide feedback as chapter reviewers. I would like to thank Adriana Rodriguez, Leigh McAfee, Annie Sweeney, Jerry Burden, Adam Millsap, Emily Chamlee‐Wright, Katie Keilman, Christy Horpedahl, Sam Staley, Dirk Brown, and many others, for their time and insights.
I consider myself extremely fortunate to work alongside smart, generous people at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who challenge and inspire me. This nonprofit is the home of heterodox thinkers and brainy economists who work to discover what aspects of institutions and culture help societies prosper. These are people for whom economics is not just an abstraction, but a way of thinking that is applied in our daily work. They take to heart the maxim from Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek that “nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist—and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger.”1
Thanks to the lived experiences of my colleagues, many of the stories throughout this book demonstrate economic principles applied in the nonprofit workplace. These are concepts such as public goods, externalities, incentives, trade‐offs, unintended consequences, and opportunity costs—which, in plain English, is about surfacing information so we can make better decisions.
I would especially like to thank my Mercatus colleagues Virgil Storr, Dan Butler, Ashley Schiller, Chris Myers, Dan Barrett, Robin Currie, Christina Behe, Matt Mitchell, Eileen Norcross, Ben Klutsey, Sarah Wright, Devin Scanlon, Gary Leff, Kim Hemsley, Sarah Jones, Jackie Cooper‐Fulton, Roman Hardgrave, and Adam Thierer for taking the time to talk with me and share their expertise.
I am grateful to Wanchen Zhao for her gorgeous and clever illustrations.
I want to express my gratitude to Dan Rothschild, executive director of the Mercatus Center, who saw the potential of this project even before I did. Both he and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Zambone suggested that I should write a book based on my workshops and consulting on nonprofit innovation. I am grateful to them for their time, excellent advice, and for granting me the time to focus on it.
I am thankful to have had the good fortune to learn from risk takers and entrepreneurial problem solvers, such as Denny Solomon, Betty Jo Jennings, Shamus Janko, Tiffany Smith, Brian Hooks, and many others.
I have been beyond fortunate to benefit from the wise counsel of Garrett Brown, senior director of Publications at Mercatus. Thanks to his shepherding, high‐quality editing, and thoughtful advice, this book sailed through the publication process. Every first‐time author should be so lucky to have confidence‐boosting guidance like this.
I would like to thank Brian Neill, Debbie Schindlar, and the wonderful folks at Wiley for their enthusiasm for the project and for helping to bring the idea of the book into concrete form.
I am deeply grateful to John Paine, whose skilled eye took a first draft and made it sing. I am grateful for his sound judgment about what belonged on the cutting room floor and what needed to be elaborated.
Most of all, my endless gratitude to Richard, for his willingness to listen to me obsess about things like theory of change and design thinking, and for his patience on evenings and weekends where I was hunched over my laptop. His sharp eye and judgment strengthened the book. I am thankful for his love, generosity, and zest for life which brings brightness to each day.
Note
1.
F. A. Hayek, “The Dilemma of Specialization,” in
The State of the Social Sciences
, edited by Leonard D. White (University of Chicago Press, 1956): 463.
IntroductionInnovation and Nonprofits
Why does innovation matter—to a nonprofit's staff and volunteers, to the beneficiaries of a nonprofit's work, to its donors and supporters?
Nonprofits provide some of the greatest gifts to the world and take on some of its hardest problems. Nonprofits are building civil society. Our work eases hunger, conserves nature and wildlife, and fights injustice. Nonprofits advancing education help break the chains of ignorance and poverty. Recovery programs, mental health counseling, medical care, and research provide healing. Arts programs lift the human spirit.
Think about your day‐to‐day nonprofit operations: what does it look like when your nonprofit is operating at its innovative and effective best?
Ideating: regularly turning “aha” moments into game changers; thinking through where you want to go and how to know you are getting there
Clarifying what's working and what's not, to accelerate your impact
Designing small experiments that lead to discoveries
Confidently saying no to things—preventing mission creep
Getting green lights for projects
Inspiring others who want to be a part of your efforts (talented superstars, partners, donors)
Creating a work environment where team members are empowered, creative, and fulfilled
Improving services and lowering costs
Making a meaningful difference that improves people's lives
Offering solutions to society's most pressing problems
Wow, right? Though as we know, not every nonprofit team would describe itself this way. Why not? Even with the best of intentions and the worthiest of missions, nonprofits struggle. We may feel unfocused or spread too thin. Teams aren't always inspired or rowing in the same direction. We often have blind spots. Sometimes teams are siloed. We may be underfunded and overworked. Perhaps our results are lukewarm. Aspects of how a nonprofit is structured or managed might be an obstacle to innovation.
How do we break out of ruts? How do we challenge the status quo? How do we make better decisions when we don't have a complete map of all of our options and possibilities?
These are common challenges that most organizations struggle with, but for a nonprofit it probably means not delivering the best outcomes to those it serves. Imagine the life‐altering ramifications when a mediocre program fails to meet the needs of an at‐risk young person. For the causes and people we lovingly serve, we need organizations that empower us to ask courageous questions, and experiment to discover what works best.
Nonprofit innovation matters because the stakes are high, the needs are many, and the world's needs keep changing. We can always do better.
The good news is that human ingenuity and creativity are limitless. There are many ways to innovate, big or small. In these pages, we will read about inspiring examples of innovative nonprofits. Some closely resemble the earlier description. They find creative ways to bring about meaningful improvements in the lives of stakeholders. Team members know that their efforts and collective brainpower make a difference. Donors feel energized and confident when they invest in an innovative nonprofit, and they remain committed because they know their money fuels good work. These are nonprofits that endure, that are built to adjust and continue to be impactful as the world changes around us.
These are nonprofits that are innovating in a variety of ways, including internal process improvements (small or large), fundraising models, organizational or program strategy, technology, or inventions. This book will dive into how they do it.
These stories are lighthearted and accessible, and they can inspire us and help us think in new ways. We will draw on stories representing a diversity of nonprofits with a variety of missions, some whose names you will recognize, as well as some that will be unfamiliar. We will explore how real nonprofits innovate, like the Mayo Clinic, Fred Rogers's nonprofit production company, Aravind Eye Hospital, Greyston Foundation and Bakery, the LeBron James Foundation IPromise School, and many others. This book also includes examples of nonprofits that have struggled, like Chicago's Hull House, The Newseum, the One Laptop Per Child Initiative, and others. It is important for us to consider both scenarios, from the innovation success stories to the lukewarm or failed efforts, which teach us what not to do.
Based on lessons from these nonprofits and from interviews with people working on the front lines of social change, this book surfaces six basic, mutually reinforcing principles that can help you be more innovative:
Like a detective, be a fearless and relentless problem solver. Identify hidden needs.
Ideate. Start small but dream big: whether designing modest experiments or identifying partners and building ecosystems for social change, boldly think through where you want to go and how you might get there.
Unlock potential. Create a collaborative workplace culture that leaves room for experiment and play, for spontaneity and discovery.
Unlock even more potential. Empower bottom‐up decision making, encourage savvy risk taking, and reward tough‐minded trade‐off thinking.
Clarify what's working and what's not through continuous learning and stress testing to accelerate your impact. Build a commonsense evaluation approach that supports agility, experimentation, and team learning.
Persuade. You must be really good at this. Stand out from the crowd, secure resources, and win buy‐in for your idea.
For each of the six principles, this book provides practical how‐to steps accompanied with real world stories that bring the lessons to life. Consider treating this book as your innovation boot camp.
When you think of innovation, in your role or at your nonprofit, what comes to mind?
Figure 0.1 Wanchen Zhao
While leaders and experts describe innovation in different ways, all are woven together by threads of common agreement:
“Innovation is turning an idea into a solution that adds value from a customer's perspective.”
“Creativity is thinking of something new; innovation is the implementation of something new.”
1
“It's about taking real needs and creating a bridge to a solution.”
2
“Innovation is a process to bring new ideas, new methods or new products to an organization.”
3
Innovation involves creativity, originality, and some risk taking. An innovative leader asks, “What could be better?” and then tinkers and experiments. Innovation is the opposite of business as usual. A social entrepreneur can be anyone who has concern for an issue and dreams about possibilities for solving it.
While for‐profits by their nature are structured to maximize profit, nonprofits are structured to advance a mission and provide value to the beneficiaries we serve. We are deeply committed to being a force for good, whether building a civil society, advancing human flourishing, or solving social problems.
One common misconception is that we in nonprofits don't have enough resources (time, staff, money) to pursue innovative ideas. The truth is, inefficiencies and lost opportunities are by far the greater loss.
A nonprofit's limited size and budget is not a constraint to achieving widespread social change and setting the world ablaze. The smallest nonprofit may start with nothing more than a spark of an idea and a few passionate volunteers. For example, international powerhouse Habitat for Humanity began at an impoverished communal farm in rural Georgia with a handful of volunteers and unwanted donated materials.
Sure, innovation can be big, like creating a civil rights movement, but more often than not it happens on the margins. According to a retired executive who coaches young entrepreneurs, “Innovation doesn't have to be about creating the next iPad. It can be the way you treat a customer.”4 A humble process improvement such as replacing paper‐based client intake forms with an electronic form on a handheld tablet can save time and steps. Seemingly small innovations open the way for our time, energy, and resources to be put to better use elsewhere.
What inspired the creation of this book? I felt compelled to share these innovation stories so that they could be useful for other nonprofits. These stories surfaced from decades of stress‐testing these insights with nonprofit teams and through the lens of my own management experience, from interviews with nonprofit professionals in a variety of settings, as well as from my own freewheeling adventures as a US Peace Corps volunteer. Increasingly often in my work, teams would reach out to me for help when they found themselves spread too thin or dissatisfied with lukewarm results. With a little help, teams can get unstuck. That's what this book is meant to be, a wellspring of inspiration and practical low‐cost ideas that you can actually use in the nonprofit workplace.
You will find insights from the discipline of economics in these stories. I have the good fortune to work alongside economists in nonprofits, people for whom economics is not just an abstraction, but a way of thinking and working. Throughout this book, you will find stories of how nonprofits apply economic principles, such as incentives, trade‐offs, unintended consequences, public goods, externalities, and opportunity costs, which in plain English is about surfacing information so we can make better decisions. Economic thinking is great for sparking innovative thinking.
Excitingly, the nonprofit sector is growing. The federal government recognizes the nonprofit sector's built‐in advantages for innovation and agile responses to social problems. In the last 60 years, government agencies at all levels have shifted a significant portion of taxpayer resources toward a grant‐making model that relies on nonprofits to deliver such crucial social services as local job‐training programs and homeless shelters. This shift may be partially because policymakers have realized that nonprofits have far greater freedom to innovate compared to government, which can be rigidly limited by strictly defined mandates or by accountability to oversight committees. As an example, local communities and the nonprofit and for‐profit sectors far surpassed FEMA's response in disaster relief efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.5
According to a 2013 study by the Urban Institute, US nonprofits account for over 5% of GDP, and contribute $900 billion to the US economy. Americans clearly believe in the nonprofit sector: a quarter of all adults volunteered with a nonprofit in 2014, contributing 8.7 billion hours.6 In 2004, “nonprofits were the third‐largest industry in the United States, behind retail and wholesale trade, but ahead of construction, banking, and telecommunications.”7 As of 2013, it is estimated that nonprofits employ over 14 million people.8
Though the needs in our society are vast, there is good reason to be optimistic. We work in a growing sector with significant resources. This book challenges us to ask, are we making the best use of those resources?
Whether you are running an NGO with a $50 million budget or a homeless shelter operating on a shoestring, this book will help you. It shares best practices that can be applied at any nonprofit, no matter what its annual revenue or staff size. These practices are not cost‐prohibitive. They will improve nonprofits by helping a variety of actors, including:
Social entrepreneurs of all stripes who want to advance a social good
Social entrepreneurs working at the international, national, or local levels
Leaders or managers of nonprofit programs
Frontline staff or volunteers
Board members
Grants officers at foundations
Donors
Consultants
Students planning careers in the nonprofit sector
While Innovation for Social Change was primarily written for those working in nonprofits, it also can help those working in philanthropy. The book can help develop a common language between donors and people working on the front lines of nonprofits. It can help foundation grants officers and donors to better understand the management challenges that nonprofits are grappling with as they strive to be more innovative and effective.
Let's also identify what this book is not. I did not write this book to tell you what to think; rather, the stories can help us with how to think. The principles, practices, and examples can help you find new ways to think about a problem or opportunity and give you a range of tools that you can apply to your nonprofit's situation and context.
Acknowledging that we live in an era of disagreement and polarization, the examples I share here reflect a variety of viewpoints. We will read examples of advocacy organizations with political orientations we may or may not agree with. There are both religious or secular missions and perspectives that we may or may not subscribe to. Nonetheless, the lessons of innovation can still be relevant to your nonprofit's particular situation and context.
This is not an academic or theoretical book. While practical, the book does not get bogged down in the weeds. It will not, for instance, cover the ins and outs of nonprofit tax law or go into the details of the best tactics for a social media campaign. This book focuses on systems that work together to enable nonprofits to become more effective and innovative.
The Plan of the Book
Chapter 1 begins with the story of a nonprofit that found new ways to punch above its weight. When faced with extinction, St. Benedict's Prep School turned difficulties into opportunity, and transformed itself through small experiments, attentiveness to the needs of its stakeholders, and in the process, created a novel approach to teaching at‐risk young men.
How do we help great ideas bubble up? In Part 1 we learn insights from the field of design thinking, a process lauded by industrial designers, engineers, and teams at movie companies like Pixar. Nonprofit teams can use these techniques as a disciplined process for exploring what's possible and thinking creatively and strategically. Are we good at identifying hidden needs? What if that seemingly small idea of yours has giant ramifications? And, when we have many possible opportunities, how do we narrow our focus? These ideation exercises are useful whether you are doing back‐of‐the‐envelope thinking or surfacing ideas in team facilitations.
Part 2 helps us transform those ideas into action. Because we are often building the plane while flying, we can design small experiments, learn, and adjust before scaling. Based on what we learn, a vision begins to come into focus. We'll hear the origin stories of Habitat for Humanity and the Southern Christian Leadership Association. How did the founders go about identifying the social problem they wanted to solve? How did they develop a vision and a theory of change? Then, how do we know if what we are doing is working? We won't shy away from pointing out evaluation pitfalls. In contrast, we can design commonsense approaches to evaluation that support learning, innovation, and action.
In Part 3, we learn how successful nonprofits build an ecosystem for everyday innovation. First we ask, does workplace culture matter? Does it affect innovation? Nonprofit powerhouse Mayo Clinic built an innovation culture that any size nonprofit can learn from. We will explore how they encourage creative collaborations and build trust among colleagues, and how they ensure that team members and supervisors walk the talk. Further, what is the organization's role in supporting innovators? To get an idea across the finish line, the idea will need resources and perhaps approvals from decision makers. The idea may need support from downstream teams. It is important that our work is high quality and on time. We may find ourselves navigating organizational structures and processes that we like, or dislike.
Heavy‐handed or bad organizational design can stifle creativity, decrease efficiency, create bottlenecks, and increase mistakes. And on the other hand, good organizational design helps teams to be their entrepreneurial best, constructively solve problems together, and achieve the best possible outcomes. Who gets to make decisions? Should it be bottom‐up or top‐down? Can we leave room for play and discovery? What's more, when is the best organizational design in fact no design at all?
As we think about building an ecosystem for innovation, what specific role do donors play related to a nonprofit's ability to innovate? Can they help or hinder innovation? How do nonprofits navigate donor partnerships—both opportunities and pitfalls—so that teams are empowered to innovate?
Last, Part 4 asks, are there traits of social entrepreneurs that we can learn from? Through stories, we learn how social entrepreneurs are deeply passionate and genuinely love what they do. They are fearless and relentless problem solvers. They boldly challenge the status quo. They are persuasive—important because there are far more innovative ideas than there are resources. They find ways to stand out from the crowd of good ideas and make a compelling case that this is a great idea. Best of all, we can sharpen these skills with awareness and practice.
The stakeholders we care deeply about are counting on us to be our innovative and effective best selves. We need well‐run nonprofits and an infrastructure that equips us to meet rapidly evolving challenges.
Through these stories we can see that nonprofit innovation is at the center of making our world a better place. What kind of human endeavors and social good will come about 50 years from now that we can't even imagine now? My hope is that the case studies and practices in this book will inspire social entrepreneurs and those with generous spirits to continue to dream big, experiment, and innovate boldly.
Are you ready to make transformational change happen through your nonprofit? Let's get started.
Notes
1.
Nick Skillicorn, “What Is Innovation? 26 Experts Share Their Innovation Definition.” Idea to Value—Creativity and Innovation with Nick Skillicorn. Retrieved from:
https://www.ideatovalue.com/inno/nickskillicorn/2016/03/innovation-15-experts-share-innovation-definition/
2.
Tony Wagner,
Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World
(Scribner, 2012): 8.
3.
Chuck Frey quoting Norman Bodek in “How Do You Define Innovation and Make It Practical and Saleable to Senior Management?”
Innovation Management
(January 7, 2008). Retrieved from
https://innovationmanagement.se/imtool-articles/how-do-you-define-innovation-and-make-it-practical-and-saleable-to-senior-management/
4.
Tony Wagner,
Creating Innovators
: 9.
5.
Frank Langfitt, “Wal‐Mart Aid Outpaced Some Federal Efforts”
NPR, All Things Considered
(September 9, 2005. Retrieved from:
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4839696
6.
Brice McKeever, “The Nonprofit Sector in Brief 2015: Public Charities, Giving and Volunteering,” The Urban Institute, 2015. Retrieved from:
https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/72536/2000497-The-Nonprofit-Sector-in-Brief-2015-Public-Charities-Giving-and-Volunteering.pdf
7.
Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McCleod Grant,
Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High‐Impact Nonprofits
(Jossey‐Bass, 2012): 14.
8.
Brice McKeever and Marcus Gaddy, “The Nonprofit Workforce: By the Numbers,”
Nonprofit Quarterly
(October 24, 2016). Retrieved from:
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/nonprofit-workforce-numbers/
Chapter 1A Story of Transformative Innovation
The investigative television show 60 Minutes began with its trademark rapid ticking of a stopwatch.1 That evening's segment opened with a camera panning over the industrial skyline of Newark, New Jersey. A narrator described the city in 1967 as a time “when all hell broke loose”—high unemployment, police brutality, race riots, and white flight utterly changed the city. As the camera panned over city blocks, it paused on a high school campus, a 100‐year‐old prep school for boys. The narrator said that like so many others who abandoned the troubled city, even the Benedictine monks who taught here had lost faith in Newark, and they closed the school.
But a handful of dedicated monks decided to stay. Fast‐forward from 1967 to 2018. The show views a morning convocation in a school gymnasium filled with teenage boys dressed in school uniforms. Nearly all the diverse student body comes from low‐income neighborhoods. The gymnasium reverberates with energy as the students begin their day, shouting chants of positive affirmation and songs about facing daily challenges and conquering, their arms around each other, swaying to the music. When a senior student stands up with a raised hand, a hush falls over them. Five hundred high‐energy boys become respectfully quiet and stand at attention. That's the signal for the elected student team leaders to begin their orderly roll calls. As it turns out, students are required to run much of the school. Students running the school?
That 60 Minutes show isn't the only time the media has focused on St. Benedict's. The school has also been featured in the documentary The Rule, which aired on PBS, and in the book Miracle on High Street. Students are accustomed to a steady flow of curious visitors, including grant‐making foundations and journalists.
Make no mistake, the program at St. Benedict's is rigorous, with an 11‐month school year, a boot camp for new students, and a capstone student‐led hike required for all first‐year students. St. Benedict's will proudly tell anyone who asks that 98% of their students go to college, and 82% have completed college or are enrolled and on track to graduate. Compare this to 50% of Newark's families living in poverty and only 12% of the adult population having a college degree. Those are impressive results. What are those monks doing, and how did the school become such a shining example?
Back in the 1960s after Newark's riots, the school, with mostly white students, closed indefinitely. Many of the monks moved away. The school's prospects looked grim. Only a handful of monks felt a strong desire to serve Newark's diverse community. They stayed. A year later, they reopened the school.2
This would not be the old St. Benedict's, and not everyone was happy about the decision to create diversity in the new student body. The school faced an immediate backlash from angry alumni. “Why didn't you move out to the (white) suburbs? You could have saved the school,” and “I won't give you a dime because of what you did.”3 Whereas tuition paid by the middle‐class white families had previously covered all operating expenses, the new low‐income families could not afford private school tuition. The monks had to learn how to raise money in a hostile environment.
To lead the reopening of the school, the council of monks made an unlikely choice of a youthful but intense 26‐year‐old monk, Fr. Edwin Leahy, to lead the school. “The no‐nonsense leader intended to run a student‐centered school based on self‐respect and responsibility.”4 According to the 1,500‐year‐old Rule of Benedict that the monks live by, listening is one of the key precepts. Leahy laid out the approach: “We must be willing to constantly evaluate the community we serve and ask how we might better serve them.”5 “He believed that listening was the key to the early shaping of the school … keep our mouths shut as much as we could and keep our ears open.”6
They became aware of the overwhelming challenges facing Newark students. Being a teenager is hard enough, but in the city's depressed economy, “St Benedict's relentless adversary was the street, where drugs and lethargy were ubiquitous, and where debased values compete with the school's good works.”7
Based on what the monks learned, they began to experiment and transform the school. They offered group counseling sessions for those in emotional distress. They worked to ensure that a resident would be on site after hours for students who had an emergency or needed help. They added a small residence with six beds for students dealing with trauma who needed a safe place to stay.
Related to their goal to understand the needs of the students and build credibility and trust, sometimes the monks and faculty experimented with making surprise calls at the children's homes, which they called homework raids. As one of the monks noted, “I really think this was worthwhile, just to see where and how these kids live, while letting parents (often single mothers) know we're helping, and making the kid wonder a bit, too.”8
St. Benedict's continued to transform itself. In 1976, a graduate and experienced Boy Scout leader led a rigorous 15‐mile hike for small groups of first‐year students on the Appalachian Trail. The rule was that no man would be left behind. The monks and faculty noticed that the hike had a positive effect on everyone involved, and they made the hike a capstone requirement for all first‐year students.
The faculty noticed an improvement in self‐esteem and performance.9 In time, they decided to model the entire school on Boy Scout leadership principles that emphasize boys leading themselves. In addition, they added key practices from the house system of British private schools. They broke the student body into groups of 15, and the groups competed against each other academically. This began to create a new culture of norms among the students. The boys expanded the policy of no man left behind to academics. The students called each other brothers, and they worried about losing their brothers to the streets. One of their morning convocation chants is “Whatever hurts my brother hurts me!”
Out of this experience came another of the school's mottos: “Never do for students what they can do for themselves.” The boys elect leaders from the student body. The student leaders coordinate events, set schedules, and lead the capstone hikes. The journalist on 60 Minutes asked Fr. Leahy why the student‐led model didn't lead to chaos. What do other educators think of this model of student empowerment and freedom? Without blinking, Fr. Leahy replied that the students also learn through failures, and that's OK.
One of the goals of the school is to build a community of peers. From those early days the vision has been to create “a tight‐knit family atmosphere where everyone knew one another and each individual played an integral part in shaping something meaningful.”10 They have a daily convocation, which is “the most important thing we do and it's critical to have them together at least once a day.”11 “We were creating an alternative to the street,” admitted Fr. Leahy, “especially since many kids coming here in the 1970s and 1980s did not have experiences of community. We were creating it for them.”12
By all evidence, the St. Benedict's model is working extremely well. After those bleak years when most had lost faith, the parents, despite tough odds, have regained faith and hope in their children's school. “Many mothers over the years [have] arrived on the school's door step and said the same thing: ‘I'm afraid I'm losing my boy and they told me to bring him to you, Father Ed.’”13
What St. Benedict's Can Teach Us About Innovation
In the best‐selling classic The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, management expert Peter Senge describes the importance of “building an organization where it is safe for people to create visions, where inquiry and commitment to the truth are the norm, and where challenging the status quo is expected—especially when the status quo includes obscuring aspects of current reality that people seek to avoid.”14
The team members of St. Benedict's Prep School embody that ideal. During their start‐up phase, they didn't get distracted by how a traditional school is supposed to operate. Instead, their practice of listening and learning led to radical innovation of the school's operational model. They paid close attention to the needs of the students and attempted experiments like implementing the first‐year hike. They learned from their successes and failures, and then they scaled what worked.
If we were to diagram the approach they came to discover through trial and error, it might look like this:
IF ► the school staff deeply engage in radical listening to the needs of their students and immerse themselves in the lives of the students to better understand the students’ obstacles, ►THEN they can design a school model that addresses those needs and diminishes those obstacles.
IF ► the students gain the opportunity to demonstrate leadership and form bonds of community, ► THEN they will experience personal transformation, and they will gain self‐respect, confidence, and the inner strength to overcome the challenges of their community (poverty, drugs, gangs, lethargy, and ignorance).
▴ Social Change vision: Students and alumni have skills to be active members of their community, raise their own families, lead fulfilled lives, and break the cycle of poverty.
Similar to the idea behind the TV series Undercover Boss, the practice of radical listening, paying attention, and walking in another's shoes changes how an organization operates. “Humility allows leaders to benefit from other perspectives, because they realize they don't have a monopoly on insight. In fact, the people who are closer to the action often have the most practical, real‐world knowledge. They help to solve problems or point out issues that would be hidden otherwise.”15
As you read on, there will be more examples of innovative nonprofits surfacing needs, creating small experiments, taking risks, engaging in active listening, and other practices that we can learn from and emulate.
Notes
1.
Scott Pelley, “The Resurrection of St. Benedict's,” 60 Minutes, CBS News, June 26, 2016. Retrieved from:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-newark-school-st-benedicts-scott-pelley-2/
2.
Adapted with permission from: Thomas A. McCabe,
Miracle on High Street: The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. Benedict's Prep in Newark, N.J
. (Fordham University Press, 2010): 198–240.
3.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 214.
4.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 208.
5.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 198.
6.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 212.
7.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 233.
8.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 239.
9.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 222.
10.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 208.
11.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 230.
12.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 233.
13.
McCabe,
Miracle on High Street
: 240.
14.
Peter M. Senge,
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization
(Currency, 2010): 172.
15.
Julie Straw, Barry Davis, Mark Scullard, and Susie Kukkonen,
The Work of Leaders: How Vision, Alignment, and Execution Will Change the Way You Lead
(Pfeiffer, 2013): 80.
Part 1Tools for Sparking Innovative Ideas
How do we in nonprofits go about drawing great ideas out into the open, pushing through hurdles, getting buy‐in, exploring the ideas and then testing and improving them?
New insights are hovering around us at all times, and yet do we give voice to them, coax them out into the open, or follow through on them? Does our workplace empower us to explore them?
Industrial designers, engineers, movie companies like Pixar, and product development teams have long sung the praises of design thinking. Design thinking is a process for solving problems, discovery, and encouraging ideation. And when translated to the nonprofit setting, it works wonders for drawing out people's best thinking.
Figure 1.1 Wanchen Zhao
The first three practices help with ideation, while the fourth is meant to spur action. These steps are a feedback loop for generating ideas, concepts, asking “what if,” learning, and adjusting.
