Shameless Self Promotion: July Edition

The July VPPNews issue is out today! Check it out and let me know what you think!

Highlights:

• VPP President and CEO Carol Thompson Cole's column on advice for board members of nonprofits looking to scale. This might seem like a column directed at a very niche market, but I think since scale can be defined so broadly, it has applications to boards at most nonprofits. If you are thinking about growing an organization in any way, this will be helpful for you.
• An interview with Gene Steuerle, a tax economist at the Urban Institute. The most interesting part, for me, is his discussion on the impact of the economic recession on nonprofit budgets.
• Michelle Obama visits VPP investment partner, CentroNía. The pictures are super cute.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Using Worst Practices

My Google Reader is out of control. It has way too many subscriptions. I also have this obsessive-compulsive thing where I can't let something unread go unread, so I end up consuming a lot of literature (if blogs can be considered literature) on nonprofits and social change.

One thing that bugs me about the resources out there is this obsession with "best practices." Advice-giving blog posts, case studies, and reports usually focus on what makes a good organization good, or what an organization has done to be more effective at something than others. Seemingly helpful for those seeking advice, this deluge of best practices and "overarching themes" makes my eyes glaze over.

Granted, not everyone reads blogs (slash wastes time with blogs) as much as I do. I'm also not running an organization or making major decisions at an organization, nor am I starting my own organization. So all this advice might be taken to heart elsewhere. I think, though, that most of the advice given is too generalized to do much good to "influence the field," as it were. People recommend things (usually through over-used metaphors) like "engage with stakeholders," "think for impact," and (my personal favorite) "have an A-plus team." Does anyone think having a C or B team is any good? Does anyone think that ignoring stakeholders is the way to go?

Social Edge recently hosted a discussion on "Access to Information" for social entrepreneurs, and one of the questions asked was:

Do social entrepreneurs even need resources? Is part of starting a social enterprise figuring it out from scratch? Or is there a way to share resources among entrepreneurs, who are do-it-yourselfers?

My first reaction to this was no, they don't. Social innovation is all about getting out there and mixing stuff up for yourself, going down the path least traveled, creating audacious goals, winning the future, etc etc. Using someone's previous path as a guide might cause some to miss out on important advancements.

But, I went on to think, without shared resources, a lot of people unknowingly will repeat the same mistakes. In the interest in efficiency, the knowledge of these mistakes should be spread far and wide as a deterrent for others. Sharing knowledge and common practices to reduce the repetition of mistakes is a good thing.

The best way to do this, I think, is to not focus on "best practices," but instead focus on "worst practices." Setting out a framework of things that have worked in the past is all well and good, but social change and social innovation needs to be adaptive. One size won't always fit all. Putting the failures out on the table makes it easier to see what went wrong and what to avoid when trying something similar. It is easy to hear a general best practice and think, "Oh yes, I do have an A-plus team," even if you don't. Saying "Oh no, I'd never make that mistake" is a lot harder.

One recent article that I think uses the idea of "worst practices" well is "Letting Go" (pdf), by Kristi Kimball & Malka Kopell of the Hewlett Foundation. The article is about the tendency for funders to be overly-controlling of social initiatives, and why loosening that grip will help grantees and foundations alike. They use several examples of when the Hewlett Foundation didn't do this, and the problems that ensued.

Another publication that I think employs "worst practices" well (to be a little self-promotional) is VPP's Leap of Reason, written by VPP Chairman Mario Morino. Morino uses several examples from his own career to show how not paying attention to an organization's impact can be pretty disastrous.

Generalizations of best practices usually are platitudes that can be easily brushed aside or incorporated into an organization on a surface level without much change. Worst practices are more specific and serve as a warning sign to others journeying down the road of social innovation. Sharing these amongst ourselves will make that trip a lot more efficient and better for all.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Guest Bloggin'

Well, dear readers, I've been neglecting you in favor of others. That's right, I've been writing for other blogs. But don't worry, you can still read those posts, thanks to hyperlinks:

• I wrote a post for Good Intentions are Not Enough, about how to work with people to help them create more intentional giving and volunteering habits. I know I get frustrated with some when they don't give as much thought to social change issues as I do, but I've learned that anger isn't a good way to approach these situations.
• Completely unrelated, I also wrote a post on Allison Jones' blog on how to start a nonprofit career with a year of service. I was in a year of service myself, and it helped me figure out what I want to do and land the job I  have now.

Let me know what you think of them!

                                                                                                  
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Shameless Self Promotion: June Edition

Hey everyone!

VPPNews' June issue is out! Check it out and let me know what you think.

Highlights:

• A profile of Ebony Jones, an 18 year old woman that is working at KIPP DC to gain the experience she needs to open a daycare one day.
• Mario Morino's column on the launch of Leap of Reason.
• A video of Paul Carttar, Director of the Social Innovation Fund, talking about the government's relationship with philanthropy. Paul gives an inspiring speech on the potential to create some real change through government partnerships like the Social Innovation Fund and the Promise Neighborhoods Initiative.

                                                                                                  
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Managing to…What?

Regular readers of this blog (hi mom!) know that I’m not a big fan of jargon. I think it muddles thoughts and distracts from real issues, and encourages isolation within a field. Nonprofit and funding jargon is especially annoying to me because this sector needs all the clear thinking and new ideas it can get. (To read a great piece on this, read “In Other Words” by Tony Proscio. Free pdf here.)

So, when the first draft of Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Scarcity, written by VPP Chairman Mario Morino with essays by several people in the VPP community, came across my desk, I groaned inside and steeled myself in preparation for all the words and phrases that I was sure to encounter: “culture of effectiveness,” “mission measurement,” “human capital,” “performance management,” and of course, “watershed moment.” 

“Managing to outcomes?” I thought. “I’m supposed to help distribute this book (available in pdf for free online, on Amazon for a small handling fee and in Kindle form for $1. Tell your friends!!!) with a title that’s going to get me blank stares. Awesome.”

Reading through the book, though, made me realize I was quick to judge. (I’m a millennial, after all, and I went to a liberal arts school full of snotty liberals.) Yes, “managing to outcomes” is a fuzzy term (which Morino admits in the first few paragraphs of the book), but that’s because what the book is talking about is some fuzzy, heady stuff. Morino and the other contributors have tapped into some very elemental and pressing problems in the nonprofit sector. The book touches on funder accountability, the overhead ratio problem, the need to recruit talented employees, capital stream constraints, technology system implementation, changing an organizational culture, etc. etc. These problems are interconnected, but have no overarching name to describe them. (I guess except for “things that are complicated.”)

The name Morino and the other contributors have given to the solution of these problems is the phrase that caused me panic as someone tasked with distributing it to the outside world—“manage to outcomes.” The way I see it, this book’s underlying message of managing to outcomes is this:

You need to collect the data to figure out how you are doing, and then make changes to do it better. Even if you find you are doing some amount of good, you always need to keep tabs and keep improving.

This is seemingly simple, and if you read the book (which you can get here, here and here—Tell your friends!!) you’ll see that for some organizations, it can be relatively simple and cost-effective in the short- and long-run. In other cases, it will require a complete organizational culture shift, significant investments of time and money, and asking yourself some pretty difficult questions. However, all organizations can begin to “manage to outcomes” in some ways, which shows the potential for this to catch on, and the potential for some real benefits. 

The truth is is that many nonprofits (and funders) don’t know how they are doing, and they don’t know the changes needed to make their programs more efficient and effective. The reasons for this are numerous, but I think they stem from the general feelings about charity as something supplemental to society, and not integral and necessary. Morino is really calling for us all to get serious as a society about social change and get shit done. 

The words found in this book are the same words that swim through most writing of the nonprofit sector, and I’m realizing that that’s maybe because what we are dealing with is hard to talk about. We all want to get stuff done in the best way possible, we just don’t always know the best way to say it. I’ll always advocate for clearer writing and speaking (who wouldn’t?) but I honestly don’t have better vocabulary for these jargon-y words that keep popping up all around me. I hope as things in the sector become more standardized, jargon will be pinned down and forced into one definition or another. That way, we can move beyond figuring out what we are talking about and start figuring out how to use these words to do stuff better.

I’ll end with a quote from Morino’s post on the Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion blog, adapted from the book:

We need to rethink, redesign, and reinvent the why, what, and how of our work in every arena from education to healthcare to public safety...We need to reassess where we have the greatest needs so we can apply our limited resources to have the most meaningful impact. We need to be much clearer about our aspirations, more intentional in defining our approaches, more rigorous in gauging our progress, more willing to admit mistakes, more capable of quickly adapting and improving—all with an unrelenting focus and passion for improving lives.

It’s not longer good enough to make the case that we’re addressing real needs. We need to prove that we’re making a real difference.

You can’t argue with those words.

                                                                                                  
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Shameless Self Promotion: May Edition

VPPNews came out last week. This month, our theme of choice was "funder collaboration." Kind of nuanced and jargon-y, I know, but important. Why is it so important, you ask? Well, check out these highlights:

• A summary of VPP's youthCONNECT briefing that brought together funders from across the region to discuss a new collaborative effort, which aims to help 20,000 youth over five years.
• VPP President and CEO Carol Thompson Cole's most recent column, "Leaving Silos Behind," about why funders should collaborate and the different models for doing so. This is a very substantial piece with a lot of important insights. I think it can spark a lot of good conversations. It's what inspired my most recent post on system-wide collaboration.

As always, thoughts, questions and criticisms, constructive or not, are always appreciated. 
                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

More than Collaboration

Or: What This Really is All About

Something I've been giving a lot of thought to recently is the emerging buzzword (or possibly well-established buzzword), "collaboration." Collaboration seems to be everywhere in the nonprofit sector, and for good reason. I see collaboration and it's often-partnered friend "knowledge sharing" (yay for jargon!) as the real way forward to solve a lot of serious problems and help a lot of people who need it.

Collaboration can take many forms. At VPP, we are deep into collaboration through our youthCONNECT initiative, which has brought together six DC-area nonprofits to work together to try and help 20,000 youth over five years. Pretty big stuff, and clearly we'll need a lot of help to do it, not just from our nonprofit partners, but other funders and government officials. youthCONNECT is funded in part through the Social Innovation Fund, which is supporting a lot of similar collaborative networks across the country and helping the sector move towards a collaborative mindset.

Carol Thompson Cole, VPP's President and CEO, has written about the need for nonprofit collaboration and, most recently, the need for funder collaboration. She says that nonprofits often do not work together and society suffers because of it. Organizations--funders and nonprofits alike--can benefit from what others have learned and most problems the nonprofit sector deals with cannot be solved by one organization. Working together in a true and real way--talking with each other, sharing ideas about where organizations can fill in the gaps of others' work, developing theories of change with other organizations--can start to make a dent in these amorphous "big problems" we talk about.

I may have drunk a little too much of the Social Innovation Fund kool-aid (that's probably the nerdiest thing I've ever written), but I think this is great. Working together makes complete sense in the nonprofit sector, because the goal of the sector is to create social benefit, and that is done most effectively without competition getting in the way.

But, when I stop downing the kool-aid and take a step back, I realize that this trend toward collaboration might be bigger than I think it is. Collaboration might not be an end to itself, but merely a stop along the way of a longer journey. I think this is really about re-defining our economic priorities.

FSG Social Impact Consultant has put out a lot of research on collaboration. They have a lot of good stuff on what they call "Collective Impact," "Catalytic Philanthropy," and "Strategic Evaluation" (all of which expands upon the ideas in this post), but what excites me the most is their work on "Shared Value." Shared Value is the idea that corporations should integrate societal needs into their bottom-line business planning, and that by addressing social needs, corporations can actually benefit financially. It is a radical shift from the typical "Corporate Social Responsibility" work that is usually done by companies. This type of business strategy has companies like Nestlé working with farmers in Latin America to create better irrigation systems for their crops, ensuring a better product for Nestlé and a more stable community for the farmers. This collaborative approach creates value for all parties involved.

This puts a new spin on things for me. To bring business into the mix as a true collaboration partner, not just a writer of checks, really shows how powerful collaboration can be. To have nonprofits, governments and corporations working together under a common theory of change with universal goals and measurement indicators will shift the way our society works. Instead of having a three-way segmented economic landscape--with corporations making money at the expense of society, forcing nonprofits to clean up the mess using money made by the corporations, all while the government oversees everything to make sure no one gets too far out of line--it can be one integrated system with one goal: Make the world a better place.

I "attended" (listened? watched?) a recent webinar (pdf) on Shared Value that had several representatives of FSG's clients on it. In the question and answer session, Tony Kingsbury of Dow Chemicals said that government, nonprofits and business all had an important role to play in creating shared value. The government encourages and enables innovation; nonprofits identify social needs and target markets; and businesses create innovative products to address the needs. (I would argue that government and nonprofits can also play a role in addressing needs through innovation, but that's a discussion for another time.) Extrapolating from Kingsbury's points, you see that each sector has its own role to fill in a collaborative effort. One isn't inherently better than the other, nor is one more adept at creating change. Each is a tool to call on to help get things done. The same with financing: Philanthropic dollars, government dollars, shareholder investment, venture capital all have different places for different things and should be used in the most effective way possible.

Jonathan Greenblatt, in a recent Huffington Post piece on social impact bonds (another very cool tool), referred to this new type of economic collaboration as an "Impact Economy":

[In] an Impact Economy...market forces are leveraged to enable private gain but also to drive public benefit. In an Impact Economy, cross-sector collaboration is not the exception but the rule, a new mode of serving the national interest.

This is where I think the sector is going, where society is going. I think this is what this is really all about. If we can get to a place where everyone is working together to try and create shared value to benefit society, the world will be a better place.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners