-
Leadership
Five Steps to Building an Effective Impact Network
How network entrepreneurs can catalyze large-scale social impact through a process that applies to networks across all systems and sectors.
-
Collaboration
Beyond Car Bombs: Keys for Transformative Impact
Trust rooted in shared dreams and values can find a way forward at the edge of chaos.
-
Environment
Cultivating Common Ground for a Healthy Environment
How engaging businesses and building a network of diverse stakeholders has drastically reduced the presence of invasive plants in California nurseries, while planting new seeds for others to sow.
-
Leadership
A Network Approach to a “No Kill” Nation
Using a strategy that starts and ends with community-based collaboration, the animal welfare organization Maddie’s Fund and its partners are achieving the ambitious goal of a no-kill nation.
-
Leadership
Decades of Deadlock: Using Network Principles to Break Through
When not being able to figure out who “won” means everyone did.
-
Collaboration
Building New Networks for Efficient, Affordable Housing
Three lessons on accelerating targeted social change through network building.
-
Leadership
Distributing Leadership, Promoting Stewardship
Foundations can play an essential role in generating authentic conversation on hard issues, but they must be both an equal player among community partners and an active steward of the mission.
-
Scaling
A Relational Approach to Scaling Mission
Two organizing principles for moving beyond brand and enabling other organizations to advance the social change your organization seeks.
-
Solutions
The Most Impactful Leaders You Have Never Heard Of
Network entrepreneurs are ensuring that systems-level, collaborative efforts not only succeed, but thrive.
Leadership
The New Network Leader
In the world of complex, multi-stakeholder problem-solving, approaches like collective impact and technologies like social media offer useful, concrete structures and tools—but alone, they are insufficient for achieving transformational change. Likewise, social entrepreneurs—despite often-heroic efforts—often struggle to achieve large-scale, sustainable change as they build and grow their own organizations.
At the heart of some of the most sophisticated, large-scale solutions to social problems are some of the most accomplished leaders you’ve never heard of: network entrepreneurs. Network entrepreneurs actively catalyze networks (or organizations that function like networks), leading to an exponential increase in growth and scale beyond what their own organization could accomplish. These leaders don’t use a single approach, employ a single tool, or operate alone. As they expand and evolve their networks—far beyond the walls of their own organizations—they make sure that their own power fades and the capacity of others grows. Most of all, they go the last mile and create a rare level of deep trust among network partners; they emphasize “return on relationships,” convinced that sustained, authentic relationships are the foundation on which all successful collaborative efforts thrive.
Today, these leaders are generating systems-level social impact in environmental conservation, education, economic development, and beyond. In this series, several leading network entrepreneurs share their perspectives and lessons on catalyzing networks for social change.