Nonprofits
Coming to Terms With the Future of Nonprofit Leadership
As Baby Boomers retire, we need to think about how the next generation of nonprofit leaders will be different.
As Baby Boomers retire, we need to think about how the next generation of nonprofit leaders will be different.
Social enterprise and innovation are about more than just invention. In this panel discussion, experts argue that diffusion or scaling up ideas is an integral part of making truly effective social change. Educators, nonprofit executives, and philanthropists share their perspectives about how to take innovative ideas for social change to that tipping point where they can create large-scale, lasting positive effects.
We should be focused on cultivating and developing the leaders we already have in the nonprofit sector, instead of trying to attract 640,000 new ones.
Social innovators need to hold a positive vision of where we can go, and must work on building faith that there is a common good and that people can work together.
Now, more than ever, nonprofit leaders need to know how to maximize their social impact. Center for Social Innovation researcher Heather McLeod Grant shares some of the groundbreaking research explored in her coauthored book Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits. Drawing on her extensive study of nonprofit leaders and organizations, Grant reveals that success isn't just about "nonprofit management," but about creating larger systemic change. She shares three of the six practices for making such transformation possible.
It's high time for the nonprofit sector to put race on the table.
You can learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. Paul Schmitz, president and CEO of Public Allies, gives a sampling of classic foibles of not only social entrepreneurs, but leaders in general.
As the wall between the nonprofit and corporate worlds crumbles, many social change organizations are asking themselves: Do we stick to our activist guns, or do we cross the divide and work with business? Research suggests that social movements need both kinds of organizations to make the changes they seek.
Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. This study of 12 high-impact nonprofits, however, shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others.
Human-caused climate change, sharply declining conventional energy sources, and population growth are threatening the very platform of human life. Yet only 5 percent of U.S. foundation spending goes to the environment, and a paltry 2.9 percent goes to science and technology.