Podcast

Civic Engagement

Jennifer Aaker - The Psychology of Giving

Research shows that spending time and money on others makes people happy—so why don't more people donate to or volunteer for nonprofits? In this audio lecture, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, Stanford marketing professor Jennifer Aaker offers insights into the phenomenon. She then turns those insights into lessons in nonprofit management that organizations can use to create compelling ways for more people to give financially and personally to the causes they care about.

Podcast

Collaboration

Diana McLain Smith - How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength

The key to success in any team or enterprise is to develop good working relationships. In this talk, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, consultant Diana McLain Smith, author of Divide and Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength, shows how those who care about performance and relationships can simultaneously nurture both. She offers tips for seeing work relationships in new ways, and practical suggestions for enhancing them.

Podcast

Advocacy

Fraser Nelson - Learn to Love Lobbying

Fraser Nelson, a consultant to nonprofits, gives an entertaining lesson on the why and how of nonprofit lobbying. Most nonprofits do not lobby government for a variety of reasons, but Nelson explains that it is legal, effective, and powerful. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored audio lecture, Nelson concludes with ways to get the most out of your lobbying efforts and five rules to follow.

Podcast

Nonprofits & NGOs

Deborah Rhode - Ethics in the Nonprofit Sector

Businesses are not the only organizations rocked by financial scandals. Nonprofits such as the Red Cross, United Way, and many others have been hit as well. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored audio lecture, Deborah Rhode discusses the need for an ethics upgrade in the nonprofit sector, which by its do-good nature is expected to take the moral high ground. She considers typical pitfalls that nonprofits are vulnerable to, and calls for clearer rules governing transparency and accountability.

Podcast

Scaling

Robert Searle - Can Nonprofits Get More Bang for the Buck?

If you haven't bought a flat-screen TV yet, chances are you're waiting for the prices to drop. Technologies get cheaper by virtue of the "experience curve," a phenomenon where, as companies get better at what they do, costs become lower. In this Stanford Social Innovation Review sponsored audio lecture, Robert Searle argues that nonprofits also can have experience curves, achieving a greater volume of outcomes for the same cost. He discusses the types of outcome metrics on which nonprofits should focus.

Environment

Offsetting Green Guilt

By Matthew J. Kotchen 6

Voluntary carbon offsets allow people to invest in projects that allegedly counteract their greenhouse gas emissions. But can voluntary offsets help slow global warming? Or are offsets a way for consumers to buy their way out of bad feelings?

Podcast

Organizational Development

Brian Lehnen, Scott Morgan, Anne Marie Burgoyne - Year One in the Life of a Nonprofit Start-up

What fuels the creation of a nonprofit organization? In this panel discussion, sponsored by the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, panelists talk about their experiences founding an education-related nonprofit in the United States and a microenterprise in Africa. They explore how they came up with the ideas for their enterprises, how they focused and manifested those ideas, and what smart and not-so-smart choices they made along the way. A portfolio manager adds her insights on what elements make a startup appealing to potential funders.

Philanthropy

Making Nonprofit Collaboration a Foundation Strategy: The Lodestar Foundation

By Jean Butzen 4

The Lodestar Foundation supports nonprofit collaborations, mergers, and other cooperative activities as a major strategy.

Podcast

Organizational Development

William Brindley - Collaborating to Wire NGOs

Aid organizations around the world are learning that they can solve their technology and infrastructure problems faster and cheaper together than on their own. Enabling that collaboration is NetHope, a nonprofit information technology consortium helping NGOs establish the technology "ecosystems" they need to serve constituencies in more than 150 countries. Eric Nee interviews Bill Brindley, CEO of NetHope, on how the consortium got started, how it works, and how it is expanding its mission.

Podcast

Measurement & Evaluation

Good Measures Conference - Evaluation for Learning

Nonprofits tend to collect a great deal of evaluative data but often have no idea how to use it to assess their performance—particularly because doing so properly is a complicated process requiring serious social sciences knowledge. In this panel discussion, part of the Stanford Social Innovation Review's conference on evaluation, two experts talk about how an organization may better use such data—as well as "external" information in the form of theory and advice—to create a "culture of inquiry" focused on learning and improvement.