What’s Your Exit, er, Commitment Strategy?
There are conditions under which nonprofits, even those pursuing transformative scale, will find commitment strategies—rather than exit strategies—to be the right answer for their direct service programs.
Scaling Innovative ways nonprofits can increase their reach and social impact
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Governance: The Secret to Mission-Driven Business Success
New research reveals a cross-sector trend that sees organizations using governance to strengthen extra-financial performance.
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Efficient Philanthropy
Nancy Roob, president of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, talks about the foundation’s True North Fund, which allows investors to put money into a pool fund that can then support multiple organizations and increase efficiency.
Wheeling in the Trojan Mice
One way to make risk-taking more palatable for social change organizations is to run small, light, nimble experiments––tests not built to win wars, but rather to quickly infiltrate new territory, attack new problems, and inform future tactics.
Upgrading a Network
Girl Scouts of the USA has overhauled everything from its federated structure to its information technology systems to the way that Girl Scouts sell their fabled cookies.
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How Nonprofits Get Really Big
Since 1970, more than 200,000 nonprofits have opened in the U.S., but only 144 have reached $50 million in annual revenue. They got big by doing two things: They raised the bulk of their money from a single type of funder. And just as importantly, these nonprofits created professional organizations that were tailored to the needs of their primary funding sources.
Centering Equity in Collective Impact
A decade of applying the collective impact approach to address social problems has taught us that equity is central to the work.
The Adoption of Innovation
How do innovations move from the edges to the core of what an organization does? For maximum impact, innovations must cease to be innovative and become institutionalized and normalized.
Ten Reasons Not to Measure Impact—and What to Do Instead
Impact evaluations are an important tool for learning about effective solutions to social problems, but they are a good investment only in the right circumstances.
Scaling Impact
Scaling requires not only fidelity to core processes and programs, but also constant adjustments to local needs and resources.