Butter Your Way to the Top
Flattery, not good governance, reaps corporate directorships – especially for white males.
Flattery, not good governance, reaps corporate directorships – especially for white males.
Many nonprofits want to expand their staff and funding base so that they may serve a broader public. Until recently, little information was available about how such organizations may do so successfully. In an audio interview with Stanford Social Innovation Review managing editor Eric Nee, William Foster shares findings from the Bridgespan Group's groundbreaking research on what it takes to be in the big leagues. He discusses types of funders to pursue, how to restructure an expanding organization, and whether going big is right for everyone.
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.
Funders are calling for more program evaluation, but nonprofits are often collecting dubious data, at great cost to themselves and ultimately to the people they serve.
Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, not the isolated intervention of individual organizations.
For NGOs, impact comes in different forms and to track the cycles of social change work, we must think across the tangibility and the speed of emergence of change.
With an understanding of these 10 funding models, nonprofit leaders can use the for-profit world's valuable practice of engaging in succinct and clear conversations about long-term financial strategy.
Professionalism has become coded language for white favoritism in workplace practices that more often than not leave behind people of color. This is the fourth of 10 articles in a special series about diversity, equity, and inclusion.