New Year’s Resolutions for Leaders of Social Change (Blog)

(Photo by iStock/Barcin)

The outsized need for innovative solutions to today’s social problems can leave nonprofit leaders feeling overwhelmed, and uncertainties about the economy and political landscape can compound the anxiety. Yet organizations still need to grow and evolve, and the New Year offers an opportunity to re-examine and refresh old goals while creating new ones. Read on for insight into moving your team forward in 2020.

How to Get Your Funding and Fundraising in Order

Ten Nonprofit Funding Models

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.

Before the Next Recession, Philanthropy Needs to Redefine Efficiency

In a crisis, short-term efficiency can be a shock amplifier. Long-term efficiency comes from building resilient institutions. Learn how to prepare for the next economic downturn.

Behavioral Economics and Donor Nudges: Impulse or Deliberation?

Charitable organizations can use insights from behavioral economics “nudges” to help people follow through on their impulsive and deliberative intentions to give.

How to Build a Stronger Organization

How Leaders Can Strengthen Their Organizational Culture

What if all social impact organizations held their leaders and staff accountable not only for what they accomplish, but also for how they accomplish it?

Building Movements, Not Organizations

Creating a healthy, humane world will require more than new organizational designs. It will take rethinking the nature of organizations entirely.

Mission Matters Most

To thrive, a nonprofit organization must develop—and adhere to—a clear statement of its core purpose. But most nonprofits today have missions that are simply too broad.

How to Plan for the Future

Eight Practices for Strategic Agility

Rather than a glossy brochure that no one reads, your strategy should be an ongoing practice that informs your decisions and adapts as circumstances change. Open access for non-subscribers to this article has been provided through January. Visit our subscriptions page to support SSIR’s mission to inform and inspire leaders of social change.

How Adaptive Strategy Is Adapting

New developments from the disciplines of innovation, data science, and implementation management are teaching us that good strategy isn’t just about setting your destination and path, it’s also about how you execute and adjust over time.

Five Essentials of Strategic Planning

A culture of strategic planning can provide a framework for aligning priorities, making decisions, allocating resources, and measuring impact.

How to Improve DEI Efforts

‘Checkbox Diversity’ Must Be Left Behind for DEI Efforts to Succeed

Good intentions to increase the diversity of organizations have led to “checkbox” approaches that don’t account for hegemony, marginalization, and the creation of sustainable shifts in power. Without a closer examination of these practices, we may wake up in a few years wondering what went wrong.

How Reverse Mentoring Can Lead to More Equitable Workplaces

To establish more diversity, equity, and inclusion across sectors, we need to reimagine the traditional mentor and mentee relationship to shift power to younger and less experienced colleagues who possess unique insight into bias and racial dynamics.

Three Ways to Improve Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Philanthropy

If funders want to improve DEI in their organizations, they need to re-define risk, emphasize trust, and reflect the communities they serve. This article outlines guidelines for doing better.

How to Work Together

How Philanthropic Collaborations Succeed, and Why They Fail

Funders need to push past politeness and hammer out expectations for how their collective action will create value—for beneficiaries, grantees, and themselves—beyond what they could do alone.

Cutting Through the Complexity: A Roadmap for Effective Collaboration

Paying constant attention to five activities will help you navigate the personal, political, cultural, and organizational dynamics inherent in collaborative efforts.

Community System Solutions Framework Offers an Alternative to Collective Impact Model

There are better ways of describing how coalitions collaborate, and naming these variations can help guide local leaders and the diverse communities they serve.

How to Engage the Public

The Science of What Makes People Care

People fail to act not because they do not have enough information, but because they don’t care or they don’t know what to do. This article outlines five principles based in social science that will help organizations connect their work to what people care most about.

Community Engagement Matters (Now More Than Ever)

Data-driven and evidence-based practices present new opportunities for public and social sector leaders to increase impact while reducing inefficiency, but the efforts must engage community members directly in the work of social change.

Keeping People Engaged in Your Cause With Help From Behavioral Science

Nonprofits struggling to keep supporters excited about their causes should follow these five recommendations to make the most of Stanford behavioral scientist B.J. Fogg’s model for getting people to act.

How to Encourage Innovation

Design Thinking for Social Innovation

By working closely with the clients and consumers, design thinking allows high-impact solutions to social problems to bubble up from below rather than being imposed from the top.

Is Your Nonprofit Built for Sustained Innovation?

Six useful starting points for nonprofits that want to build their capacity to continuously innovate.

Asking Questions About Sustainability, Scale, and Systems Change

When nonprofits try to plan for scale, systems change, and sustainability at the same time, they can often find these expectations at odds with each other. The answer is not a zero-sum choice, but a flexible approach that focuses on the mission.