These civic participation processes have great potential in spurring collective impact: Empowering Champions: When you consult citizens through an open, crowd-sourced process for ideas for how to improve the community, a large number of different issues will surface. The role … Continue reading
Category: Friday's Thoughts
Friday’s Thoughts: Applying Best Practices Across Sector
We live in a world where for-profits and not-for-profits occupy separate spheres, and we often focus more on their differences than on their similarities. What would happen if we stopped focusing on tax status, and took the best practices from … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: What Social Entrepreneurs Really Need
…I and other Mexican social entrepreneurs have had to overcome our own challenges. This experience has taught me that money, by itself, is never enough. What we need are changes in legal and fiscal regulations, as well as the creation … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: Collaboration and Common Goals
The issue isn’t a lack of interest in collaboration. Quite the opposite. At least anecdotally, it’s clear that many funders participate in collaborations with like-minded organizations. These efforts take a variety of forms, ranging from sharing information around a conference … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: Advocating for Systematic Change
So, neither the public sector nor corporate and economic elites, as a result of some newfound enlightenment, seem poised to consider alternatives to the current system. To the contrary, their first impulse will be to resist any such efforts. This … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: A World Defined by Change
Of course, the world has always seen some change, at least evolutionary change. But the practical day-to-day work of an organization was marked by increasingly specialized repetition: A few people told everyone else how to repeat actions together, efficiently, in … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: 6 Characteristics of Tri-Sector Leaders
Balanced motivations. A desire to create public value no matter where they work, combining their motivations to wield influence (often in government), have social impact (often in nonprofits) and generate wealth (often in business) Transferable skills. A set of distinctive … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: The Organizations that Brought Us this Far
Those of us working on social investment don’t think we’re smarter than those who aren’t, but we’re not selling snake oil, either. We are well aware that impact investment would not be possible without the decades of social innovation that … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: Creativity and Vision
My hope is the Lean Startup movement will not fall into the same reductionist trap. We are just beginning to uncover the rules that govern entrepreneurship, a method that can improve the odds of startup success, and a systematic approach … Continue reading
Friday’s Thoughts: Civil Society in All Its Forms
In a world of blurring roles, civil society has the opportunity to transmit many of these core values to an increasingly receptive set of businesses and government institutions. In all scenarios there remains an acute need for organizations, individuals, movements … Continue reading
