Communicate, Grow, Impact, Impact Measurement, Lead, Lean Start-Up, Organizational Assessments, Organizational Culture, Social Impact Architects, Storytelling
In January 2018, we named it the year of collaboration. We practice what we preach by collaborating with partners to ensure the social sector gets easy-to-digest, actionable information to energize our work. We partnered with one our favorite like-minded...
Corporate Social Responsibility, Impact Measurement, Social Impact Architects, Social Movements
As we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. next week and witness the power of the recent movements in the last few years, we are reminded of the importance of social movements to our country’s evolution. Movements were believed to have started in the late...
Annual Traditions, Client Flow/Design Thinking, Impact, Impact Measurement, Lean Start-Up, Nonprofit Trends, Organizational Assessments, Organizational Culture, Social Impact Architects, Social Movements, System Change
When I first heard the famous parable about “The River,” I was at a national cardiovascular convening in 2003 held at Mountain Lake Lodge in Virginia (made famous by Dirty Dancing). The presenter told the story: you and a friend are having a picnic by the side of a...
Communicate, Evaluation Planning, Impact, Impact Measurement, Program Development, Social Impact Architects, Storytelling
Last month, The New York Times published a great article – Social Programs Can Sometimes Turn a Profit for Taxpayers – that put SROI (social return on investment) and cost-benefit analyses into the mainstream. In it, Seema Jayachandran, an economics professor at...
Business Planning, Grow, Growth/Scaling Plans, Impact, Impact Measurement, Lean Start-Up, Program Development, Social Impact Architects
“Evolve or die” – this saying is even more true today than when I started Social Impact Architects. Just 10 years ago, I learned about social business plans in business school, but today traditional business plans are being replaced by a more efficient tool – the...
Collaborate, Ecosystem Mapping, Impact Measurement, Social Impact Architects, Social Movements, System Change
In the nonprofit community, we often talk about our clients “falling through the cracks.” As a result, we spend a lot of time conducting case management sessions to help each and every client navigate “the system.” But, these are often only temporary fixes for our...