On June 30, President Obama announced his pledge to support social innovation from the “bottom up.” As a community organizer in Chicago, he learned that the some of the best solutions exist at the grassroots level.

The president added that we need to bring the most promising community-based solutions to scale by expanding successful programs and developing other high potential solutions with a strong emphasis on measuring results and impact. “People don’t need somebody out in Washington to tell them how to solve their problems, especially when the best solutions are often right there in their own neighborhoods, just waiting to be discovered,” said Obama.

As reported earlier this year by The Chronicle on Philanthropy, the White House is looking for “new ideas” and “new models” but innovation does not necessarily imply new nonprofits or programs. “It’s about impact and effectiveness,” said Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council. In Tuesday’s announcement, Obama said that he will be asking Barnes to travel across the country to “discover and evaluate the very best programs in our communities.”

The $50-million fund for social innovation is part of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. The funds were authorized by the national service law in April 2009, but the funds still need approval by Congress in the fiscal year 2010 budget.

More coverage:

• White House Press Release
• America Forward
• Nonprofit Times
• The Foundation Center
• Huffington Post

No Comments »

Last Friday I attended “Relationship Building: What We Can Learn from Alumni Groups.” Co-sponsored by Development Executives Roundtable (DER) and the Foundation Center in San Francisco, three panelists from Bay Area educational institutions talked about how they cultivated longtime donors through relationship building with program alumni. The insights they shared could apply to many nonprofits seeking to build a stronger funding base and support, especially those with alumni groups or memberships.

Moderated by Kelli Nakayama, a DER board member and grants manager for Children’s Hospital and Research Center Foundation, the panelists represented a diversity of Bay Area organizations:

• Sue Merrill, Annual Giving Manager, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) - a large public educational and research institution
• June Thompson, Executive Director of California Association of Student Councils (CASC) - a student-led nonprofit for youth leadership training with a staff of two
• Patricia Cavagnaro, Director of Development, Immaculate Conception Academy - a 126-year old Catholic high school for girls in the Mission District of San Francisco

10 Tips for Building Relationships

1. Give program alumni, members and other supporters (volunteers, donors) multiple ways to get together because they will want to meet each other and see each other.
2. Send a regular e-newsletter and ask your constituents what articles they want.
3. Tell potential donors where their dollars will go. What will their contributions support? Be specific.
4. Ask beneficiaries of your programs or services to write thank you letters to donors, telling them how their support made a difference in their lives
5. Give beneficiaries multiple ways to “give back.” If you maintain relationships with beneficiaries, such as program alumni, oftentimes they will want to give back in the future.
6. Acknowledge donors to thank them for their generosity. Donor walls are a great way to do that. You can also think of creative ways to build and expand the wall over time (Immaculate Conception Academy came up with an innovative and creative solution).
7. Explore social media as part of your communications strategy, especially if you are building connections among supporters.
8. Manage donor/volunteer/alumni information effectively with constituent databases (Idealware article).
9. Use tools to capture best practices and manage institutional knowledge, especially if your organization relies on a large number of volunteers, peer-to-peer training or high turnover. CASC set up a wiki to support their elaborate transition process for volunteers. For help with wikis, Idealware published a how-to article called “Using Wikis for Internal Documentation.”
10. Thank and acknowledge. Thank and acknowledge.

1 Comment »

Youth development advocates nationwide have been building a movement to prioritize play and outdoor time for children and youth - through recess, sports and adventures in nature. Backing them up are new research studies from the fields of pediatrics and youth development, linking the influences that regular play and outdoor learning time have on success in school and life.

This afternoon the inaugural Sports4Kids Play On conference kicks off three days of keynotes and sessions dedicated to the topic of play - its multiple benefits and how to build programs to make a difference in our schools and communities. The conference runs May 18 – 20 at San Francisco’s Mission Bay Conference center. This conference comes at a time when many children and youth-oriented nonprofits are developing community programs that get kids outside to play in safe, fun, and supportive environments while learning, connecting and being physically active.

Finding funding and understanding philanthropic priorities is key to making outdoor and sports-based programs a success, so I am looking forward to today’s afternoon session featuring speakers from health-driven foundations including the The California Endowment, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Kaiser Permanente followed by a discussion with Dr. Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play and often called one of the country’s premiere experts on play behavior.

No Comments »

No Comments »