I've been a huge fan of GivingTuesday since I first heard about it back in September, 2012 during a conference at Stanford. I'm pleased to see that some of the skepticism and complaints have now morphed in to more capacity builders providing tips for nonprofits to take advantage of this national day of giving. Giving Days organized by local communities are being adopted by many more communities than ever before and a stronger understanding how these efforts can help build the capacity of … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2014
Pioneers in Justice: Building Networks and Movements for Social Justice
Note from Beth: How do we build networks and movements around important social change issues. A generative social impact network links people together through relationships. They create social capital or value by making their skills, resources, and knowledge available to each other. Engagement in the network provides a bigger benefit than to the individual member, the networks can work on finding solutions to big social issues. A social impact network is different than a coalition or … [Read more...]
Using Design Thinking to ReThink Our Nonprofit or Community Foundation Work
Last week I was lucky enough to facilitate a mini-innovation lab for 60 community foundation program officers at the first meeting of ProNet during the Council on Foundations conference in Cleveland, Ohio that celebrated 100 years of community philanthropy. To facilitate the lab, I used human centered design techniques (for a good overview see Jen Bokoff's terrific overview post here) and more specifically the Luma Institute methods (for more, see my post here.) The intent was to provide a deep … [Read more...]
The Power of Our Collective Professional Networks and Transdisciplinarity Learning
Earlier this month, I had an opportunity to facilitate a full-day innovation lab for an amazing group of network thinkers using human design methods to inform the design of a leadership network. It has been exactly a year since I have committed to practicing the methods from Luma Institute as part of improving my facilitation practice. It was a great learning experience from both a process and content perspective. Since we were working on how to integrate networked leadership principles … [Read more...]
Book Review: Connecting to Change the World
Almost five years ago to the day, I was lucky enough to meet Peter Plastrik and Madeleine Taylor while I was Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation. Peter and Madeleine were the among the pioneers in writing about, designing, facilitating, and evaluating networks in the social impact space. Almost tend years ago, they co-wrote "Net Gains," one of the first practical handbooks on building and working in networks for social change. Whether it is a network of organizations or individuals, … [Read more...]
