Interview: now is the time to bring institutions into impact investing
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, January 26th, 2012
2 Comments -
I had the opportunity on Tuesday to sit down with Ben Thornley of Pacific Community Ventures, who has published a series of forward-looking reports on impact investing as head of their InSight program. After a year of investigation, he is about to release a new report next month about the potential for bringing institutional investors into impact investing, who collectively manage $22 trillion in capital. He gave us a preview of what he learned in the report and shared his point of view on where the field as a whole is headed.
Working Wikily: What did you find most interesting in the research you’re about to release?
Ben Thornley: It turns out that institutional investors engage in a relatively diverse set of activities that would meet the definition of impact investing, but call them by different names—responsible investing, economically targeted investing, ESG integration, and others. For all the talk of how fiduciary duty constrains activity, we were surprised about how creative they’ve become at ensuring that they can meet their fiduciary obligations and still have an impact.
New metrics and a new mindset for measuring movements
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, January 12th, 2012
Leave a comment -
When you’re trying to build a movement, how do you know if your effort is reaping results? Across all the types of enterprises in social change, movement organizers are often seen as the polar opposite of straightforward service providers such as soup kitchens. It might be hard to quantify the emotional benefit of getting a meal when you’re hungry, but it’s often enough for the people running the kitchen (or providing the funds) to know that those in need are being helped. The situation is far more complicated for the people organizing civic action, whether one as wide-ranging as Occupy Wall Street or as focused as the campaign against fracking. You can measure the number of people who show up at an event, but how can you measure the gradual shift in mindsets, greater levels of political awareness, and the strength of grassroots leadership? › Continue reading
CalFOR: using impact investing to build regional food systems
Written by Noah Flower on Monday, December 19th, 2011
Leave a comment -
Last week I joined a group of about 70 or 80 people for a day-long working session on the connections between two active hotspots of social innovation: impact investing and regional food systems. Called the California Financial Opportunities Roundtable (CalFOR), it was hosted by Glenda Humiston and her team at the California USDA’s Dept. of Rural Development. They want to know: How can we help match up impact investors with enterprises that are building regional food systems in California?
It was a day of doing, structured as an innovation session, but also proved instructive and inspiring in seeing the frontier of progress for the issue areas of both impact investing and regional food systems. Here are some highlights from the presentations and plenary conversation that I think would be of interest to any fellow watchers of those two fields: › Continue reading
Experiments with networks are leading the way in community change
Written by Blog Admin on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Diana Scearce and Noah Flower. (Also published on CausePlanet.)
Social networks are hardly news. Everyone participates in networks in our families, schools, neighborhoods and workplaces. For activists from Mahatma Gandhi to current Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street leaders, understanding networks, linking together citizens and harnessing the power of network connectivity have been central to creating social impact.
The reason to use the language of networks today is because there are now countless venues where citizens can connect with one another, nurture networks and create change for themselves and their communities. Many of these efforts were novel experiments just five to ten years ago. The crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi was piloted in 2007 and is now critical to relief efforts in crisis situations. Facebook has grown from zero users in 2004 to 800 million, or nearly one out of every nine people in the world. This story of an increasingly networked citizenry is also about face-to-face relationships. › Continue reading
Webinar: “Leadership for Networks Designed to Change Systems”
Written by Noah Flower on Thursday, November 3rd, 2011
Leave a comment -
WHEN: December 6th, 2011
WHERE: Hosted online by Leadership Learning Community – click here to register
For six years, the RE-AMP network—comprising 125 nonprofits and funders across eight states in the U.S.’s upper Midwest—has been focused on just one audacious goal: reducing regional global warming emissions 80 percent (from 2005 levels) by 2050. And it’s working. Much has been written about the power of collaborative networks and shared leadership to increase social impact. For nonprofits and funders that want to go deeper on the tactics of how to build an effective network—and what kind of unique leadership is needed within networks—it is useful to understand how RE-AMP has done it.
RE-AMP’s process was grounded in the tools of systems dynamics and multi-stakeholder facilitation. But RE-AMP combined these well-known “best practices” with network-centric “next practices”—including different leadership at different stages in the network’s evolution. During its two-month study of RE-AMP, Monitor Institute identified six key principles that RE-AMP members followed in building their network and described them for other social-sector leaders in a case study, available on the Monitor Institute website.
Join us to learn about those six principles—with a particular focus on network leadership—and for a conversation about how to build aligned action networks powerful enough to move the needle on major social challenges.
Speakers
Heather McLeod Grant – Author of the report and a senior consultant with Monitor Institute.
Rick Reed – Original funder of RE-AMP with the Garfield Foundation.
The top ten things we’ve learned about networks
Written by Gabriel Kasper on Monday, October 31st, 2011
Leave a comment -
The amount of knowledge and experience in attendance at last week’s Grantmakers’ Gathering on Networks was inspiring. So when Diana Scearce asked me to try to synthesize the learning at the end of the conference, I was at a bit of a loss. It didn’t make any sense to just stand up in front of the group and parrot the great things that all of the participants had been saying over the two days.
So I tapped my inner Francis Ford Coppola and decided to break out the video camera to make a short (but obviously masterful) video about the “Top 10 Things We’ve Learned about Networks,” using conference participants—the “people formerly known as the audience”—as the stars.
(You can also watch it on YouTube.)
Close the triangle
Written by Guest author on Monday, October 24th, 2011
3 Comments -
By Scott Bechtler-Levin, Co-Founder and President of IdeaEncore Network, an online resource sharing platform that builds networks to disseminate and curate nonprofit tools/templates.
After spending a couple days with nearly 150 smart, network weavers at the GEO/ Monitor Institute “Growing Social Impact in a Networked World” conference, I am reminded of one of my favorite quotations:
“The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know…” (Socrates, according to Plato)
One of many ‘ah-has’ came early during the well facilitated conference. It was just an off-hand comment from June Holley that the basic building block of network weaving is the “closing of triangles.” › Continue reading
The power of curation
Written by Guest author on Monday, October 24th, 2011
1 Comment -
By Paula Goldman (@pdgoldman) is Director at Omidyar Network and an expert on making unorthodox ideas mainstream.
The wisdom of crowds, the insanity of crowds.
Mention the word “network” to most people and their reactions tend to sway between these two polar extremes. It’s either “crowdsourcing is the answer to everything” –or it’s a complaint that social networks like Facebook and Twitter are just “too full of chatter.”
If I have one takeaway from the GEO/Monitor Group conference on Networks earlier this week, it’s about how crucial the curator is in determining the difference between a successful network and one that simply makes lots of noise. › Continue reading
Evaluating networks and their effectiveness
Written by Guest author on Monday, October 24th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Tom Kelly, the Associate Director for Evaluation at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore, Maryland.
Lists. I am a list maker. To do. To followup. To call. And at a conference like Growing Social Impact in a Networked World, I made several lists–in my notebook, on my iPad, emails to myself, and on those very cool hexagonal Post-its. I will work through all of them over the next week or so but the list that will keep growing is the one of insights and new ideas I gained from hearing fellow participants share their knowledge, experiences, and tools.
I was very fortunate to be a part of the early Network of Network Funders community of practice. And it was amazing to be at this meeting and see and connect with real examples of foundations struggling and succeeding with networks in ways that were just notions (yes, hunches) a few years ago. › Continue reading
The new and the unknown
Written by Guest author on Monday, October 24th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Kate Wing, a program officer in the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Marine Conversation Initiative.
We’ve all been in a meeting where someone new to the field sits down at the table and says, “Wow – why don’t you all do it this way? Haven’t you ever thought of this?” about a topic where yes, the rest of us in the room have been thinking about this for a long, long time. Maybe we have our own special name for it, our insider’s jargon, and the newcomer just hasn’t learned the code yet. Or maybe it’s an idea that’s been tried before and failed. The old timers may respond wearily that this ‘new’ idea isn’t really new at all, it’s just unknown to the freshman. Where, they wonder, are the really ‘new’ ideas – brilliantly original concepts or things that have never before existed and will change the world the second they come into being? That’s the kind of ‘new’ funders like to fund. › Continue reading
Relationship building as a measure of impact
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By John Esterle, the Executive Director of The Whitman Institute
One of the themes raised up as the GEO/Monitor Institute conference came to an end was the importance of trust and relationship building in networks. Indeed, that was my theme for the day given that I facilitated a couple of morning conversations on that topic and then in the afternoon heard Ify Mora from the Barr Foundation talk about how they use social network mapping to capture the relationships that have been built through their innovative Fellows Program.
So, as I leave the conference I’m wondering how storytelling might be combined with social network mapping to make the broader case within philanthropy that relationship building — and the spaces and processes that support it — matter. It’s an important challenge to meet because I think that unless relationship building is broadly recognized as a key measure of impact, it will continue to be under-resourced (to the detriment of achieving the larger goals and outcomes people are working toward). › Continue reading
Network leadership: a few ingredients in the secret sauce
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
2 Comments -
By Kathy Reich, program officer for organizational effectiveness and philanthropy at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation
For a while I’ve been puzzling over what makes a good network leader. The traditional models of organizational leadership clearly don’t apply, but then, which models do? The Grantmakers Gathering on Networks provided a few a-ha moments for me about network leadership:
- The first leader or leaders in a network are like first responders at the scene of a crash—they’re in charge of making things happen until the structures get set up to fully address the situation. No one tells them to take on this role—they do it because they see the need, or the crisis, or (best yet) the opportunity. (With apologies to the woman in Rafael Lopez’s network leadership discussion group, who offered this great analogy and whose name I didn’t catch!)
- From Leslye Louie of Encore Fellowships (http://www.encore.org/fellowships), network leaders “Seed, then cede.” They find other great leaders within the network, then step back and let them lead.
- › Continue reading
Shifting our role in the hub
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Annie Hernandez, The Lumpkin Family Foundation (goodWORKSconnect.org)
The day I heard about the concept for this gathering of grant makers I knew I had to be involved. As a member of the planning committee, I became even more geeked out about this intimate, interactive learning opportunity. It totally lived up to and exceeded my expectations.
In May of 2008 when I joined The Lumpkin Family Foundation I was given the challenge to figure out how to develop a network to support the nonprofit capacity building work of The Foundation in downstate Illinois. After reading the book The Spider and the Starfish, the Lumpkjn family had been inspired to not follow the recommended model of endowing a nonprofit center at the local university.
Accepting this challenge, I entered the network weaver role with intermediary partners › Continue reading
Power and control
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Marie Sauter, a Program Officer with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Pacific Northwest Initiative.
Among many insights gleaned from this week’s conference on Growing Social Impact in a Networked World, one theme keeps recurring for me: the importance of grantmakers sharing power and control within broadly construed networks of collaborators in the quest for social change.
During Domestic Violence (DV) Awareness Month, I’ve been reflecting on how concepts of power and control have shaped the dialog in the DV field. For nearly three decades, the “power and control wheel” has been the standard tool within the DV victim services field to describe the most common tactics used to control and abuse victims.
The power and control exerted by grantmakers are certainly not analogous to these abusive behaviors in most respects. But naming a behavior is an important step toward changing it – and many thought leaders at the conference have commented on power and control: › Continue reading
Networks are beautiful
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Stephanie McAuliffe, director of human resources and organizational effectiveness at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Bob Agres Executive Director of Hawai’i Alliance for Community Based Economic Development said that network weaving is the humility to discover the unique gift of each person you encounter and to connect it with a need. That’s beautiful. I heard several people at the Gran maker’s Gathering on Networks say that networks are beautiful. I find beauty in the trust that allows network ties to strengthen and in the visual representation of networks.
It is fun to join 150 people sorting through what is new about networks after eons of collective activity. Robin Katcher from Management Assistance Group and Sartita Gupta from Jobs with Justice resolved oneold/new conundrum by using the phrase “movement networks”. They then stunningly laid out their disciplined approach to building those networks. The Jobs for Justice movement seems to be benefiting from trust developed between participants in a leadership program who chose to work together afterwards, and the trust Sartita gives Robin as her networks coach. › Continue reading
Day two: focus on the how to
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
While we continue to grapple with some key questions around supporting, investing in and growing networks, on day two of the conference we got a bit more down and dirty with practical matters like “how to”.
We started the morning by reflecting in small groups on emerging insight and strategies. My favorite insight from this session was the comment that sometimes it is as simple as having conversations. Though we might not have the whole networked world figured out, that if we just begin by having intentional conversations, getting out from behind our desks and take small steps to have conversations, listen and learn from people. Other ideas coming out of this included the need for flexible funding (e.g. an innovation funds), creating new incentive for change, and creating a community of practice (hey, isn’t that what we are?) › Continue reading
Turning waste into opportunity
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Sande Smith, Director of Communications of the Women’s Foundation of California
During the first day of the Growing Social Impact in a Networked World conference, I had plenty of opportunities to have my mind blown. I wasn’t the only one. I heard my colleagues asking questions about the changes that would have to happen in their organizations for them to be able to truly embrace a new way of being – a way that embraced network philosophy.
As my own mind began to reconstruct meaning, I found myself thinking about two presentations in tandem. Lisa Gansky’s presentation on The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing and the joint presentation from Bill Traynor and Audrey Jordan about Lawrence CommunityWorks, a project in Lawrence, Massachusetts that is rebuilding a profoundly shredded civic infrastructure.
The common denominator? How networks allow us to reclaim waste. › Continue reading
How do funders help established organizations develop a network mindset?
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Adene Sacks, a Senior Program Officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, which focuses on the Jewish education of youth and young adults based in San Francisco.
As the GEO gathering comes to a close, funders are spending their morning on the practical consideration of how adopting a network mindset will change our day to day work. One of the most interesting discussions I participated in this morning focused on what networks mean for those established field organizations whose names are often synonymous with the work we do.
Monitor Group senior consultant Heather McLeod Grant made the fascinating point that many of these established organizations began life as networks but adopted centralized organizational structures to bend to their funders or funding model. Organizations like the Junior League, the Sierra Club and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Life are all, at their core, decentralized networks. › Continue reading
Networks and social movements
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Mary Manuel, the Managing Director of the McKay Foundation, which funds progressive civic engagement infrastructure nationally and in the western states.
Movement: “A collection of persons or groups who come together around a common concern. Typically their mission is to bring about some type of societal change relative to their concern.” They are characterized by the following elements: collective intentional action, continuity of sustained action, outsider status, scope and scale, and formation of collective identity. *
In her article Unstill Waters: The Fluid Role of Networks in Social Movements, Robin Katcher describes the several of the roles that networks can play in social movements: › Continue reading
The elephant in the room: “funders” and power
Written by Guest author on Thursday, October 20th, 2011
Leave a comment -
By Eugene Eric Kim, co-founder of Groupaya, which helps groups work together more skillfully to create their futures.
Over the past two days at the GEO / Monitor Institute conference, “Growing social impact in a networked world,” I’ve heard several people ask some variation of the same question over and over again:
What is the role of the funder in all of this?
This question has been bugging me, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. During Mary Manuel’s session on movement and networks, it came to me. There’s an elephant in the room here, a word that I haven’t heard anyone use. That word is “power.” › Continue reading
