strategies to achieve social impact

Peter YorkSenior Vice President & Director

Understanding the Sustainability FormulaUnderstanding the Sustainability Formula

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Agenda

1. The Organizational Effectiveness Framework

2. Lifecycle discussion

3. Study Findings

4. Q&A

5. Leadership Discussion

6. Adaptability Discussion

Defining Organizational Effectiveness:Defining Organizational Effectiveness:

The Four Core Capacity ModelThe Four Core Capacity Model

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The Four Core Capacities Model

The ability of all organizational leaders to create & sustain the vision, inspire, model, prioritize, make decisions, provide direction, & innovate, all in an effort to achieve the organizational mission.

Leadership Capacity

The ability of a nonprofit organization to monitor, assess, and respond to internal and external changes.

Adaptive Capacity

The ability of a nonprofit organization to ensure the effective and efficient use of organizational resources.

Management Capacity

The ability of a nonprofit organization to implement all of the key organizational and programmatic functions.

Technical Capacity

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Core Capacities Model

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Organizational Lifecycle

Infrastructure DevelopmentInfrastructure Development

Core Program DevelopmentCore Program Development

ImpactExpansion

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Organizational Lifecycle

• Core Program Development• Leading, managing, learning about, adapting and resourcing

an organization’s core programs

• Infrastructure Development• Leading, managing, learning about, adapting and resourcing

an organization’s operations and infrastructure to take the core programs to scale

• Impact Expansion• Leading, managing, learning about, adapting and resourcing

the efforts to create mission- and vision-centered community change that the core programs cannot accomplish on their own

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Lifecycle Stage Discussion

• What milestones would indicate that a school has succeeded with respect to its core program capacities?

• What milestones would indicate that a school has succeeded with respect to having the infrastructure to effectively serve more students and families?

• What milestones would indicate that a school succeeded with respect to expanding its community impact beyond what it can do inside the school?

Sustainability FindingsSustainability Findings

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The Challenge of Defining Sustainability

• Financing• Mission progress• Effectiveness/Impact

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CCAT Dataset

• CCAT has been administered to 2000+ organizations

• Confidential, anonymous survey of all staff Leaders and 1-3 board members

• Measures Core Capacities – Adaptive, Leadership, Management, and Technical – and places organizations along the lifecycle continuum

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ORGANIZATIONAL RESOURCE SUSTAINABILITY OF CCAT ORGANIZATIONS

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The Sustainability Formula

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Internal LeadershipApplying a mission-centered, focused, and inclusive approach to making decisions, as well as inspiring and motivating people to act on them

Fundraising SkillsDeveloping resources necessary for efficient operations, including management of donor relations

Program StaffingMaking staffing changes as needed to increase and improve programs and service delivery

EmpoweringPromoting proactivity, learning, and a belief in the value and ability of staff and client

Leader VisionFormulating a clear vision and motivating others to pursue it

The Sustainability Ingredients:The Sub-Capacities that Matter

Effective Leadership

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There’s More to Leadership…

• Advancing effective communication of mission and vision to internal and external stakeholders

• Engaging internal and external stakeholders in planning

• Taking decisive action when faced with challenges

• Making decisions anchored in cost-effectiveness

• Demanding accountability that includes demonstrated success with those being served/targeted

Only one in four nonprofit organizations are well led…

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Leadership Accountability Matters

Four domains of leadership accountability:

1. Financial leadership• Finance• Fundraising

2. Programmatic leadership• Cost-efficiency vs. cost-effectiveness

3. Operational leadership

4. Community leadership

AdaptabilityIt’s About Relationships & Learning

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There’s More to Adaptability…

Financial Adaptability (24%):

•Influencing leaders and stakeholders to believe in, invest in and gather resources for the organization

•Developing long-term relationships with community leaders and institutional grantmakers

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The Key to Leading Is Learning

Only one in four nonprofit organizations are effective learners…

The following set of organizational learning behaviors are significantly and singly the biggest predictor of organizational leadership:

•Creating sophisticated financial, operational, programmatic and environmental data-gathering and learning processes

•Spending time leveraging evaluation data for making meaning, decision making and planning, storytelling, not primarily for accountability or validation

•Infusing learning into ALL planning, anchored in program success

•Taking immediate and decisive action, particularly at a human resource level, as indicated by evaluation findings

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Learning: What It Is & Isn’t Learning: What It Is & Isn’t

Learning Is Not…• Evaluating• Assessing• Managing Knowledge

Learning Is…• Making Meaning • Explaining• Challenging and Changing Assumptions

The Prerequisite for Leading is Learning!

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Or, a method for finding out what happened, how & why…

A Field Recognized Definition for Evaluation

“The systematic collection of information about the activities, characteristics and outcomes of program use by specific people

to reduce uncertainties, improve effectiveness and make decisions with regard to what those programs are doing and affecting.”

Michael Quinn Patton“Evaluation Essentials for Small Private Foundations”

…through what intentional learning process?…

Effective Program CapacityAn Issue of Management

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There’s More to Program Capacity…

Only 14% of all CCAT organizations scored well on program capacity. So, what distinguished the best from the rest?

•Effective “program staff” recruiting, hiring and firing practices•Infrastructure growth to match program growth•Continuously improving program delivery skills, tools and practices•Continuously improving program management tools, processes, systems and practices•Facilities

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Top Ten Recommendations for Achieving Sustainability:

1. Unpack success metrics for programs, operations and community leadership

2. Construct cost-effectiveness measures

3. Train board on vision, mission, and success measures

4. Set resource generation goals for individual staff and board leaders

5. Engage in learning with funders/donors

6. Assess and address finances and business model

7. Carve out time for many “learning meetings” around programs, operations, and community engagement efforts

8. Formally and intentionally gather program, operational, and community data

9. Improve program management practices, particularly quality assurance

10. Develop program delivery performance metrics

Questions, Answers & Dialogue

BreakBreak

Digging Deeper Into Leading and Digging Deeper Into Leading and LearningLearning

Leading

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Strengthening Leadership

1. Strengthen organizational learning

2. Strengthen organizational planning

3. “Unpack” cost-effectiveness to strengthen accountability

4. Peer exchange/learning

5. Executive coaching

6. Develop staff and board leader assessment tools and processes

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A Refined Leadership Tool

Strategic Leadership

Strategy Management

Adapting

Mission

Resources StrategiesShort-term Outcomes

Long-term Outcomes

Learning

Impact

Vision

Strategic Planning FrameworkStrategic Planning Framework

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Guiding Questions

• What do some of the “positive deviant” school leaders you know do that others do not?

• What resources do schools need in order to enhance their leadership?

Learning

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NO…and Nike is empowered to learn NO…and Nike is empowered to learn because they don’t!because they don’t!

The Core of the ProblemThe Core of the Problem: : The Nonprofit Sector’s Lack of Investor-to-The Nonprofit Sector’s Lack of Investor-to-Investee Outcome Synchronicity Investee Outcome Synchronicity

Do Investors Hold Nike Accountable for Improving the Social Status of the Wearer?

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Why Aren’t Nonprofits Learning

• There’s no outcome synchronicity between the investor and investee

• Effectiveness and accountability must be viewed through the measurement of proximate effect

• Proximate cause-and-effect is the only way!

• Learning requires understanding the cause, not the effect

• There’s no Research & Development for programs/initiatives

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Program Learning Behaviors that Facilitate Sustainability & Growth

TCC found six program learning behaviors that explain why some organizations grow at or greater than the rate of inflation, while others do not. Specifically, organizations are significantly more likely to grow faster if they engage in the following behaviors:

1.NOT evaluating to decide if a whole program works or has value, but instead, learning which specific program design elements worked and for whom.

2.Using data gathered directly from program recipients to refine and improve programs, rather than data provided by the program implementers.

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3. Engaging key leaders and staff in making meaning from client-derived data.

4. Developing program management practices and tools that prioritize the consistent delivery of “what works” over non-programmatic human resource management needs.

5. Determining appropriate client outcome measures by listening to “on-the-ground,” individual, success stories, rather than population-wide social impact stories, desired by those not living with the problem or condition (i.e., funders).

6. Design leaders assessing the resource feasibility of program improvements/fixes/re-designs.

Learning Behaviors that Facilitate Sustainability & Growth (cont.)

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Program Learning Facilitates Sustainable Growth

41% of nonprofits grow faster than the rate of inflation over a three year period

Nonprofits where leaders engage in learning behaviors are 2.5 times more likely to grow faster than the rate of inflation.

Average Annual Growth Rate (Mean Per Year, Based on Three Consecutive Years of Data)

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Strengthening Learning

Leaders Need to Conduct the Following:

•Programmatic/strategy-centered data-gathering to identify: what works; for whom; under what conditions; and with what resources.

•Organizational and programmatic leaders analyzing program data in order to strengthen, repair, refine and/or re-design program elements/components/practices, in order to maximize achievable success.

•Acting on lessons by changing program and organizational policies, operations, procedures and processes

•Monitoring program quality/best practices

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Guiding Questions

• How do “positive deviant” school leaders engage in program learning?

• What resources do school leaders need in order to enhance their program learning?

The EndThe End