Because of President Obama’s and the federal government’s imprint on this initiative, I have often wondered where the funds would be awarded and subsequently distributed, and how far of a reach they would have on a national level. Does geography matter in this case? It may be a while before we can truly tell, but in the interim, I have constructed a map using Google Maps that lists the donors providing matching funds, as well as the eleven intermediary groups who will further disperse funds to subgrantees. I will be working to update the map to also reflect the subgrantees that receive funds. It is my intent to collect as much data as possible through the map and throughout the duration of the Social Innovation Fund to see the extent of the Fund’s impact across the nation.

View Larger Map

So, back to my original question: does geography matter? A brief look at that map will show you a couple of interesting things:

• Four of the five major matching donors are located in California; three of them are based in Silicon Valley (two involve the founder and first president of eBay), and one in Los Angeles. The other major donor is based in New York City.
• All but two of the intermediary organizations are located east of the Mississippi River: Three organizations in New York City, two in Washington, D.C., two in the greater Boston area, one in Louisville, Kentucky, and one in Cincinnati, Ohio. REDF of San Francisco was the only West Coast grantee, and though the Missouri Foundation for Health in St. Louis is technically located west of the Mississippi, it is still geographically closer to all of the grantees in the East.

These are just some basic observations. Perhaps geography doesn’t matter, and this is only an interesting, if maybe coincidental, markup of the locales of donors and grantees. But, we won’t know for sure for a while. In any case, with the addition of subgrantees and future inceptions of the Social Innovation Fund, hopefully the map will diversify. I hope the map will eventually serve as a tool for those who wish to apply for grants in the future, as well. In any case, I appreciate your commentary and feedback here or on my personal website for how the map can be improved.

For more information and different points of view on the Social Innovation Fund and those serving as intermediary organizations, I highly suggest the following reads:

• “Analysis of Social Innovation Fund Results” at Adin Miller’s blog.
• “Social Innovation Fund Announces Grantees” at Sean Stannard-Stockton’s Tactical Philanthropy Blog
• “Congratulations to the Social Innovation Fund’s inaugural grantees!” at the Public Innovator’s Blog
• “Federal Government Awards $50-Million in First Set of Innovation Grants by Debra E. Blum at the Chronicle of Philanthropy
• “Wise Picks? Commentators Weigh In on the Social Innovation Fund Grants” by Nicole Wallace at the Chronicle of Philanthropy (with links to blog posts by Nathaniel Whittemore, Marcia Stepanek, and Sara Mead)
• And, of course, the Corporation for National and Community Service’s Press Release announcing the grants

Let’s face it, we all want to believe that our organizations, or we as individuals, have a high capacity to innovate (and for the sake of humanity, let’s hope we do,) but let me pose a rhetorical question here: is it safe to say that things we think are innovative sometimes aren’t? It’s been the go-to descriptor of products and services in business and marketing for years, and has expanded to various other niches such as organization innovation, ancillary innovation, and so on. For the past year, the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation and the Social Innovation Fund have been on the radar of just about anyone connected to, or having an interest in the third sector. Beyond this, it has attracted a renewed interest in the ways government works with nonprofit organizations and socially conscious businesses. And, thus, we’re enamored with innovation all over again.

My friend and colleague Jasmine McGinnis offered her take on the pros and cons of the Social Innovation Fund and concluded with this statement:

…I fear that without changing the process of awarding these funds to innovative nonprofits, the Social Innovation Fund risks falling into a trap of being just another organization that provides grants–and that my friends, is simply not that innovative after all.

She’s right. Doing something that another organization has done before–time and time again–is anything but innovative. Research on innovation has told us that in order for something to be innovative, it has to be novel, unprecedented, or even groundbreaking, as it were. We have yet to see this from the Office of Social Innovation, but some, including Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, believe it will be a “new paradigm for solving social problems.” Professor Christensen wrote last year that the “social sector in its current form…fails to foster, support, and scale innovation. Fundamental shifts need to occur in the structure of the social sector in order for systems of innovation to truly take hold.” Now, because I study innovation–specifically organizational environments that foster innovation–I am a fan of Professor Christensen and his work. We even share a few things in common. However, I take slight umbrage with the first part of his statement. The social sector has indeed fostered, supported, and depending on your perspective, scaled innovation. That’s not to say that the nonprofit sector hasn’t confronted a fair share of challenges, though as much as Christensen claims “innovation in the private sector has been the key to our nation’s longstanding economic prosperity,” I dare say current times aren’t prosperous enough for me to be too enthusiastic about this statement. We will all wait with great hope that the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation and the Social Innovation Fund provide the paradigmatic shifts Professor Christensen outlines.

Here is a list of three simple things I try to keep in mind when thinking of innovation and how we can put the accompanying minutiae in perspective:

1. We need to quit playing the “my sector is better” game. If you think about it long enough, you’ll realize that there are good components to any type of organization. Businesses, nonprofits, and yes, even government, all have the capacity to innovate. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently garnered some press when he claimed that nonprofits can’t change the world. There is marginal truth in that statement, but only as it applies to nonprofits whose mission it is to change the world. Most of them, however, are much more grounded in reality and recognize that they do better by focusing on specific areas within their realm of control. As for the other part, he’s quite wrong. Nonprofits have already changed the world in the way goods and services are delivered. They provide an alternative to commerce and government, and fill in gaps that those two sectors leave open. Zuckerberg believes that “building a company is the best way to change the world, because it’s the best way to align the interests of a lot of smart people…to build something that’s great and serves people.” There are plenty of smart people in the other sectors, too, Mark. Their interests are aligned, and they serve people, too. The takeaway here is that each sector is important in its own right, as since collaboration among organizations of differing sectors is common, we would do best to look for strengths within a given sector and how they match with others.
2. Innovation has a life cycle. This is pretty simple. As innovations become more diffuse over time, they evolve into standard practice (or even “best practices”…more on that in a second), and thus their saliency as an innovation diminishes. Or, in some cases, what was once an innovation in one respect, is taken over by something else even more innovative (in fact, you may want to look up Professor Christensen’s concept of disruptive innovation.) This, quite obviously, forces an organization to look to continually innovate, even if only to maintain legitimacy. What is innovative today won’t be innovative tomorrow, especially if you come up with something more innovative next week.
3. “Best practices” should be used carefully, and re-evaluated often. I am not necessarily against best practices, but I share a view espoused by Sandford Borins in one of his books: do not become beholden to them. An unwillingness to deviate from the comforts of best practices could diminish an organization’s capacity to innovate. The failure to evaluate on a constant basis perpetuates the stereotype that governments and nonprofits can’t sustain innovation. Governments and nonprofits can and often do sustain innovation. There’s a great book by Paul Light for those who might be curious as to how they innovate, called–wait for it–Sustaining Innovation.

Innovation may be a buzzword, but at least it’s one that keeps us talking and thinking.

NOTE: For those newly interested in social innovation, I would suggest a new book by Stephen Goldsmith called The Power of Social Innovation. I haven’t read it yet, but it quickly captured my interest and it’s on the top of my reading list. Goldsmith himself is a great example of a social innovator, so I look forward to reading it and discussing it with anyone else who reads it as well!

Like many of my colleagues, my interest in nonprofit studies and social entrepreneurship came about through various other channels. Upon graduating with a degree in journalism from Arizona State University, my intention was to go to law school. A close mentor of mine who was on the faculty of the School of Public Affairs at ASU suggested I look into getting an MPA first to boost my chances of getting into a good law school. For this and various other reasons, I followed this advice and after I completed my master’s I had more or less forgotten about law school and was intent on pursuing a PhD. While earning my MPA, I had the opportunity to work in some unique capacities such as directing all of the student events for the 2004 Presidential Debate at ASU. From there I worked as a graduate intern in the state and local government relations office at Salt River Project, one of Arizona’s largest electric utilities (and some might say, due to their intricate system of dams, the reason Phoenix is able to exist in it’s current state.) After that I worked as a contracted consultant for various organizations before I was hired as the Policy and Research Analyst at the Arizona Association of Counties (AACo), a 501(c)4 organization that represents Arizona’s 15 counties before the Arizona State Legislature. While I loved my time at AACo (and some days still wish I was there) I cut my time short in order to pursue my PhD in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at UGA.

Some might say I can’t make up my mind; I just like to think I’m interested in a lot of different things. When I arrived at Georgia, I had in tow a completely different set of intentions than I have now. While I am very interested in public management, I have also gained a keen interest in contracting, cross-sector collaboration, or partnership between organizations of differing sectors by any other name, which logically exposed me more to the nonprofit and commercial sector. And furthermore, it all made sense to me as nearly all of my previous professional work experience  involved collaborating with partners of a different sector. I have been fortunate enough to use some of these examples in my current research.

At this time, I am in the dissertation writing phase of my program, and I will go on the academic job market at some point this year. The topic of my dissertation is on the subject of organizational innovation and how managers of public and nonprofit organizations perceive and value innovation within their respective agencies given a set of environmental and managerial characteristics. I enjoyed presenting this work at conferences in 2009, but will be much more gratified by getting it into a bound book in 2010.

Other research I’m working on includes a project on service learning and volunteerism by students providing free tax services to the public, a comparative study on social enterprise and social innovation initiatives, and a study on accountability measures in cross-sector collaborations.

I look forward to writing on all of these things in the coming months, and also look forward to interesting and spirited dialogue with my colleagues here!

The theme for this year’s conference is Philanthropy in Communities: Finding Opportunity in Crisis. It is relevant and timely, and I am really excited to see the research that will be presented. I will be presenting two papers: the first is on managerial perceptions of innovation value in public and nonprofit organizations, and the second will be a case study of the now defunct Arizona 2-1-1 Online program. I’m also excited to be participating in a colloquium entitled “Does Real Action Happen Online?” I’m very eager to hear my colleagues’ response to what I view as a question of ever-increasing importance.

In addition to presenting my research, Lindsey McDougle and I will also be helping with the social media coverage of the conference. I’ll post a few updates on my blog and here at thirdsectornetwork.org. Also joining me in the social media coverage are:

So, even if you can’t join us in Cleveland, we hope you’ll join us online!

We are all in agreement that the world is rife with talk and activity of and within the third sector. Our interests are common, but each of us has managed to target something rather unique.

Photo courtesy of RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service, UT Austin

Nonprofit organizations, volunteerism, business associations, public charities, family foundations, art as investment, corporate social responsibility, generation X and Y in the nonprofit workplace, higher education, social enterprise…and the list of topics goes on and on. We are particularly concerned with what makes certain aspects of these topics “nonprofit,” “philanthropic,” or generally socially beneficial. Our common thread is our desire for the development of theory and practice in the third sector, and as our RGK mentor Peter Frumkin put it in his book On Being Nonprofit, the “structural features [that] give these entities a set of unique advantages that position them to perform important societal functions neither government nor the market is able to match.”

However, recent structural changes within some organizations have challenged that ideal…but odds are, one of us is interested in those changes, and we’ll eventually end up discussing it at some point.

We look forward to providing what we hope will be insightful commentary, and we invite you to take part in the discussion.