I’ve been leading an initiative that’s now going into its sixth year and have thus been thinking about some of our learning around long term change. Long term change for organizations and society does not come quickly and takes a lot of on-going commitment through the inevitable ups and downs. Here are some of things we’ve been learning as we head into our sixth year:
Leadership commitment – Organizations and networks that have been most successful with making significant changes, and most importantly increasing their impact due to these changes, understand that it is, and plan for it to be,
We’re at an interesting juncture in the history of civil society / social sector organizations. Many innovative organizations that started 20-25 years ago have now reached a certain maturity, with lessons learned to share.
This interview with Mari Kuraishi of GlobalGiving and Dennis Whittle of Feedback Labs, the co-founders of GlobalGiving, sharing some of the stories about its founding and their learning in the years since its creation, is one of these interesting reflections. It’s well worth a listen! Some of my take-aways:
The concept of “innovation” in the social sector was new 20 years ago when they were asked
The Civil Society and Testing Change project (CS&TC) is an initiative to develop and test new ways for civil society organizations and their partners to operate. The project’s model is for global, multi-stakeholder working groups to focus on areas where operational changes may have the most effect on impact, and to have a lead group test these ideas and theories over a multi-year period. An introductory blog post can be found here. Our target group are NGOs and civil society organizations that are 10+ years old, interested in considering operational changes to remain effective and relevant, and with …
I recently facilitated a session for social sector practitioners on global trends for organizations engaging internationally, and some ideas for how they could incorporate them into their operations or programs in creative ways. Here is some of what we discussed:
Tying to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – organizations can use the SDGs as a gateway to encourage their members to think and act more globally
Some examples:
* The International Coach Federation through its foundation has an initiative to ‘advance social progress through coaching‘ by supporting organizations working on the SDGs.
* The International Federation of Library Associations has …
A couple of years ago Bonnie wrote a series of posts on how our concept of networking has changed in a more globally connected world. We are continuing to see an increase in global networking and in the creation and expansion of new networks. Two new efforts provide interesting examples of how some of these new networks are being created and some of what is being learned.
Civil Society and Testing Change
The Civil Society and Testing Change project is a collaborative effort among a network of organizations and individuals interested in …
