When you think of the social causes, you likely think of the players as nonprofit organizations or government agencies. But, the reality is that for-profit businesses have been an important cog in the social cause economy for some time. Consider the following ways that businesses contribute to social causes: Businesses are an important channel to donors and volunteers, i.e. in … Read More
Can More Self-Interest Help In the Social Cause Economy?
Is the nonprofit sector becoming more selfish? In the hearts of the people working in the sector…not likely. But in the ways that groups and organizations are advancing their missions, there is growing evidence that more self-interest is good for the sector. The inspiration for the question originated from a recent article in Nonprofit Quarterly that distinguishes between nonprofits with a “doing … Read More
The 2020 Census as a Social Cause?
The idea of counting millions of people nationally as part of the 2020 census may not seem all that exciting, but this decade’s version will be far from boring, as politics will be a force and the results will be consequential in communities across the country. At first glance, the census appears to be simply a federal government effort with … Read More
Better Nonprofit Partnership & Collaboration
In our previous blog, we talked about the problem of organizational silos: groups of people within an organization working and making decisions without the proper input from other stakeholders. Silos also exist across organizations in communities and are a problem because they lead to missed opportunities to address complex community challenges including, poverty, inclusion, homelessness, addiction, workforce development, and others. Silos exist … Read More
Developing an Effective Nonprofit Communications Plan
Collaboration is an important theme in the Social Cause Economy, as the complexity of the problems in communities often requires a diverse set of people, organizations, and assets. Though it makes great sense to focus on cross-organizational teamwork, community efforts are more likely to fail if the participating organizations do not have their own collaborative culture. Silos are the enemy … Read More
5 Technologies for the Collective Impact Model & Framework
The concept of Collective Impact has been around for several years. In order to truly affect change for the good in a community, multiple service organizations and stakeholders, all of which have different focuses, must work together. The problem of hunger is not solved just by the local food bank. It is solved by the local school system with distribution, … Read More