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Fifteen years ago, I started doing research on the challenges of taking nonprofits to scale. The topic was still under the radar both in the university and out in the field. My focus was growth through replication, and when I presented papers and case studies, nonprofit audiences often dismissed the ideas as “too corporate.” As one audience member said to me: “We are not McDonald’s. You cannot use a cookie cutter to replicate the work we do.” At almost exactly the same time, however, social entrepreneurs began developing new models for expanding organizations through replication in new locations. Their organizations grew to become nationally recognized nonprofits such as Teach for America and Habitat for Humanity, as well as internationally known nongovernmental organizations such as Bangladesh-based BRAC. These organizations have found that scaling is anything but an exercise in cutting cookies, as it requires not only fidelity to core processes and programs, but also constant adjustments to local needs and resources. Today, there may be no idea with greater currency in the social sector than “scaling what works.” In its first year, the Obama administration announced several multimillion- or billion-dollar programs that focus on expanding proven-effective programs to new locations. As…

Earthquakes, hurricanes, and other disasters are terrible—pain and suffering abounding, lives and homes destroyed. Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant new book documents and explains the other side of disasters: how they often sweep away the barriers that isolate people from each other under normal times, inspiring “the better angels of our nature” that President Abraham Lincoln evoked in our nation’s darkest days. Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell investigates the social consequences of five major disasters: the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; the gargantuan 1917 explosion in Halifax, Nova Scotia; the devastating 1985 Mexico City quake; Lower Manhattan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks; and Hurricane Katrina’s 2005 deluge of New Orleans. Each case study provides a thick description of what surviving residents themselves understand to be a temporary utopian society naturally arising in the midst of casualties, disorientation, homelessness, and great loss of all kinds. Solnit tells many poignant stories of altruism, courage, and compassionate social action. In 1906 San Francisco, for example, we meet Amelia Hoshouser, a middle-class woman who fed thousands of people in her makeshift “Mizpah Café,” while throughout the city soup kitchens, shelters, and relief projects emerged from collective human spirit as if spontaneously from the ruins. The quake…

Nineteen-year-old Stephen Mensah has a junior high education, but no real home or assets. He had lost any hope of attaining the additional education that he wanted until six months ago, when he became a Fan Milk microfranchisee. Fan Milk is Ghana’s leading producer and distributor of dairy products. Scandinavian investors founded the company in 1960 to produce milk for Ghanaians, many of whom suffered from protein deficiencies. Today, Fan Milk is listed on the Ghana stock exchange and employs some 8,500 microfranchisees, who sell milk, ice cream, yogurt, and popsicles from atop their carts or bicycles throughout Ghana. Fan Milk has sister companies in Nigeria, Togo, and the Ivory Coast, but the business remains most developed in Ghana. Now, almost every morning, Mensah wakes up on a thin mat at the White Park Fan Milk Depot in Accra, Ghana. He cleans his cart and stocks his cooler with the variety of products he thinks will sell best. He then heads into the sun and weaves through crowded streets to deliver dairy products to Accra’s residents. Each week, top sellers earn roughly 80 Ghana cedis ($53) in profit. Partly because Fan Milk requires franchisees to save about 10 percent of…

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) has been in existence for more than 40 years, with an impressive track record of policy victories and influential corporate partnerships. In 2009, the organization began a new experiment. Under the leadership of Dave Witzel, a veteran social media strategist, EDF launched a network called the Innovation Exchange, focused on bringing together companies interested in sharing ideas and approaches to creating environmentally sustainable businesses. Since it started, the Innovation Exchange has used networks and social media tools as core elements of its strategy. For example, the organization made its internal strategy documents available to everyone by sharing them on a Google Group, and then solicited public feedback. In one instance, the Innovation Exchange posted a draft version of its elevator pitch on its blog; a university professor picked it up and shared it with her students, who proceeded to edit the statement. The result was a better pitch that the Innovation Exchange now uses.1 The Innovation Exchange’s efforts are at the forefront of a new way of working that is now being tested throughout EDF. At last year’s all-staff retreat, 350 EDF employees—including lawyers, scientists, and economists—participated in two days of intensive social media training and…

Si Kahn’s latest book, Creative Community Organizing, is a reflective collection of stories and songs from Kahn’s long and venerable history as a community organizer. He tells riveting tales from his experiences as an organizer with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Arkansas in the 1960s, with the Brookside Strike and other campaigns fighting for the rights of mine workers in Kentucky and mill workers throughout the South in the 1970s and 1980s, and, finally, with Grassroots Leadership, an organization he founded that fights for the abolition of for-profit prisons and an end to immigrant family detention. Kahn’s objective in writing the book is to help interested readers answer a question he often hears: “So do you think I should become an organizer?” By writing the book, he hopes to provide an inspirational, but honest picture of what it means to be an organizer so that idealists can make their own choices about whether this is the path for them. Like any good organizer, Kahn teaches through storytelling. His narrative voice is affable, inspirational, and humorous. The book is strongest when Kahn illustrates some of the complex ethical and strategic challenges organizers face through vivid examples from his own…

Nobody thought it would work. Padma Venkataraman, in New Delhi on business for the United Nations, wanted to do something more than just hand out rupees to the disfigured beggars with leprosy. She wanted to give them microloans to start their own businesses—something no bank or charity had ever attempted. Critics said the “untouchables” in India’s 700 leprosy colonies would not be able to exchange a lifetime of begging for work, let alone be able to repay loans. They also asked who would be willing to do business with leprosy patients in a country where people consider the disease to be a curse. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed leprosy an “eliminated health problem” in 2000 because its prevalence had dropped to less than one case per 10,000, an estimated 12 million people in India are still suffering from the disease. For them, poverty and social stigma block their access to the free drug therapies that can cure leprosy, which is caused by a bacterium and damages skin, nerves, the upper respiratory tract, and eyes. Following rejection by families and coworkers, many people with leprosy band together in colonies centered in five southern Indian states. That’s where Venkataraman, the…

Jehan Ratnatunga, a 26-yearold Australian, thinks the best strategy for underwriting water sanitation projects in the developing world is to launch a nonprofit toilet paper company called Who Gives a Crap. Silly? Perhaps. But the idea proved just intriguing enough to earn Ratnatunga a spot as one of 25 fellows in the first-ever Unreasonable Institute taking place this summer in Boulder, Colo. Some 284 applicants from 46 countries vied for the chance to take part in this new social enterprise incubator. They first had to earn their way—and demonstrate their entrepreneurship chops—by competing for sponsors in a social media marketplace. Ratnatunga’s venture was one of the first to get funded, thanks to 228 sponsors who contributed a total of $6,500 to kick-start his idea. Daniel Epstein, one of four founders of the Unreasonable Institute, says the program is intended to fill two critical gaps facing many young social entrepreneurs: mentoring and access to capital. High-profile mentors who have signed on to help this summer include Bob Pattillo, founder of Gray Ghost Ventures; Dennis Whittle, CEO of GlobalGiving; Kjerstin Erickson, founder of FORGE; and David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World. In August, at the close of the institute,…

As a first-generation immigrant, I’ve always said that it’s difficult to know Americans and not fall in love with them. I know this from personal experience. On my first day at Stanford University in September 1974, my freshman roommate gave her only blanket to a lost, drenched, and freezing foreign student. I still hold a very special place in my heart for her. Fast-forward almost 30 years, and my job as U.S. assistant secretary of state at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) was to bring about many happy introductions between Americans and people from all over the world. Through its prestigious Fulbright scholarships and other programs, ECA has facilitated training and exchanges for more than 300 current or former heads of state, 1,500 cabinet-level ministers, 50 Nobel laureates, and 1 million other community leaders. Although ECA’s annual budget of $520 million seems sizable, it turns into a trickle when divvied up between 165 countries. I decided to stretch our dollars by forming partnerships with the many private corporations that could potentially benefit from ECA’s programs. I thought my strategy was logical. But I quickly learned that just because something is logical doesn’t mean that a government bureaucracy…

On Jan. 12 at 4:30 a.m., James Eberhard was woken by a telephone call from a U.S. State Department representative with the news that a 7.0 magnitude earthquake had struck Haiti. “Can we turn up a text relief effort?” asked the representative. Eberhard called his colleagues at the Denver-based company Mobile Accord and its nonprofit division mGive. Eberhard is founder and chairman of both organizations, which work together to create cell phone text donation campaigns for charities. Within hours, Mobile Accord, mGive, and the American Red Cross had raised $170,000 for earthquake victims in Haiti. A flurry of text-giving promotions soon followed during the Super Bowl and Grammy Awards and in a public service announcement by first lady Michelle Obama. Appeals also spiraled through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. The results shattered records. Within 72 hours of the earthquake, donations from text messaging exceeded $8 million, according to CNN. By March 4, the Red Cross had raised a total of $50 million for victims of the Haiti earthquake, $32.5 million of which came from text giving. The Haiti earthquake marked a tipping point in the evolution of text giving. Cell phones are now ubiquitous in the United States,…

As any comic book reader knows, the citizens of Gotham City have a handy way to call for help. Just power up the Bat-Signal and Batman will swoop to the rescue. It turns out that superheroesin- training are just as ready to answer the help call in communities around the world. A new online game called Evoke, promising “a crash course in changing the world,” had attracted more than 13,500 players from 130 countries soon after it launched in March. Their mission during the 10-week game: Learn about social innovation strategies to solve global crises— and then put their own good ideas into action close to home. Evoke is intended to leverage the enormous popularity of online gaming to engage a broader audience. The game grew out of conversations between African university leaders and the World Bank Institute, said Robert Hawkins, senior education specialist for the institute. Educators in Africa are eager “to prepare their young people to think more creatively about solutions to issues in their own communities,” Hawkins says. That’s challenging in an educational system that “emphasizes rote learning over innovative thinking.” Enter Jane McGonigal, award-winning alternate reality game designer and director of game research at the Institute…

Joanne Weiss’ career demonstrates that social innovations are often created and driven by people who reach across the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors. Weiss started her career by co-founding and leading several for-profit companies, most of which were in the educational field. She then joined the nonprofit NewSchools Venture Fund, which for the last 12 years has funded nonprofit and for-profit educational reform organizations. And last year Weiss was recruited to be the director of the U.S. Department of Education’s $4.3 billion Race to the Top Fund. The Race to the Top Fund is not a typical government program. Instead, it borrows from the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, most notably the idea that competition can stimulate change. Rather than getting grants based simply on how many children are in school or how many schools are failing, states must compete for money by putting forward innovative programs that improve their educational system. Some states will get money and others will not, based on performance and outcomes. In this interview with Stanford Social Innovation Review Managing Editor Eric Nee, Weiss explains what the department hopes to accomplish with Race to the Top, what criteria will be used to judge the states’ proposals,…

Springfield, Mass., the birthplace of basketball, was once a thriving manufacturing center producing everything from Indian motorcycles to Rolls- Royce sedans. But the wave of factory closings that began sweeping the United States in the later part of the 20th century has hit the city hard, and no one has suffered more than Springfield’s children. In 2001, at least one-third of those younger than age 9 were living in poverty, 20 percent of babies were born to teenage mothers, and students regularly ranked among the lowest academic achievers in the state. For the staff and board of the Irene E. & George A. Davis Foundation, a local grantmaker established “to improve the lives of individuals and families” in Springfield and surrounding Hampden County, the persistence of child poverty and related problems prompted a reassessment of their strategies and mission. “There was a feeling on our part that we were giving out all this money, and so what?” said Mary Walachy, executive director of the Davis Foundation. At the same time that the grantmaker was reevaluating its role in the community, national researchers were producing compelling data on brain development and the payoffs that come from investments in early childhood education.…

Over the past decade or so, the term social entrepreneur has become a fashionable way of describing individuals and organizations that, in their attempts at large-scale change, blur the traditional boundaries between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. Given the ceaseless appearance of innovations and new institutional forms, we should welcome a new term that allows us to think systematically about a still-emergent field. One danger, however, is that the use of the modifier social will diminish the contributions of regular entrepreneurs—that is, people who create new companies and then grow them to scale. In the course of doing business as usual, these regular entrepreneurs create thousands of jobs, improve the quality of goods and services available to consumers, and ultimately raise standards of living. Indeed, the intertwined histories of business and health in the United States suggests that all entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship. The pantheon of model social entrepreneurs should thus include names such as railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, meatpacking magnate Gustavus Swift, and software tycoon Bill Gates. THE STEW OF POVERTY People tend to think that advancements in health care, for example, are the achievements of either government or the social sector. More recently, they note how the work…

In 2000, while working for a national refugee resettlement organization in New York City, Jane Leu decided that the federally funded system of matching immigrants to careers was a failure. “We didn’t have an incentive to focus on [the] quality” of the placements, she remembers of her six years of putting highly educated, English-speaking foreigners in low-skill jobs. “It was just about quantity.” So with no funding, a borrowed laptop computer, and her kitchen table as a makeshift office, Leu started the nonprofit Upwardly Global, whose goal is to help highly skilled immigrants reclaim their careers in the United States. The beginning was rocky. With no funds and no employees, Leu was limited to one-on-one sessions with job seekers, reaching out to foundations for grants, and making employers aware of a hidden talent pool: 1.3 million bilingual workers with degrees and professional experience in every possible white-collar profession. Successes trickled in. By 2002, the organization received its first grant and hired its first paid employee. In 2003, Leu’s work was recognized by the Draper Richards Foundation when she became its first fellow, earning a $300,000 grant. Today, Upwardly Global employs 29 people to serve some 600 job seekers a year.…

In the midst of the worldwide financial crisis, funders are increasingly suggesting that nonprofits consider merging—that is, fusing their boards, management, and legal entities to form a single organization. In 2009 alone, my consulting firm delivered nearly 60 presentations and workshops on mergers and other partnership forms to more than 6,000 participants—double the previous year’s tally. Similarly, our strategic restructuring practice (which handles mergers and other partnerships) grew 60 percent last year, during the worst part of the recession. Now 2010 is upon us, and the urge to merge shows no signs of abating. Underlying this trend are two core beliefs: The nonprofit sector has too many organizations, and most nonprofits are too small and are therefore inefficient. Mergers, the thinking goes, would reduce the intense competition for scarce funding. Consolidating organizations would also introduce economies of scale to the sector, increasing efficiency and improving effectiveness. Yet a closer look at the nonprofit sector suggests that this thinking is too simplistic. Mergers are risky business. They sometimes fail, although not so frequently as in the corporate world. They usually cost more than anticipated. They sometimes create more problems than they solve. And the problems that they allegedly solve—too many nonprofits,…

Rubicon Bakery is deservedly famous for its 12-layer chocolate cakes and other rich confections that generate some $2 million annually in sales. Each sale helps underwrite job training and other programs for poor and disenfranchised people. This social enterprise works wonders for the 4,000 people in the San Francisco area that Rubicon Programs reaches annually with its bakery and landscaping businesses, along with its housing, mental health, legal aid, and other social services. But for those who are down and out in most other communities, chances are slim of finding the same kind of help. After 23 years at the helm of Rubicon Programs, Rick Aubry has decided it’s time to take “the next big leap forward,” and design social enterprises that can succeed on a national scale. “Most social enterprises have remained local or at best regional,” he says. Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army are rare exceptions, both using a thrift shop model that’s more than a century old. Figuring out what those national solutions might look like is the task facing Rubicon National Social Innovations. The best fit for scaling, Aubry predicts, will be a sustainable idea that fills a widely occurring need. Similar to for-profit franchises,…

Her suit is Prada. Her hair is neatly coiffed. Her handshake is firm and her eye contact steady. Her body leans forward ever so slightly to show that she is interested, but not anxious. Her easy banter manages to convey her many achievements without seeming arrogant. Her replies arise after thoughtful pauses. Her compliments seem sincere. And her next job is quite likely to be the one you are offering, suggests a new meta-analysis of several dozen studies. Combined, the studies show that hiring managers are remarkably susceptible to a job candidate’s appearance, gestures, postures, flattery, and self-promotion. Alas, the study also finds that these interviewer-wooing tactics have more to do with whether a candidate gets the job than how well she performs at it. “Many executives and managers have too much confidence in their ability to read people,” says Murray Barrick, chair of the management department at Texas A&M University and the study’s lead author. “They don’t want to hear that self-presentation tactics are having this much impact on their hiring decisions.” “I also didn’t think that our effects would be this strong,” he adds. Barrick and colleagues’ study offers an antidote to the beguiling wiles of potential hires:…

On Wednesdays in Rwanda, just before sundown, the radios come to life. Farmers lay down their tools to gather under shade trees, fan clubs take their usual seats in the bars, and a hush settles over prison courtyards. Each week, an estimated 85 percent of radio listeners in Rwanda tune their radio dials to the soap opera Musekeweya (New Dawn). Using a Romeo and Juliet plot to symbolize Hutus and Tutsis, the program teaches listeners how to prevent ethnic violence, embrace reconciliation, and heal the wounds of the past. In 1994, radio-borne hate propaganda helped prompt a Hutuled genocide of 75 percent of the ethnic minority Tutsis. Within three months, the genocide wiped out 10 percent of the Rwandan population — some 750,000 victims. Now, Musekeweya is reclaiming the radio to help survivors live together again. “Musekeweya helped me calm down,” says Kennedy Munyangeyo, a 36-year-old filmmaker from Kigali who lost his two brothers, several uncles, and a sister to the genocide. “I used to think that we should react by hating the people who did the genocide, but after a year of listening to the show, I realize that if someone did a bad thing, the answer is not…

In the time it takes to update your Facebook page, you could be making the world a slightly better place. That’s the idea behind The Extraordinaries, a Web-based platform for microvolunteering that’s been generating plenty of buzz since its launch last year. The goal is to harness thousands of currently untapped hours by making volunteering fast, convenient, and bite-sized. While waiting for a bus or cooling your heels at the dentist’s office, you could be using your smart phone to tag photos for the Smithsonian, send a study tip to an at-risk student, or map your local parks. “We want volunteering to be as fun and ubiquitous as playing a game,” explains Sundeep Ahuja, cofounder and president of the San Francisco-based business. The Extraordinaries (www. beextra.org) was founded by a trio with deep experience in social media. Chief technology officer Ben Rigby pioneered the use of mobile phones for youth voter registration when he founded Mobile Voter. CEO Jacob Colker was one of the first to harness Facebook to organize political campaigns. Ahuja was a product manager at MySpace before helping to launch Kiva, the microphilanthropy site. Traditional community service “has been about carving out a Saturday afternoon or an…

In 1988, Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom’s famously conservative prime minister, approved a revolutionary reform: Allow secondary schools to shrug off local control and become autonomous, central government- funded entities. To convert into one of these so-called grant-maintained schools (GMs), a school had to secure the majority vote of its students’ parents. By 1997, some 900 of the United Kingdom’s 3,500 state-funded secondary schools had gone GM (the rough equivalent of a conversion charter school in the United States). Damon Clark’s father was the principal of a GM school. Two decades later, Clark is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Florida, where he has uncovered the first evidence that GM schools fare better than standard schools on national exams. “GMs increased the pass rate on their Grade 11 exams by about 5 percentage points,” from a 40 percent to a 45 percent pass rate, he says. He further finds that upturns emerged as early as two years after the GM conversion and persisted eight years later, at the end of his study. In both the United Kingdom and the United States, advocates of charter schools and their analogs contend that giving schools greater autonomy not only will…