PF Whiteboard

We’re creating a social innovation curriculum for BYU. Key take away, thus far? Creating a curriculum from scratch is both incredibly fun and incredibly hard work. Six huge whiteboards worth of scribbling, 3 books read, 10 other curricula reviewed, and countless hours worth of internet research/article reading/framework sourcing.

Right now I’m looking for great resources/reading/exercises on “root cause analysis”. Any and all leads would be gladly accepted!

Progress is happening, and we have a deadline (course will be launched in late August), but a lot more needs to be accomplished before then.

Maybe once it’s done we’ll make it available online somehow…

We shut down our web form last month. This was the page on our website where anyone could go to briefly tell us about their people, idea and impact. When we set it up it seemed like a great idea, where we felt like we could be entirely approachable, not ask for detailed proposals, and able to learn about new organisations that we would be a good funding fit for.

During the past year we’ve had about 100 organisations go to the page to tell us about their work. We’ve learned about many interesting and important models. However, we found we weren’t a good fit for any of them. We were spending lots of short periods of time figuring that out and then responding to people. They added up to a significant amount of time each week. And, even though we didn’t ask for much information from each org, each org still invested time in telling us their stories -with no significant results for them or us. It didn’t work.

As we talked about this we realised this time would be better spent going out and finding orgs that we do fit with, through channels that we *know* yield results. This method feels better too. We love technology and the way it connects people, but having conversations with real people, along with all the depth and dimension that comes with that, works better for us as we are very trust/relationship based in our approach. We know that our best matches come through referrals. Referrals from those who know us well and know an org well -enough to see a strong potential and mutual fit.

So, we’ve taken down our web form. And the time we were spending on fielding, researching and responding to web leads we are now spending on deliberately building relationships with those around us who can make recommendations to us (a lot of the time this is other funders). We’re not trying to be unapproachable or close our doors to new ideas and organisations. We just know that our ratio of time spent to fits found will improve by focusing our efforts on things that we know work. We’re going back to more of our ‘beating the pavement’ approach.

I’d love to hear from practitioners and funders on this. Practitioners, what’s your take on this? Have you seen other effective ways of funders remaining open to new conversations? Funders how have you navigated this issue? Did you come to different conclusions?

A group of BYU student leaders involved in building social innovation on campus have come up with a fabulously simple tool: Changemaker Maps.

They realised that every new student who came through the Ballard Centre’s doors (centre for social innovation on BYU’s campus), had to sit down and have the same conversation with a student leader or a staff member to get them oriented. They were essentially communicating the same information to many students again and again as new students tried to figure out where they could do to be involved, what social innovation classes they could take that would fit with their major, and what the possibilities were for them at the intersection of their field of learning and social innovation. So the student leaders created Changemaker Maps, which now sit in hard copy form at the entrance of the Ballard Centre, as well as online.

Each map is designed for students from a different discipline or college on campus (business, engineering, sociology, etc), includes a field overview, model in the field, listings of on-campus clubs and orgs to get involved with, as well as internships, resources and classes to explore.

Simple in design and content. Effective in helping orient many new students to come.

It’s not necessarily the most novel or groundbreaking idea, but absolutely useful in this and probably many other situations. We all know that the information most people need for any given task is already out there, but it’s breaking down the barrier to access, or creating more intuitive organisation of that information that makes all the difference to people actually getting that information they need.

We decided to try out Pinterest.

There’s so much ‘stuff’ that comes across our desks and inboxes that could be useful to someone, so we’ve been looking for a good way to share cool things we find and see. Enter Pinterest.

Most people use Pinterest to share food, interior design ideas, or clothing and styling they like. It’s a great way for a person to build a comprehensive picture of their personality, taste, and their own individual brand… Perhaps also for an organisation like the PF.

So what are we sharing? Well, we love insightful commentary and articles on SE and philanthropy, genius products for society, and great short films. So that’s what we’re pinning. As well as social innovation job postings, volunteer opportunities and a bunch of other stuff.

Like our dabbling with Twitter and other social media, there’s no big strategic plan here. It seems like a good, useful thing to do, so we’ll give it a try for a while and see if you like it and find it useful. And hopefully it’ll also be a good way for people to get to know us at the PF.

See you on Pinterest!

Hello!

For a few months we were pretty sure we were giving up on our blog. We didn’t think the time put in to writing posts produced enough value or usefulness. However, after a few conversations at the Opportunity Collaboration last month we’ve decided to get back on the wagon.

At the Opportunity Collaboration I led a dinner discussion on what makes an ‘ideal funder’. As you might imagine, we had lots of eager participants all ready to contribute to painting a picture of a great funder. There were grant seekers, grant makers, and philanthropy consultants at the table, drawing flowcharts, cartoons and writing lists. The discussion was broad and extensive (see word cloud above), but boiled down to 4 main points. So here, in the words of a group of thoughtful Opp Collab delegates are the top 4 characteristics of an ideal funding relationship:

- Trust
- Transparency
- Thoughtful flexibility
- Partnership

I’d love to hear specific stories and instances of funders demonstrating these characteristics. How does a funder demonstrate they trust you? In what way do you want funders to be transparent? Can you share examples of funders being thoughtfully flexible? What does a partnership with a funder look like?

Concrete examples will help us and other funders take list of nice, but abstract, words and figure out if and how we can put them in to action. This is about sharing best practices, not recognising specific people or organisations, so please keep your description general (no program officer/funder names).

Thanks, in advance of taking the time to type.

As you probably know, we are a small shop and both relatively new to foundation work. There are many advantages to this situation. There are a few downsides too.

One downside is that it’s harder to get regular feedback from different perspectives on how I’m doing as a developing foundation professional. So I want to attempt to crowd source my own annual review. I’m hoping this will provide feedback on a variety of the roles I find myself playing, from all different angles.

If we worked together, interacted or you’ve observed me working at a conference, event, etc during 2010, I’d like to hear from you. The only stipulation is that you provide at least one thing I should keep doing that you saw in 2010 and one thing you suggest I should work on/try in 2011. Please feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section, or if you’re more comfortable emailing them then send to jessamynATpeeryfoundationDOTorg.

Many thanks, in anticipation of you taking time to do this. It will be a great way for me to figure out what I can work on during 2011 to be better at what we do.