Is product market fit a useful concept for nonprofits?

Is product-market fit a useful concept for nonprofits?
Product market fit is a concept developed by venture capital firms to assess the likelihood of a product and company succeeding #charity #development . 
The traditional definition is “when a company’s target customers are buying, using, and telling others about the company’s product in numbers large enough to sustain that product’s growth and profitability.
In this case there is a product and a customer. But in the case of many nonprofits, the customer may not be the person that benefits from the product. There may be a third party that is really the customer ie that pays for the product. For example, a nonprofit may offer a product to improve mental health for low income individuals who may not have adequate access. The customer may in fact be the insurer rather than the individual. Roger Swannel noted that for nonprofits the market “is three-sided with the user, the funder and the charity”.
A strong market for a nonprofit would therefore be one in which the nonprofit is tacking a problem for a significant number of people that funders want to pay for. 
All to often in nonprofits, product and service development is driven by the magnitude of the problem not the demand for the product or service by both beneficiaries and funders. 
The dilemma for me is that nonprofits often serve populations that are marginalized and may not be “large” or “profitable”.  For example, a nonprofit that has a software package capable of providing reading support for blind or low vision individuals. This is not a large market but it may be a significant opportunity for philanthropy rather than the market forces to tackle.
Now You: Do you think of the people you serve as customers or beneficiaries? #philanthropy #nonprofits #fundraising #agilefundraising

Purpose Driven Women Entrepreneurs

What do you think are the key characteristics of purpose-driven women entrepreneurs?


If you said passion and perseverance, you are correct. However, there are actually a number of skills and traits that in combination determine a woman’s success as an entrepreneur.

According to the new book Innovate Hers, Kurshan and Hurley determined that one set of characteristics is passion, combined with empathy, and optimism.

 In the course of interviewing countless women who had launched successful purpose driven enterprises, they found that empathy was a key factor.

This interpersonal sensitivity was reflected in the attention to the well-being of others both internal to their organizations and external attention to the needs of partners, beneficiaries, and clients alike.

This characteristic was significantly higher for women entrepreneurs than for the general entrepreneurial community. Coupling passion, perseverance and empathy, enabled these entrepreneurs to strike a better balance between doing well and doing good.

Now you: Has your empathy been a driving force in your endeavors?

#InnovateHers #empathy #purpose-driven #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #womenentrepreneurs #leadership #nonprofits #socialimpactorganizations #success #entrepreneur

  • 19Romy Alexandra and 18 others

InnovateHers

What are InnovateHers?

In a recently published book Barbara "Bobbi" Kurshan and Kathy Hurley coined the term to describe women with entrepreneurial mindsets used to build or scale an organization for a purpose or more significant cause.
Their book, InnovateHers: Why Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurial Women Rise to the top, examines the stories of many women entrepreneurs globally, from every demographic and every walk of life to determine the particular entrepreneurial mindset and skills they demonstrate and how they may be different from their male counterparts, or the general population.

These women have started businesses, and nonprofits, and are even internal entrepreneurs within corporations. The stories throughout the book are grounded in research, using the EMP (Entrepreneurial Mindset Profile).

I too have focused my work on innovation-oriented purpose-driven nonprofits, particularly in the education space. Many of these organizations are formed and led by women.

What has struck me is how the nonprofit field has not yet embraced an entrepreneurial mindset and behavior. 

This book sheds some light on the key characteristics, mindset, and skills that women leaders need to become entrepreneurial in their approach to solving society’s most pressing challenges.

Key takeaways include:
·      Gender-diverse leadership leads to better business results.
· women lift each other up.
·      Women engage different traits and skills to be successful.
·      Entrepreneurial mindset and skills can be cultivated and developed.
·      We need to begin earlier to develop these skills in young girls and women.

I would highly recommend this insightful work. (See first comment below for a link to the InnovateHers website.

If you are a nonprofit leader who desires to bring an entrepreneurial approach to your strategy and fundraising and business development efforts, contact me at: lpoller@agilefundraisingstrategy.com

#womenentrpeneurs #nonprofits #socialimpact #agilefundraising #InnovateHers #entrepreneurialmindset #leadership #nonprofitleadership #BarbaraKurshan #KathyHurley

Celebrating other organizations is field leadership

Is your organization missing a key aspect of being a field leader?

Bob Burg, in the Go-Givers movement, talks about the law of influence. The influence you have is directly linked to how abundantly you place the interests of others first.

Field leaders point to and celebrate the work of others. They lead not only through their direct work but by providing frameworks and guidelines that support innovation and implementation in their field.

Public recognition of good examples of the work is not only generous but necessary to encourage other organizations to implement with high quality and fidelity. It also encourages innovation.

There are lots of ways that field leaders can shine the spotlight on other organizations:
· ✔️Publish articles or provide a publication to the field that feature the work of other organizations;

·✔️ Provide speaking opportunities on panels at your convenings;
·
✔️Sponsor an award program;

✔️Pursue collaborative funding opportunities;

✔️ Promote staff exchanges and fellowships;

✔️Ask people from other organizations to serve on Advisory committees

Now You: What are ways you shine the spotlight on other organizations in your field.

#nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #agile #agilefundraising #strategy #collectiveimpact #fieldleadership #fieldbuilding #gogivers #influence #innovation #funding #opportunities #leaders
 

The Right Answer in Search of a Question

“The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question” --Unknown
Questions are essential to curiosity and learning. When we encourage our teams to ask, “what if?” or “why not?” we are fostering a culture of learning .
Learning organizations are more likely to innovate. How can your nonprofit create a learning culture?
There are a million ways. Here are some of the raw ingredients…
➕Listening, speaking, debating, questioning
➕Creating psychological safety and building trust
➕Fostering a growth mindset with feedback
➕Encouraging and modeling empathy
➕Design thinking processes
➕Teaming and collaboration
➕Critical thinking
➕Looking at data
➕Seeking external perspectives
➕Creating physical and virtual spaces that encourage collaboration.
❓Now You: What do you think is most important in a learning culture?
If you want to create an innovation culture in your nonprofit, ...
1. Visit https://lnkd.in/eZt8yYh for a perspective on innovation
2. Contact me for a 30-minute discovery call at lpoller@agilefundraisingstrategy.com
#Innnovation #nonprofits #innovationnonpofits #leadership #nonprofitleadership #designthinking #growthmindset

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Sculpting and Strategic Planning

There are many ways to think about strategic planning. The key though is to remain agile, seeing how your actions are changing your environment, and how the environment is affecting your actions.

I once took a figure sculpture class.
We worked with a live model, forming the figure out of clay.
To sculpt, we used a turntable working on one side at a time.

The rotating movement of the turntable is important.

When you are working on the piece that is right in front of you, you inevitably are changing the opposite side. In fact, you are changing the whole piece.
By moving in a circular pattern, you are adapting to the changes you are making in a process of continuous refinement.

Sculpture, like strategy, is an iterative process …
Of adding
Subtracting
Defining
Refining
Learning.
That is the heart of agility.
Now You: How do you gain perspective on the effect of your actions?
#agilefundraising #agilestrategy #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #leadership #agile #agility #strategicplanning #strategy #designthinking #fundraising #fundraisingleadership #planning #learning

Field Leaders Shed Light on the Accomplishments of Others

An organization that is a field leader, leads when they shine a light on the accomplishments of other organizations as exemplars of the work.


Bob Burg, in the Go-Givers movement, talks about the law of influence. The influence you have is directly linked to how abundantly you place the interests of others first.

Field leaders point to and celebrate the work of others. They lead not only through their direct work but by providing frameworks and guidelines that support innovation and implementation in their field.

Public recognition of good examples of the work is not only generous but necessary to encourage other organizations to implement with high quality and fidelity. It also encourages innovation.

There are lots of ways that field leaders can shine the spotlight on other organizations:
· Publications that feature the work of other organizations;
· Speaking opportunities on panels at your convenings;
· Sponsoring award programs;
· Collaborative funding opportunities;
· Staff exchanges and fellowships;
· Advisory committees

Now You: What are ways you shine the spotlight on other organizations in your field.

#nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #agile #agilefundraising #strategy #collectiveimpact #fieldleadership #fieldbuilding #gogivers #influence #innovation #funding #opportunities #leaders

Funding your core not just your projects

Nonprofit Leaders: What do you do when you realize much of the core work you do is unfunded because you are raising money by project?

In my work with nonprofits, I am hearing more leaders talk about this challenge. It goes beyond the need to raise general support to fund administration and operations. We need to articulate our core work that is at the top of our purpose. Projects are an outcome of this larger purpose. Here are some examples:
· Building coalitions of public and private organizations around a societal challenge.
· Catalyzing funding for collective action;
· Publishing best practices;
· Conducting research and development;
· Extending the work across fields or disciplines;
· Influencing policy;
· Creating new field capacity or infrastructure;
· Providing technical assistance;
· Providing funding opportunities to other organizations;
· Disseminating the work pro-bono to developing countries.
The challenge is not in creating projects out of these activities, rather to articulate this larger field-building function as core and worthy of significant funding.

Now You: Do you have a larger strategy or purpose that you have not yet articulated?
#nonprofit #development #funding #opportunities #projects #infrastructure
#fundraising #strategy #fundraisingstrategy #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #fieldbuilding #collectiveaction; #agilefundraising #agilestrategy #foundations

Cultivating new relationships -- the side door

#Nonprofits how do you get introduced to new foundations and begin cultivating these relationships?

Use the “Side Door” to start a relationship with a new foundation prospect.

Foundations are inundated with hundreds of proposals for every single proposal that they fund.

Developing relationships with foundations can be challenging.

Regional and national foundations can be purposely inaccessible and have strong gatekeeping.

Many family foundations fund preselected organizations or are by invitation only.

Use the Side Door--A strategic approach that will get you into a conversation faster.
The side door is a combined approach that ensures you have respectful contact with the foundation, and you benefit from an introduction from an ally:
Ø Go through the front door; but
Ø Also elevate your communication by having a mutual connection -the side door-flag your correspondence; and
Ø Your connector can vouch for the credibility of your organization.
If you would like to learn how to implement this strategy to gain better traction with new foundation relationships ..

1. Download your free Power-Up New Foundation Relationships
Guide https://lnkd.in/eRseW2E

2. Contact Lisa Poller at lpoller@agilefundraisingstrategy.com for additional resources and a 15-minute discovery call.

Now You: Have you ever used the side door?

#nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #fundraising #foundations #agilefundraising #cultivation

Donating to Support Ukraine

Donating to support Ukraine- Want to know where to start?

According to Forbes Magazine, there are a number of reputable charities organizing drives (see Forbes article)

Start with GoFundMe, which just launched a centralized hub to help people looking to donate to the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.

This hub features Ukrainian nonprofits offering emergency relief as well as individualized fundraisers for Ukrainian families seeking support.

GoFundMe's global Trust and Safety team has researched and verified all organizations highlighted on the donation hub.

GoFundMe has also organized its own Ukraine Humanitarian Fund that will give donations to a collection of verified nonprofit organizations.

You can also share and repost information on places to give and ways to support. We can all be megaphones at this urgent moment.

#gofundme #Ukraine #Ukrainesupport #emergencyrelief #humanatarianrelief #humanrights #refugees #Ukrainiannonprofits #nonprofits #nonprofit #team

Mimimum Viable Consortia-- applying agile principles to collective action

“Minimum Viable Consortia”?


I had not heard about this term until last week. I am a big fan of agile approaches which campion the minimum viable product (MVP) so I was intrigued.

In the world of social collective action, it has been widely accepted that “large-scale societal challenges require large-scale responses”.

Like many of my social impact colleagues, I was influenced by the 2011 seminal work of Kania and Kramer on Collective Action which suggested highly coordinated and structured efforts between organizations, including the development of a backbone organization (Stanford Social Innovation Review 2011).

Minimal Viable Consortia is a new agile paradigm for collective action proposed by the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative (SSIR, 2022).

They argue that “progress on major societal challenges can and often should begin with small, agile initiatives—minimum viable consortia (MVC)—that learn and adapt as they build the scaffolding for large-scale change.”

In the next few posts, I will examine some of their core principles and experiences.

I can’t help but think that agility applied to collective action may be the right thing in a time of dynamic change.

❓ Now You: What do you think? Minimum Viable Consortia or Collective Action Backbone organizing?

#nonprofits #socialimpact #collectiveaction #agile #agilefundraising #agilestrategy #collaboration #Mininalviableconsortium #leadership #nonprofitleadership #socialimpactinvesting #changeefforts #innovation #development

Agile and lean development for large scale social change?

What do you gain from applying agile to collective action efforts for social change?


This is the question that the Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative raised in the current issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

They explore the idea of a Minimum Viable Consortia (MVC), a new term that parallels the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) from agile software development.

“MVCs are consortia having the minimum necessary structure and processes needed to generate positive early results, together with the ability to adjust and adapt as needed”.

Like other agile approaches, these consortia are:

📌Driven by a mission that is aligned with each organization but also recognizes potential conflicting interests;

📌Comprised of crossfunctional teams across participating organizations;

📌Structured with minimal formalities and flexible processes;

📌Representative of a critical formational stage of development which creates the foundation upon which further growth can happen;

📌Iterative, with design, experimentation, trying out with stakeholders and learning;
Designed for rapid adjustments in a dynamic environment;

📌Demonstrations of early success with stakeholder buy in.

🔔Now You: Do you think of your work as Agile or Structured?

#socialimpact #collectiveaction #agile #agilefundraising #agilestrategy #collaboration #Mininalviableconsortium #leadership #nonprofitleadership #socialimpactinvesting #changeefforts #nonprofits #learning #innovation

I am a mapmaker

I am a mapmaker, I am a traveler” Brene Brown, Atlas of the Heart.



To lead, I must make the journey as well.
I cannot find the road if I am not seeking.
I cannot lead an innovation organization if I am not mapmaking, capturing the journey at every step, including the experiments that succeeded, and the ones that failed.
I must acknowledge that others have gone before me,
and many walk beside me,
and there will be others in the future who will start with this map, while they chart their own.

#BreneBrown #AtlasoftheHeart #leadership #innovation #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #agile #success

Staying Agile in Uncertainty

Can you stay lean and agile, in order to address complexity?

In my posts this week, I have been exploring the application of agile techniques to the development of collective impact efforts through MVC’s –Minimal Viable Consortia.

I came across an interesting example catalyzed by the Schmidt Futures Network—called Focused Research Organization (FRO).

This agile startup structure is created as a new model designed to solve scientific or technological challenges that can not be addressed by existing organizational structures in academia, industry or government.

They are designed to operate as tight knight fast-moving mission-driven organizations with a startup agile way of operating.

The organization has a mission that drives its work, with the moonshot approach to solving big problems, but a systematic, agile process that for iterations. Its teams are shielded from academic and for-profit incentives.

FROs are important when solving the problem requires coordinated levels of engineering or system building and has a societal benefit that must transcend monetary or proprietary goals.

FROs are designed to produce tools or technologies, key scientific data sets, or processes that accelerate progress in the whole field. At the conclusion of the FRO’s mission, transition plans enable the rapid and widespread dissemination of the work.

❓Now you: Are there any grand challenges in your field where you think a lean, agile approach would produce breakthrough results?

#SchmidtFutures #R&D #Innovation #scientificresearch #technologicresearch #moonshot #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #leadership #Minimalviableconsortia #Lean #Agile #agilefundraisng #strategy

Impact Players Make Work Lighter

We all know that “many hands make light work”, but did you know that Impact Players in your organization, make work light for others?

Liz Wiseman in her book Impact Players defines the characteristics of a person(s) within an organization that has an outsized impact. These individuals ask how can I bring my passion and talents to bear on the key thing that is important to the organization, something that will make a true impact on the problem we are trying to solve.
One of the five characteristics of an Impact Player is that they make work light.
“Impact players make the work feel lighter for everyone, through humor and appreciation of others, and care for their wellbeing. People want to work with them.”
They make others feel that their work has been lightened—not by assuming their work or picking up the slack. Rather they bring a lightness to the work we all share. They have no drama, no politics, no bureaucracy. They are driven by being useful to the work, stepping up when needed, but also stepping back. They get things done and over the finish line, they care about what matters to the organization.

Now You: Is there one thing you did this week to make the work lighter?

#nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #leadership #ImpactPlayer #success #agile #agilefundraising #collaboration #LizWiseman #wellbeing #work

Impact Players Thrive in Ambiguity

It is in the ambiguity and messiness that white space is created to add value….
Is that a mindset or a skillset?

Liz Wiseman, author of the Impact Players says that impact players use “unclear direction and changing priorities are chances to add value. “
Impact players have a mindset that is markedly different from the rock solid contributors.

“They are energized by the messy problems that would enervate or foil others. Lack of clarity doesn’t paralyze them; it provokes them.”

But Impact players also have a skill set to use ambiguity and are driven by the chance to contribute to solving a difficult problem. They step up when they see that something needs to be done to advance toward a solution.
They step into a leadership vacuum, without ego, without needing either clarity or authority of role.

Liz Wiseman notes that Impact Players, “don’t see problems as distractions from their job; rather, they are the job—not just their job, but everyone’s job”.

Impact Players work hard to mobilize others, to make the load lighter, and to get it over the finish line.
They also know when to step back, when the job is done or to make room for others to step up.

Now You: Do you step up in the face of a challenge?

#LizWiseman #ImpactPlayers #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #agility #success #agilefundraising #leadership #Mindset #work #strategicplanning

Impact is more than reach

Nonprofits are constantly asked to quantify their impact… But is go-to metric of number served/reached, really the most important?

As with many things, when we measure impact, we need to capture complexity while distilling it into a simple framework.

This is the topic of a provocative article by @Mona Mourshed in the lastest issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

She argues that “higher reach alone does not equate to impact. The unintended consequence of excessively or exclusively defining impact by reach is that “Nonprofit leaders can find themselves discussing how to serve more people through “lighter touch” models or debating ambiguous metrics like “reached” or “touched” to expand participant numbers” with potential implications on program quality.

For direct service organizations working to scale, she argues that you should look at three interrelated pillars simultaneously-- breadth, depth, and durability.

Not only do you look at the number of people you reach, but the depth of that reach in changing or affecting individuals’ lives, and the durability, how long after your work does that effect last.

While reach can be an important indicator of impact, it should not be at the expense of depth or durability.

📌Now You: Do you look at the depth of your impact as well as how many you reach?

#SSIR #nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #strategy #agilestrategy #agilefundraising #impact #impactmetrics #sucess #goals #accountability #reporting #funders #monamourshed #nonprofit #work #innovation #quality

Measuring all the dimensions of impact

Nonprofits, particularly direct services organizations, might consider measuring their impact on three dimensions -- breadth, depth, and durability. But what should agile innovation and social impact organizations consider?

I would argue that determining how to measure impact depends on your “endgame”, that is the specific role that your nonprofit intends to play in the overall solution to the social problem, once it has proven the effectiveness of the core model or intervention.

ORGANIZATIONAL PATHWAYS
For example, if you are intending to gain impact from your work by expanding on what other organizations can do, you might measure impact as…
🔶The extent to which your work is distributed through existing platforms;
🔶The breadth, depth, and durability of those distribution platforms;
🔶How your technical assistance and training have enabled others to adopt and scale your work;
🔶How the most impactful parts of your solution are unbundled and how those parts achieve scale; and
🔶How your use of technology has enabled you to expand access to your work at a lower cost.

FIELD PATHWAYS
Education systems, juvenile justice, and child welfare systems, to name just a few, operate at a massive scale but don’t necessarily achieve a massive impact.
If you are intending to gain impact from your work by changing systems, then you might consider impact measures such as…

🔶 How you have coalesced and moved a constellation of organizations toward a shared target;
🔶The extent to which you and your partners are effective at changing a critical component of the system;
🔶The extent to which you and your partners are able to change the conversation, demonstrate an effective change management process and inject new leadership; and
🔶The extent to which you have influenced policy at various levels of the system.

❓Now you: Do you have field-building goals as well as organizational goals?

#nonprofits #nonprofitleadership #leadership #impact #impactmeasures #strategy #agile #agilestrategy #agilefundraising #fieldleadership #fieldbuilding #socialimpact #innovation #education #work #nonprofit

Work Flexibility

So Monday always hits me like a ton of bricks….

My mind is like popcorn, with pop-ups of to-dos and things undone.

Why is this when I could be breaking the tyranny of a 9 to 5, weekday job?

It's habit, expectations, training…

As an independent consultant, working from home,
I could theoretically work how and when I want to.

Yet, I am still bound to this pattern of work during the week, off on the weekend.

Perhaps it is time to look at the cadence and flow of my days.

Would I be more creative, more present, more productive, more loving?

Or, as I heard in a meditation today, “try being less not more”.
Hmm…

Now You: Would you like to change your work patterns?
#reflection #wfh #work #home #family #success #mindfulness #workingfromhome #change