Strategic Planning – Board Input Survey

If any of you brave hearts are about to embark upon your next cycle of strategic planning, I share with you, below, a Board Input Survey we co-created with the help of our strategic planning consultant, Michela Perrone of MMP Associates. The survey worked extremely well and helped us all get clear, real, and focused on exactly what we need to do over the next 3 years.

Several features of the survey, and the process itself, contributed to some very honest feedback. It helped distill the ensuing discussion down to the very essence of our purpose and mission.

The Likert scale is unique and captures movement across all attributes of the organization. The open ended quesitons encouraged thoughtful feedback. The completed surveys were submitted directly to the consultant, Dr. Perrone, who prepared a general summary in her own words of the results, without individual attribution. And the outcome was a concise strategic plan across four distinct “Critical Areas of Engagement” that captured the very essense of our work.

Click “Read more” for the entire text of the Board Input Survey.

Design Thinking for Social Innovation - Post # 3

This is the last post on an article entitled Design Thinking for Social Innovation by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt, which appears in the current (Winter 2010) issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

My primary take away from the article is this: Always prototype an initiative to solicit feedback from the constituents you seek to serve. Rely on local expertise to uncover local solutions that work, then help scale up the solutions. This bottom up design model insures that you are using your constituents’ very best ideas to help design a lasting solution to meet their actual (not perceived) needs.

As a foundation leader, I see opportunities for applying design thinking to strategic plan initiatives. The design thinking described in this article has been codified by IDEO, a global innovation and design firm, into the “Human Centered Design Toolkit.” It is available as a free download from www.hcdtoolkit.com.

Design Thinking for Social Innovation – Post # 2

This is the second post on an article entitled Design Thinking for Social Innovation by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt, which appears in the current (Winter 2010) issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review.

In design thinking, inspiration is the first step of the process. It embraces the problem or opportunity that motivates people to take action. What struck me most about this phase of design thinking was the authors’ statement that focus groups and surveys rarely yield important insights because all they do is collect data on what people want. Rather, the authors suggest a better starting point – go out into the target area and observe the actual experiences of your constituents. Observe how they move through their day and improvise their lives. Get out there, do “homestays,” and shadow locals at their jobs and in their homes. By becoming embedded in the lives of the people for whom you are designing, you have a much better chance of success.

Ideation is step two. The authors suggest a process of idea development that discourages the “devil’s advocate” and encourages vocalization of many ideas, among which the best simply rise to the top. The authors quote Linus Pauling, a two time Nobel Prize winner, who said “To have a good idea you must first have lots of ideas.” With a diverse group of people with multidisciplinary training, a strong and varied base of ideas can emerge.

Finally, implementation can occur. At the core of implementation is prototyping your designed solution. Testing, iterating, and refining.

Design Thinking for Social Innovation - Post # 1

This past year I read Daniel Pink’s book “A Whole New Mind.” Pink makes a very compelling argument that success in the coming decades depends on a work force that is trained in both left brain and right brain thinking. In particular, he highlights the need for design thinking. Jobs that can be reduced to a formula, mechanized, or shipped overseas are already gone from our economy. But design thinking will always be in demand, no matter what the business or industry. When I realized what he was saying, I immediately gave a copy of the book to my 17 year old daughter and 19 year old son, hoping it would sway them to incorporate some “design” elements in their college or post graduate education.

In the current issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review, an article entitled Design Thinking for Social Innovation by Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt brings the very same “design thinking” approach to large and complex social problems.

The authors describe design thinking as an integration of both our (right brained) ability to be intuitive and to recognize patterns, and our (left brained) ability to be rational and analytical. It describes design thinking as a process that goes through three spaces, inspiration (the problem), ideation (the process of generating, developing and testing ideas), and implementation (the path that leads from the project stage into people’s lives). And movement through the three spaces is never linear. The build in feedback causes looping and reiteration. But the process, while chaotic, produces very effective results.

Community Foundation for Northern Virginia - Community Investment Grants

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia is pleased to announce the award of $221,815 in Community Investment Grants to 35 nonprofits meeting critical community needs in Northern Virginia.  The grants were awarded in four categories:

• Poverty Relief
• Child and Youth Development
• Health, Mental Health, and Aging
• Education

Go to "Read More" below for the entire list.

Update on the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund at the Community Foundation

In just four business days, the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia has raised $70,145 for our Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund.

Since the fall of 2005 when I first became President of the Community Foundation, we have never engaged in efforts to fundraise for a cause outside of Northern Virginia. Before we took this step, the thought certainly occurred to us that we were spending our precious donor relationship capital on a need unrelated to our service area. There was no asset development or financial gain in this for either the citizens of our region or for the Community Foundation, as we are donating every dollar we collect through the Fund to the American Red Cross for emergency relief efforts in Haiti.

So why did we do it?  I think there are several good reasons:

• Because we are a center of philanthropy in Northern Virginia and are widely perceived as such.
• Because some donors are clearly moved to fund this need, now.
• Because when we asked some community leaders and faithful donors should we do this, they unanimously said yes.
• Because it just feels like the right thing to do, no matter what else is on our plate at the moment.

Just this once, for this special cause, we have vastly expanded the definition of “community” in “Community Foundation for Northern Virginia” to include the Haitian people who are suffering some of the worst deprivations and sorrows this human life can inflict.

As a community foundation leader, watching this unfold is inspiring and affirming.  We feel so grateful for the response to the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund, so appreciative of the chance to help, and so eager to learn whatever lessons this effort will teach us about our role in Northern Virginia.

Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund at the Community Foundation for Northern Virginia

The Community Foundation for Northern Virginia announced yesterday the creation of a Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. To my knowledge, this is the first time in our organization’s 31 year history that we have actively engaged in fundraising for a cause that was not squarely centered on our region.

Like the rest of the world, we are horrified by the devastation in Haiti from the January 12 earthquake. Images pouring out of the region on Wednesday the 13th were heartbreaking and impossible to ignore. Those images raised some questions for us last week. As leaders of a local community foundation, what role could and should we play here? Should we attempt to fundraise for relief efforts? And if so, were there other leaders from the broader community who would want to help?

By close of business Thursday, January 14, staff had sent out targeted emails to Board members and certain donor advisors we believed might be open to providing a matching grant for victims of the earthquake. By noon on Friday, we had raised $12,000 in matching grant commitments. With these funds in hand, we then reached out to the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce, the Loudoun CEO Cabinet and others, asking if they would be willing to distribute notifications to their membership base advising them of the Fund and requesting contributions.

As I write this blog post, we have built the donation page for the new Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund on our website. All contributions, including the original $12,000 in seed matching grant funds, will be donated to the American Red Cross. Our donation page for the Fund went live Monday morning, January 18, at which point the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Northern Virginia Technology Council, and hopefully others distributed the email, Facebook and Twitter announcements of the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund’s creation at the Community Foundation.