Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations

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Innovation in Nonprofit Organizations

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Contents

Introduction! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Page 4

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Project Background! ! ! ! ! ! Page 5

Best Practices!! ! ! ! ! ! ! Page 7

Innovation! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Page 8

Technology! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Page 10

Human Resources!! ! ! ! ! ! Page 12

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Introduction

All over the world, nonprofit organizations are

developing innovative practices to help foster social

change. For some, limited access to human, social, and

financial capital have forced this innovation. For others,

these changes are driven by an honest desire to do better.

Charities, nongovernmental, and nonprofit

organizations are the lifeblood of our society. For

generations, they’ve augmented social infrastructure and

filled critical gaps in our support systems. From world!

renowned and ubiquitous groups like the International

Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, to tiny one!man

operations that protect rare species of insects, the unique

missions and experiences of nonprofits have much to

teach us all.

Time, money, and the absence of networking

opportunities limit the amount of interaction between

nonprofits, and between the nonprofit and for!profit

worlds. By drawing on the experiences of 14 innovative

Canadian nonprofit organizations, and best practices from

the scholarly literature, this white paper hopes to bridge

that gap.

What can a tiny start!up charity teach a tiny tech

start!up? Can huge government!funded innovation centers

teach something new to the world’s largest corporations?

What exciting things can be learned from a parent!child

resource center in Anzac, Alberta, Canada "population

837#.

There are countless parallels to be drawn between

organizations in di$erent sectors, and lessons to be

learned in both directions. Along with innovators all over

the world, this paper helps to fill these knowledge gaps.

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Project Background

In August 2011, TribeHR and Impact99 launched the

Innovate for Impact contest. The contest’s goal was to

showcase and improve the productivity, engagement, and

digital leadership of nonprofit organizations across

Canada.

Among the many submissions, we found numerous

examples of innovation, and ultimately selected four

leading stories. Each of these winners received a free

ticket to an Impact99 conference in British Columbia or

in Toronto, along with a subscription to TribeHR’s social

human resource software package.

The winning organizations, selected for their

creative and strategic implementation of innovative

processes, were:

Aboriginal Workforce Development Initiative

Aboriginal Workforce Development Initiative o$ers

career training for aboriginal people in the Canadian

province of New Brunswick. By understanding the need to

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What is the Innovate for Impact Contest?

Sponsored by TribeHR, Impact99, HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector, and Capacity Waterloo Region, the Innovate for Impact Contest ran from August to November 2011.

The contest, which was free to enter, asked nonprofit organizations to explain why they’re Canada’s most innovative.

Four winners won prizes with a combined value of over $10 000.

change tactics in a changing economy, AWDI prepares its

clients for the jobs of the future.

Operation Springboard

Operation Springboard creates community programs

that have rapidly expanded across Ontario. Their

programs emphasize community justice, employment

training, and support for people with developmental

disabilities.

Vantage Point

Vantage Point helps other nonprofit organizations in

Vancouver build their capacity to promote positive

change. They help organizations recruit, engage, train, and

retain both volunteers and paid sta$.

Whistler Community Services Society

WCSS administers more than 27 social programs in

the city of Whistler, British Columbia, and surrounding

regions. Their o$ering spans the range of social services:

from environmental sustainability to drug education, and

from feeding the hungry to helping seniors stay active in

their communities.

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What is Impact99?

By stressing that HR needs to be social, and not merely do�social, Impact99 is a conference that brings together some of North America's most respected HR and social media experts.

Impact99 is about pushing organizations to learn, adapt, and take risks. It's about looking to the future, being strategic, showing passion, and accessing community. With attendance at each conference capped at 99, it is intimate, interactive, and engaging.

Best Practices

What does it take to be innovative in the nonprofit

sector? When celebrating innovation, we must be careful

to avoid celebrations of simple "newness." The adoption

of new practices or policies doesn't demand practicality.

It's possible to do something "innovative" without doing

anything wise or unique. What’s new to one business isn’t

necessarily new to the world1.

It’s also possible to be innovative without being

productive. A fast food company, for example, can be

innovative by serving blocks of wood on bread.

Unfortunately, if their new practice doesn’t further their

organizational goals "perhaps “increased sales,” or “high!

quality food”#, it’s not an innovation that other companies

should look at repeating.

A “best practice,” meanwhile, is defined as “the

adoption of a practice or policy through following a ‘state

of the art’ approach.” It means doing something within

your organization that’s recognized as best!in!class: doing

something that’s done by the best!of!the!best.

Note here that “best practices” are not necessarily

“innovative,” and “innovation” is not necessarily a “best

practice.” You could do something new without doing

anything smart, and you can do everything perfectly

without doing anything new.

Fox example, one could make the argument that

Wal-Mart has been following the same best practices for

decades. While they’re a leading international

corporation, and they make a ton of money, they aren’t

necessarily doing anything innovative2.

This paper identifies organizations that have

implemented innovative best practices. We’re talking

about groups that are doing something new, and doing it right.

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Impact99 and

TribeHR are helping

employers and

employees imagine new

ways to make their

organizations more

productive, engaged and

responsive.

— Christine McLeod,

Impact People Practices

Sometimes their successes are modest, and sometimes

they’re significant. What’s important is that they’re

continually working to get better at what they do. For the

sake of brevity, when we say “innovation,” we really mean

both.

Innovation

Across industries and institutions, innovation is key

to organizational success. Competition demands

evolution; innovation is inherent to it. At the same time,

innovation is di%cult to develop, di%cult to maintain, and

vulnerable to external influences. There are countless

factors that help to mediate the e%cacy of innovative

practices3. Some include:

• Making innovation an explicit part of the organizational mission and philosophy

• Placing innovation at the center of all strategies

• Leveraging innovation as a goal!driven process

• Finding, developing, and nurturing the right people

• Building a supportive culture

• Developing links between di$erent functional departments and di$erent areas of expertise

• Freedom and space for risk and failure

• “Flat” organizational structures, or hierarchies with multiple reporting accountabilities

• A perception of equal value across all employee levels

• Having a clear distinction between pure and applied research

• Active dialogue with customers and consumers

• E$ective and e%cient execution of ideas

• Pressure

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• Willingness to try anything

• An internal sense of teamwork, sharing, and “social”

• Celebration!

• Desire to innovate even in di%cult circumstances

• Projection of organizational innovation both internally and externally

• A well!designed work environment

• A tangible “group memory” so that innovative ideas are not lost or forgotten

So are the nonprofits we looked at doing these

things? Absolutely!

The world is changing rapidly with new

technologies, materials, and systems. Envirolegacy, a

nonprofit dedicated to environmental sustainability, is

developing a project called “ecotecture.” Drawing from

research at universities across the world, it’s an attempt to

combine ecology, agriculture, and engineering, to create a

new kind of farm.

This type of integration and convergence is common

in other organizations. REACH Edmonton Council for Safe Communities is working to prevent crime so that their

community a safer place for everyone. Instead of focusing

on one cause of crime, they view it holistically. In order to

reach the widest audience possible, the nonprofit partners

with providers of policing, governance, education, and

services for threatened and underprivileged populations.

Because children have so much influence on our

collective future, many nonprofit organizations reach out

to them. Anzac Li'l Lakers Family Resource Center began as a

drop!in playschool. After quickly recognizing that

children weren’t the only people in the community who

needed services, it has grown to o$er parenting

workshops, art programming, and more. Because money is

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J Hazard/Wikimedia Commons © CC BY-SA 3.0

tight, the Anzac school gets many of its art supplies

through re!use and re!cycling.

In Toronto, Family Day Care Services recently saw its

funding and government oversight shift from one

provincial ministry to another. The change has forced

them to look at alternative ways of delivering their

services, such as online webinars, which allow them to

reach a wider audience than they would otherwise be able

to.

Each of these groups o$ers valuable lessons for other

nonprofits and for the for!profit sector:

• Problems can’t be tackled unless you consider all of their parts.

• The best solutions draw from many di$erent experts.

• You can leverage your relationships to expand your operations.

• Environmental initiatives can be both socially and financially lucrative.

• Re!invention is always possible.

TechnologyMore and more often, leading organizations are

turning to technology both as a result of innovation, and

to help promote innovation.

At The Calgary Police Interpretive Centre, the

YouthLink program has recently revamped its programs to

better align with the organizational mission. This has

resulted in a new focus on social media, as the

organization tries to expand its profile and visibility in the

community “outside of the Grade 6 demographic.”

HomeBridge Youth Society recognizes the need for

e$ective recruiting and performance management 10

software systems, but with limited access to funding,

makes do with Excel spreadsheets to manage their 135

sta$. Executive Director Linda Wilson says “specialized

software geared to monitoring HR functioning would

make the organization far more e%cient and e$ective in

our HR practices, despite the fact that we still don’t have

a designated Human Resources professional on &a sta$

team of 135'.”

At North York Women’s Centre, sta$ often leave the

organization in order to pursue better opportunities for

enrichment and enhancement. The organization

recognizes that one approach to this common challenge is

to improve employee recognition and professional

development opportunities, and that technology can help

with this.

In New Brunswick, Canada, the Aboriginal

Workforce Development Initiative o$ers career training

for aboriginal people. Previously, their focus was on

o$ering training for skilled trades careers in New

Brunswick's significant energy, natural resources, and

forestry industries. In recognition of the emerging

information and communications technology sector,

however, the group has developed a new emphasis on

technology.

In Ontario, Operation Springboard helps youth

build skills by equipping them with digital video cameras

and tablet computers. The new technology has helped one

program increase its completion rate, engagement,

approval, and outcomes by as much as 20(.

The Social Innovation Generation research group at

MaRS Discovery District is actually studying technology.

They’ve brought together thousands of “unusual

stakeholders” in an attempt to advance our collective

understanding of social innovation, finance, and social

technology.

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Research like that being conducted by SiG@MaRS is

critical to furthering our understanding of how di$erent

organizations use innovation e$ectively. What’s clear now

is that promoting innovation over the long!term is a best

practice every organization should encourage. Pervaiz

Ahmed at the University of Bradford in the United

Kingdom suggests five ways that this is best achieved4:

1. Recruitment policies that both target and appeal to innovators

2. Implementing rewards systems that keep employees happy, healthy, and motivated to succeed.

3. Promoting both entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship)similar concepts di$erentiated only by their proximity to the organization.

4. Ensuring an e$ective organizational structure.

5. Having a well!defined, appreciated, and productive organizational culture.

Human ResourcesProper job design. Relevant rewards. An engaged

team. Do these things sound familiar? They’re the basic

functions of strategic human resource managers5. They’re

also the things you need to make sure that your

organization is an innovator at the top of its class.

People are the common theme that unites every

innovative nonprofit. Those identified here achieved their

successes through cultures of creativity and e%ciency. An

organization’s ability to adopt innovative best practices is

therefore tied to its ability to recruit, select, train, retain,

and engage hard!working and e$ective sta$. The HR

department)whether it exists explicitly or is a function

of a small group of driven managers)drives innovation.

People are at the heart of it.

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Every organization wants to be innovative. But

often, sta$ are so overwhelmed with their day!to!day job

functions that they can’t find the time to be innovative.

HR comes to the rescue once again; resource allocation

has never been more important. E$ective nonprofit and

for!profit organizations should constantly be looking for

ways to be more e%cient with their people, their money,

and their time.

Regardless of whether an organization finds

e%ciencies through cost!cutting measures like

outsourcing or downsizing, by applying pressure to

employees and suppliers, by the adoption of best

practices, or through the use of e$ective new

technologies, you should always ensure that your strategy

revolves around innovation. Innovation drives success

every day, from the tiniest nonprofit to the largest mega!

corporation. Regardless of mission and goals, it’s people

that are at the core of organizational success.

How do you manage your people?

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1 Brannan, T., Durose, C., John, P., & Wolman, H., (2008). “Assessing

Best Practice as a Means of Innovation.” Local Government

Studies 34 (1), 23–28.

2 We use this purely as an example that!s logical to our diverse

audience. There are plenty of departments at Wal-Mart HQ, and

plenty of individual Wal-Mart stores, that have been extraordinarily

innovative in recent years. For example, a new Wal-Mart store in

Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, has installed a huge quantity of solar

panels on the roof of their store, which has not only started to

reduce the company!s carbon emissions, but also saves them

money on their energy bills.

3 Ahmed, P.K. (1998). “Benchmarking innovation best practice.”

Benchmarking for quality management

& technology 5(1), 45–58.

4 ibid.

5 Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B.

(2009). “Principles of Management.” Flat

World Knowledge, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

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