2021 was the first year of the Argo Honors by the Meridian Foundation and we followed that up with a second cohort of recipients recognized for nonprofit innovation in 2022. Since we began we have honored 15 nonprofits in central Indiana with $10,000 unrestricted awards.

We are excited to repeat our process again in 2023 with minor changes to our application and process.

Applying nonprofits this year should understand the shorter and clearer definition of innovation we continue to refine. Nonprofit Innovation is a creative break in practice, large or small, solving a community problem.

We have learned that solving a problem is at the heart of innovation. We have added a bullet point in the nominated project or program information section for applicants to define the community problem being worked on.

We are encouraged because more Arago Hoor applicants in 2022 understood our award is for prior work. We believe there is more educating to do, because our award program, does not follow the conventional wisdom of nonprofit grantmaking. We have also come to realize that nonprofits taking an innovative path require start-up funding. In 2023 we are relaxing the five-year start date for innovation and asking applicants to identify both when the program started and when significant start-up funding was received. The start date can be longer than five years if start-up funding was received within five years or 2018.

In 2022 we initiated labeling the innovation practices of the seven Arago Honor recipients with a differential ranking to better distinguish the nuances of innovation. We want to better show that not all nonprofit innovation is equal.

The highest rank of disruptive innovation went to Be Nimble Foundation, followed by Conner Prairie Museum which earned both catch-up and potential to be disruptive labels because their long-term impact is not fully realized. Both applicants used aspects of technology to strengthen their innovation practices and human connection.

We labeled start-up innovators as Patchwork Indy and Joy’s House, who need additional capital. The incremental innovation, to create moderate advantage, went to Overdose Lifeline, Inc., and Meals on Wheels of Central Indiana. Latinas Welding Guild earned the catch-up innovation ranking.

These rankings of innovation are featured in the compilation of case studies of the 2022 Arago Honor recipients. We use comments from volunteer readers during the review process to make innovation ranking determinations. We seek to showcase the nuances of innovation and how the word has different connotations. We urge potential applicants to read the blogs on the website to understand our basic concept of nonprofit innovation fully.