Ranking Social Innovation
Ranking social innovation
by Donna Oklak, Co-Founder, The Meridian Foundation
Is it possible to rank nonprofit innovation in central Indiana as good, great, or phenomenal? A new award program seeks to understand what innovation looks like in central Indiana. The Arago Honors by the Meridian Foundation celebrates and inspires nonprofit innovation. In its 2021 inaugural year, the Arago Honors recognized eight nonprofits with $10,000 unrestricted awards each. We are proud to spotlight eight inspiring examples!
Because our concept of awarding program innovation is new, we found many of the 65 local nonprofits applying for the honor did not understand we were looking for public value solutions. Nonprofits also struggled with the over-used term “innovation.”
A useful starting point is a clear definition. “Innovation is a break from practice, large or small, leading to significant social change.” We credit this definition to Stanford Social Innovation Review and agree when they say the word innovation is more than a “catchall slogan”—it’s an urgent imperative to advance a nonprofit’s mission and impact.” We also agree when Stanford Social Innovation says nonprofits must come up with new solutions to solve vexing social challenges.
Last year the leaders of the eight Arago Honor recipients were very intentional problem solvers in a wide assortment of missions and their work showcases how to solve multiple problems simultaneously. When publicizing the inaugural recipients we used a subjective order, listing nonprofits with more substantial outcomes nearer the top. We found innovation:
Relieving food insecurity by creating a new resource for food crop harvesting at the Society of St. Andrew’s (SoSA) new satellite office.
In a new partnership between two nonprofit organizations with remarkably similar missions that previously did not collaborate. The award went to The Milk Bank for building a partnership with Versiti to provide mother’s milk for new babies.
Supporting health and aging assistance at a new venture studio inside CICOA, a 49-year-old community-based nonprofit, building scalable revenue-generating enterprises.
Involving classroom support work for preschool education assistant teachers, blending less expensive online and in-person learning at Early Learning Indiana.
Building career portfolios for young interns in fashion, photography, graphic design, digital and social media, art, and music at PATTERN, enabling Indiana talent to stay in Indiana while simultaneously growing the local creative economy.
In a new business acceleration program at Launch HOPE (Hope, Opportunity, and Prosperity through Entrepreneurship) Foundation for at-risk women to receive support from interns at Butler University’s Lacy School of Business. Interns write business plans and proof of concept papers for incarcerated women.
Facilitating Powerful Conversations on Race (PCR) using a civic reflection dialogue facilitation method using artwork, texts, and media for public reflection and dialogue on this difficult topic at Spirit and Place housed at IUPUI’s School of Liberal Arts. They are building an income-generating social entrepreneurship strategy around (PCR).
Building equity in the arts and creative community by GANGGANG, a start-up nonprofit, for its first fine art fair called BUTTER. BLACK artists in the fair pay no fees to participate and 100 % of profits from sold works go to artists.
The leaders of the eight nonprofits receiving an Arago Honor in 2021 are each in their own way forging new paths to find critical solutions using innovation. We would be remiss if we did not point out a few similarities and parallels in recipients’ work. These include:
Nontraditional nonprofit leaders Kristi Mitchell and Polina Osherov established nonprofits as Launch HOPE and PATTERN, respectively, when an alternate for-profit business model might have been more familiar.
Innovation at more established nonprofits with greater resources. Leaders at 100-year-old Early Learning Indiana (ELI), led by Maureen Weber, and at 49-year-old CICOA, led by Tauhric Brown, have instituted strong innovation practices at their respective nonprofits to improve the workforce at ELI and generate new business opportunities and income at CICOA.
The strength of partnerships and a parallel concept of opening satellite offices to accomplish more missions is evident in The Milk Bank (led by Freedom Kolb) working with Versiti, and the Society of St. Andrew based in Big Island, Virginia. SoSA CEO Lynette Johnson came to Indianapolis to strategically hire local gleaning leader Dawn Barnes, who subsequently built a field office in Indiana
While GANGGANG (led by Melina Simone Jeffers and Alan Bacon) and Spirit and Place (Director Pam Blevins Hinkle) at IUPUI’s College of Liberal Arts, are using different strategies to advance DEI discussions, conversations at both nonprofits are creating new revenue-generating sources for their respective agencies.
If we can pair up the eight Arago Honor recipients and identify shared characteristics, can we also rank them on an innovation scale?
In the first year of the Arago Honors, a panel of volunteer readers and the Meridian Foundation were decision-makers, identifying innovative programs and their impact on applications. We relied on the definition of innovation to make winnowing decisions, but we realized we would benefit from other reliable tools.
Why Nonprofits Must Innovate, published by BCG (The Boston Consulting Group) perspectives lists a ranking grid to scale the types of innovation and impact. Authors Amy Hsuan, Adam Katz, Mark Freedman, and Brenda Thickett share this useful chart ranking innovation:
Disruptive, when a nonprofit establishes a significant long-term advantage
Incremental, to create a moderate advantage
Sustaining, to maintain current position and
Catch-up, to reduce disadvantage
To their list, we would add:
Start-up, early concept for change.
Using the chart above we can rank the eight Arago Honor recipients as good, great, or phenomenal in colloquial language, or disruptive, incremental, sustaining, catch-up, start-up, in academic terms.
As one of the stronger examples, CICOA is a potential disruptive innovator that intends to use its venture studio for a longer-term advantage, both nationally, regionally, and locally. A sustaining rank can be given to Early Learning Indiana and PATTERN for creating a moderate advantage in their sectors. The more prevalent ranking of incremental innovation fits the Society of St. Andrew, The Milk Bank, and Spirit and Place. GANGGANG can claim both the catch-up innovation rank and start-up and Launch HOPE Foundation also fits the start-up innovation group.
Simultaneously to launching the Arago Honors, The Meridian Foundation has also sought local innovation guidance from other community leaders to better understand the landscape we are assessing.
Kelli Jones of Sixty8 Capital and Be Nimble Foundation has been recognized by TechPoint with a Mira Award in 2022 for Investor of the Year. Kelli has set up both for-profit and not-for-profit entities and says innovation in Indianapolis is “extremely incremental.”
Jonathan Jones, leading the Innovation Fund at United Way of Central Indiana, says he wants to encourage disruptive innovation in our city. He regularly hosts cohort meetings on Zoom with United Way grantees to share best practices. Since 2019, the United Way Innovation Fund has awarded almost $3 million to seed innovation in 36 local nonprofits.
Jonathan Haag, Vice President of Innovation at CICOA says, “Nonprofits that want to move from incremental to the disruptive stage of innovation require a dramatic shift in thinking, support, and practice.” Jonathan is also advising nonprofits on innovation best practices.
The Meridian Foundation and everyone encouraging Indiana nonprofits to be innovative will benefit from this growing network. Specific conversations, funding, new framework, and assessment will raise the status quo and impact in our community.
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The Meridian Foundation will select its second round of Arago Honor recipients in 2022. Interested nonprofits can apply on or before August 15, 2022, at www.indymeridianfoundation.org.