Welcome to Research Friday! For this week’s post, we welcome Dr. Gordon Shockley, who describes the work he and colleague Peter Frank are doing on social innovation. As always, we welcome your comments, feedback and suggestions!

Government has a rich legacy of social entrepreneurship. In the 20th century, it orchestrated large-scale social change when it had the capacity — the resources, expertise, and available political, social, and economic institutions — to do so. Consider some examples from American policy history. In response to the Great Depression in the 1930s, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration enacted the nation’s first-ever social policy with the programs of the Social Security Act. The U.S. federal government’s social innovations reached new heights with President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s. The U.S., as well as the national governments of much of the developed world, robustly practices variants of high-capacity governmental social innovation today, such as the myriad programs countering the global Great Recession.

There is also a distinguished history of social innovation in the U.S. from the private, non-governmental civil society partnering with government. For example, many of the reforms from the Progressive Era in the early 20th century depended on action from both government and charities. As Camilla Stivers (2000) puts it, “Women reformers recognized that…

Once upon a long time ago, North America was bursting with animals that were really big. Mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths — animals we only know about from their old bones and our good imaginations. The birds were over-sized as well, and when the huge animals died, giant vultures with 20-foot wingspans would swoop down to feast on their carcasses.

And then, they vanished. For reasons scientists still theorize about, most of these large animals went extinct rather quickly. The huge vultures, once plentiful, with all varieties of Eagles, Teratorns, and giant condors, were suddenly hungry. Their food sources gone, the giant vultures soon followed the animals into mass extinction.

Except one: The California Condor.

The California Condor is the sole surviving member of the Gymnogyps genus, a castaway from the Pleistocene epoch. It’s the largest flying bird in North America. If you see one sitting in a tree, you might remark that it is the ugliest bird you’ve ever seen. But when you see it flying, unfettered in the open sky, you’ll undoubtedly think it is one of the most beautiful sights you’ll ever witness. It has a wingspan of nearly ten feet and can soar for miles without a single flap.

Condors survived over the ages because they found new food sources, such as beached whales and dead cows, and didn’t have enemies. Until they did: people. Electric power lines, lead poisoning (bullets…

Good question. As a nonprofit accountant, I hear this question asked often. Some of the objections to learning about accounting sound very reasonable at first, especially when there's no one around to express a contrary view. So, I'll step up to the challenge and face those objections head on.

“I don’t need to learn that stuff. We have an accountant in our organization who deals with it.”

It's a good thing if you have a knowledgeable accountant on the payroll who knows the ins and outs of nonprofit financial tracking. After all, not every organization has the luxury. If you're one of the lucky ones that does, be kind to that person and tell them that you really appreciate all that they do.

Why? Many organizations need and want an accountant on their payroll. If your accountant feels under-appreciated or undervalued, he or she may head for greener pastures, leaving you without a thorough understanding of the basics of your organization’s financial results. Your remaining staff members may need at least a small knowledge of the basics to link to the new person you hire. So, don’t rely too heavily on your accountant. Attaining good financial management skills will help ensure that your organization moves forward, even without him or her.

“My brain is not designed for numbers. I supervise people that do that.”

Some people have a better understanding of…

Welcome to Research Friday! As part of a continuing weekly series, each Friday we invite a nonprofit expert to highlight a research report or study and discuss how it can inform and improve day-to-day nonprofit practice. This week, Brian Spicker of Valley of the Sun United Way sat down the with Center's Stephanie La Loggia for a short interview about the meaning of "collective impact." Below is part of the interview.

In Kania and Kramer’s article, they discuss the key elements to successful collective impact. Can you talk a little about those key elements?

Brian Spicker: What's wonderful about that article is it’s something I think all of us in the social sector have been working on, they just happened to present it elegantly. But those five elements are: a common agenda. So everyone understands the language, what it is what we’re intending to do, and it’s tied then to metrics, that it’s a shared metric system. So, that’s the second element. The third element, which is really critical, is mutually reinforcing activities. So you have a variety of nonprofits, government, and philanthropic organizations working together — they are doing their own things, but it’s mutually reinforcing that common agenda, it is tying those things together. And showing that it's moving the needle, the metric, forward. 

The…

In the age where people expect more for less and at a pace that reflects the era of an instant-gratification lifestyle, it's no surprise that associations are looking for solid leaders who will keep their mission at heart, as well as keep the association moving forward — quickly. It makes sense, right? Our members have a vested interest and passion for the livelihood of what their association is doing and how it's doing. And, as history will show, leadership is the key to success. So, if success is based on leadership, then how does an association establish great leaders for guaranteed success?

We often hear the phrase, "That person is a born leader." And many of us believe that leadership — both the good and the bad — originates from the individual and his or her personal characteristics and values. To a certain extent, this is true. Charisma, intelligence, and great communication skills all play a serious role in effective leadership. However, James Kouzes and Barry Posner — authors of The Leadership Challenge — illustrate how leadership goes beyond the individual: it's a relationship.

In The Leadership Challenge, Kouzes and Posner take a look inside various types of organizations, finding that successful and effective leadership focuses on five different practices: modeling the way; inspiring a…