If you work at an advocacy organization, or support them, have you encountered new challenges in attracting members, keeping them engaged, and attracting their donations? Many people we’ve spoken to have had that experience, and as a result we’ve recently completed a national study of member-based advocacy organizations called “DISRUPTION: Evolving Models of Engagement and Support.” › Continue reading…

We’re very excited to share a new Monitor Institute case study on the innovative methods of collective impact and large-scale collaboration being pioneered by the RE-AMP network. › Continue reading…

It’s clear that something’s changed in the world when the cover article of the Harvard Business Review is titled “How to Fix Capitalism: Creating Shared Value,” and when one of the authors is Professor Michael Porter, who built his reputation on insight into the nature of competition. › Continue reading…

The Monitor Institute’s Diana Scearce recently wrote a piece inspired by ‘Switch’ a fantastic book by Chip and Dan Heath. We wanted to share it with you here on our blog. They are asking for your help in identifying civic engagement bright spots. Do you have something to share? › Continue reading…

Our colleagues at the Global Business Network just released a major new report with the Rockefeller Foundation: “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development.” It takes a novel scenario-driven approach to describing how technology can alleviate poverty, tapping the tradition of scenario planning as a tool for strategic thinking that GBN has pioneered over the past two decades. › Continue reading…

The Monitor Institute has just released a new case study focusing on KaBOOM!, an award-winning national nonprofit that helps build playgrounds in low-income communities, and advocates for children’s right to play. › Continue reading…

As part of our ongoing research project into the future of membership-based advocacy organizations, we’ve been talking to folks from “new” as well as “older” groups focused on issue-organizing. We’re hoping to find out how the nature of civic engagement and mobilization is changing – along with the business models needed to support this kind of work. › Continue reading…

Over the past 6 months, I’ve had the pleasure of facilitating a community of practice for funders supporting networks. The question that keeps coming up is: how to make the case that working through and investing in networks will produce the intended social impact? At the same time, the belief in network impact is becoming more widespread–-the potential for organizing without organizations, the power of developing a strategic understanding of webs of relationships, and the promise of openly sharing both data and new knowledge. There is more and more experimentation with network models for social impact. › Continue reading…