Center for Social Innovation

As both an open publishing platform and a social media site, Tumblr allows content creators to not only host and share, but also have access to an engaged network of users. Liba Rubenstein, Tumblr’s director of social impact and policy, talks at Social Media on Purpose 2014 about how Tumblr’s versatile platform can help non-profits tell powerful stories, catalyze engagement and drive measurable impact.

Devising a plan of action that leveraged the expansiveness of Twitter and social media, Stefania Pomponi and Clever Girls Collective helped turn Make-a-Wish Foundation’s #SFBatKid into a word-of-mouth local campaign to a global phenomenon. Pomponi discusses the step-by-step process of creating a viral social media campaign that garnered two billion impressions, and the key lessons that nonprofits and social organizations can take away from it.

A critical approach to measurement, evaluation, and data collection is needed for nonprofits to expand impact in an increasingly interconnected social world. In this panel discussion at Next Generation Evaluation conference, Kathy Brennan, Patricia Bowie, and Lucy Bernholz give provocative overviews of developmental evaluation research design, shared measurement for collective impact, and the social responsibility of nonprofits employing big data for good.

Effective evaluation is about more than measuring impact—it’s about figuring out what works and why. In this panel discussion at the Next Generation Evaluation conference, Lisbeth Schorr, Fay Twersky, and Alicia Grunow discuss the implications of evaluative techniques such as shared measurement, big data, and improvement science for philanthropy and nonprofit management.

Modern technology empowers individuals to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. In this audio lecture, Marina Gorbis, executive director of the Institute for the Future, discusses “socialstructing” — generating small contributions from each person in a wide network to accomplish large tasks, such as the creation of a global collection of crime-related data. Gorbis describes socialstructing as an alternative to some types of formal organizations in the future.

From the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s Nonprofit Management Institute, Kenyon explains how the intersection of mobile, social, and technology is changing nonprofits. As technology becomes increasingly mobile, intimacy with technology has increased; how can we be more effective in outreach without invading personal spaces?

Is innovation something new, or is it built from fragments of experience that grow to become something greater? Skateboard legend Rodney Mullen is an innovator of tricks. To this day, every new skateboard trick can be attributed to Rodney’s early creations. Like most social entrepreneurs, Rodney developed something that took on a life of its own, and he found himself struggling to reconnect with the joy he originally found. Ned Breslin and Rodney discuss the struggles of being an innovator and how creativity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Instead, it is a collection of experiences, teachings, and learning that come from the simple act of listening.