Webinars

Live discussions of important social innovation topics

Our on-demand SSIR Live! webinars are offered every 4-6 weeks, and feature the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s most provocative and important topics. Webinars are available for purchase on-demand 12 months after the date of the live event.

Upcoming: The Network Leader Roadmap

March 22, 2016 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by David Sawyer, David Ehrlichman, David Haskell, & Curtis Ogden

This webinar is the second in a two-part series on The New Network Leader.

The most daunting social and environmental challenges of our day can’t be solved through individual action, no matter how heroic. What does it really take to catalyze diverse groups of people, within organizations or across sectors, to build trust, take action, and work together to achieve uncommon results? This webinar is for organizational and network leaders who recognize that real progress requires collaborative approaches involving multiple actors and resources across departments, organizations, and sectors. This webinar is also for leaders seeking new insights into how to build trust, lead authentic conversations, and catalyze generous collaboration across teams, organizations, and networks.

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The Tactics of Trust

The Network Leader Mindset

March 8, 2016 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Jane Wei-Skillern, Marty Kooistra, & Jean Horstman

This webinar is the first in a two-part series on The New Network Leader.

Why do seemingly selfless nonprofit organizations have such a hard time working together? To harness the tremendous potential of networks, social sector leaders must let go of conventional wisdom and shift their focus from organization-level goals to network-level impact. Join Jane Wei-Skillern, a researcher of nonprofit networks, to learn the four principles that are critical to network success. Targeted at managers and executive leaders, this webinar offers participants lessons on how to build cultures and structures that enable networks to thrive.

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Related Story: The Most Impactful Leaders You’ve Never Heard Of

The Hidden Financial Lives of America’s Poor & Middle Class, Part II

February 4, 2016 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Jonathan Morduch, Rachel Schneider, Ida Rademacher, & Ellen Seidman

This webinar is the second in a two-part series on The Hidden Financial Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class.

What are the implications of the U.S. Financial Diaries and other recent research and how can they provide insight to help families escape poverty, build stability, move up the ladder, and invest in the future? This webinar will look at innovative policies, products, and programs that seek to help households make ends meet, build security and stability, and invest for the future. We’ll consider innovative efforts in all sectors of society—from financial tech start-ups, to new policy approaches at all levels of government, and everything in between.

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The Hidden Financial Lives of America’s Poor & Middle Class, Part I

January 21, 2016 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Jonathan Morduch, Rachel Schneider, H. Luke Shaefer, & Diana Elliott

This webinar is the first in a two-part series on The Hidden Financial Lives of America’s Poor and Middle Class.

What are the implications of the U.S. Financial Diaries and other recent research and how can they provide insight to help families escape poverty, build stability, move up the ladder, and invest in the future? The first webinar in this series will discuss the results and implications of new research into the hidden financial lives of low- and moderate-income American households and delve into the effects of income volatility, how families are adjusting to this volatility, and the gaps in current programs and policies.

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Leadership

Building Better Movements

January 14, 2016 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Charlie Brown, Trabian Shorters, Max Young, & Jill Vialet

Movements may seem to rise up organically, but there is a method behind this mystique. Organizations can leverage the strategies behind successful movements to create greater impact. This webinar will outline a movement maker’s approach to organizational strategy—a three-step methodology for mobilizing people around a shared purpose and strengthening bonds among a group. This webinar will be useful to practitioners and leaders in the social, business, and government sectors who want to leverage collective action to further their organization’s mission.

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Organizational Development

Tomorrow’s Nonprofit Sector: 2016 and Beyond

December 8, 2015 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Lucy Bernholz

What do Uber, the Fight for $15, and robots have to do with the nonprofit sector? Each of these represents a defining force shaping the future of work in the United States, including work in the nonprofit sector. Join Lucy Bernholz, author of the annual Philanthropy and the Social Economy Blueprint Series, for a sneak peek at Blueprint 2016 and the future of work. Targeted specifically toward managers and executive leaders, Bernholz will discuss the implications of the gig economy, automation, and living wage battles for the social sector. The webinar is aimed at individuals concerned about their own career paths as well as at leaders involved with organizational change and planning processes.

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Organizing Communities to Create Health (Complimentary)

November 17, 2015 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Bridget B Kelly, Regina Stevens, Nayeli Y Chavez-Dueñas, & Mark L Wieland

Vast and ever-increasing sums of money are spent each year on health care, but not on what most people would like to see change to make their lives “healthier.” The health care industry is locked into a model focused on our most passive states—viewing health as curing our diseases and preventing us from causing ourselves harm. To support us in actively creating health for ourselves and for our families, friends, and neighbors, the health industry needs to broaden its view and share its decision-making power with the people it serves. This webinar is ideal for community leaders and organizers who wish to connect to the health and public health sectors, and the resources they have to offer. It’s also useful for health care, public health, and social change leaders interested in learning how to better understand the complex needs of the communities they serve and what role health plays, among other aims.

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Related Story: Communities Creating Health: An Introduction

Design Thinking to Drive Organizational Strategy

November 10, 2015 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Nadia Roumani & Paul Brest

This webinar is the second in a two-part series on Design Thinking for Social Change.

Do you want to improve the strategic effectiveness of your organization? Do you want to enhance your and your team’s ability to make critical decisions? Do you want to achieve greater clarity on which aspect of a complex problem your organization should tackle? Do you want to make sure that your organization has a clear, precise theory of change? Design thinking—a human-centered method for tackling complex problems—provides a powerful framework for pursuing work in the social sector. Social problems exist within intricate systems that involve multiple feedback loops. Design thinking, combined with traditional strategic planning processes, can help social sector organizations develop approaches that target those systems on the basis of sound evidence. This webinar is for social sector practitioners who want to use design thinking in order to improve organizational decision-making and to hone their organization’s vision, values, and strategy.

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Design Thinking

Design Thinking to Solve Social Problems

October 20, 2015 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Nadia Roumani

This webinar is the first in a two-part series on Design Thinking for Social Change.

Do you want to ensure that your organization is targeting problems that are truly worth solving? Do you want to find ways to identify creative solutions to those problems? Do you want to maximize the impact that you can make with the resources that you have at your disposal? Design thinking—a human-centered method for tackling complex problems—provides a powerful framework for pursuing work in the social sector. Social problems exist within intricate systems of stakeholders. Design thinking can help social sector organizations better understand the needs, motivations, and behaviors of those stakeholders. This webinar is for social sector practitioners who want to use design thinking in order to achieve greater focus, improve their creativity, and facilitate collaboration within and outside their organizations.

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Valuing Frontline Work

September 23, 2015 at 11:00 am Pacific
Presented by Lehn Benjamin, Katya Fels Smyth, Maria Peña, & Jesús Gerena

Over the past two decades, funders and policymakers have put more pressure on nonprofit organizations to pursue and achieve measurable outcomes. The increasing focus on performance-driven frameworks such as “pay for success” and “social return in investment” signals that such pressure will only grow more intense. For nonprofit professionals, that trend raises troubling questions: What if the ways that your organization makes a difference in people’s lives are not easily measured through conventional performance metrics? What if the logic model of your organization does not fully account for the value that you deliver through direct work with beneficiaries? Funders and policymakers also face a quandary: What if the performance data that you receive do not adequately capture the effectiveness of the nonprofits that you fund? This webinar will be of interest to nonprofit practitioners whose organizations provide direct services to marginalized groups. The webinar will also be highly relevant to funders, consultants, evaluators, and other professionals who support organizations that engage in such work.

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