Resources
Fuel for Your Fire
and/or
RFPs That Protect Equity and Ideas
Inequity in the grantmaking process frequently garners significant attention, highlighting the disparities many nonprofit organizations face in accessing vital resources. However, it is equally important to address the inequities present in the Request for Proposal (RFP) process for contract work, which often determines who earns revenue and contributes to the social impact sector. Here are some of our suggestions for creating a more inclusive and fair RFP process.
Assessing Your Job Description
Reading the tea leaves, we believe that organizations that have a bottom-up, demand-driven learning culture that empowers staff to be creative, will be most likely to thrive in the turbulent days ahead. And believe it or not, the process of establishing such a culture can begin with a job posting. But did you know that despite their best intentions, organizations often don't seek the right candidate attributes for such a role?
With All Our Hearts
What if your team or organization could conduct its monitoring, evaluation and learning work on its own terms, rather than based on the requirements of donors? Would this breathe new life into the process? And if so, which organizations are already doing this? We set out to uncover the secrets of such "positive deviants," and learn what a more bottom-up, demand-driven form of learning would look like—one practiced with all our hearts?
Power Tools for Maximizing Impact
We are generally interested in the principle of maximizing impact in the areas of influence and program design. There are at least four power tools in these areas that make a big difference in an organization’s ability to maximize its impact: creativity and generative thinking, systems design, research, and cross-sector collaboration.