• Ingenuity
• Visionary leadership
• Flexibility
• Networking and collaboration
• Risk-taking
• Problem-solving
• Strong storytelling
• Powerful ideas that can attract backing (champions, resources, talent)

The definition could be shaped by whether you work on a local scale or a global one, the size of your organization and the type of problem you are solving. Innovation does not necessarily mean new. In some cases, nonprofits have emerged or transformed to reinvent broken revenue models or respond to changing times.

Perspectives on Innovation

How do journalists, philanthropists, nonprofits and entrepreneurs define innovation?

• Innovation from the Bottom Up. In the New York Times Dot Earth Blog, author Andrew C. Revkin writes about his participation in the inaugural Rockefeller Innovation Forum last month. He describes innovations as technological (such as the design of cheap water filters), financial (such as microfinance) or conceptual (problem solving focused on root causes and not symptoms).
• What is Innovation in Health and Well-Being? Ashoka Changemakers calls an innovative health project one that “uses new strategies beyond those used by traditional health systems.” In this article they discuss preliminary trends around innovation in health and well-being and take a closer look with some real-life examples from the field.
• Risk Taking and Visionary Thinking. In disheartening news, yesterday Steve Jobs announced that he was stepping down as Apple’s CEO. In Jobs case, innovation has been synonymous with risk taking and visionary thinking. As this New York Times article reports, he redefined the music, cellphone and entertainment businesses with his products going on a gut instinct about what he thought people would want.
• Building networks. Andrew Hargadon, a professor of entrepreneurship and a Kauffman Foundation senior fellow, blogs on What is Innovation. In his article he writes: “Shifting the central activity of innovation from ‘having an idea’ to seeing and building the networks shifts the attention from thinking to the actions required to build the network that will realize the idea. In other words, innovation has two sides: creativity and entrepreneurship.”
• Public, private and nonprofit sectors converge. The Social Innovation Fund calls its itself “innovative” for representing a “new way of doing business” for the federal government. In July of this year, the San Francisco Business Times featured the Bay Area philanthropic organization REDF as a “new model” of philanthropy after they received a second $3 million grant from the $50 million Social Innovation Fund. REDF in turns matches these funds to support subgrantees (community-based nonprofits) building social enterprises to employ the hardest-to-serve populations.

Social Innovation Resources from Social Edge:

• Innovation toolkit – How to create a mind map
• Innovation toolkit – Design Process
• Innovation toolkit – Rapid Prototyping

A Sense of Urgency

President Bill Clinton, our 42nd President and founder of the William J. Clinton Foundation received a Lifetime Achievement Award for innovation in philanthropy at The Rockefeller Foundation’s inaugural Innovation Forum. As President Clinton accepted the award, he said:

“innovation can make the difference” in a world that, as it stands, is “too unequal, too unstable and totally unsustainable.”

Tell me your zip code and I will tell you your life expectancy.

Those are the words of Dr. Robert Ross, President and CEO of The California Endowment, who talks about the dire statistics related to healthy food access in a video for the newly launched California Fresh Works Fund.

• In the United States, one in every three children under the age of five are overweight or obese.
• 23.5 million Americans who live in low income neighborhoods lack access to a supermarket within a mile of their home including 1.7 million Californians.
• In California, adults in neighborhoods with low access to healthy food options are 20% more likely to be obese than those with high access to healthy foods.
• Each year in California, obesity causes thousands of deaths and costs families, employers, the healthcare industry and government more than $6 billion.

On July 20, 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the new fund, a public-private partnership that will loan $200 million to increase access to healthy food in underserved communities in California using a tested and scalable solution. In addition to an interest in promoting good health, the fund’s investors want to stimulate economic development, job creation and promote innovation. The partnership includes grocery industry groups, healthcare organizations and leading banks. With at least $20, you too can become an investor through the Calvert Foundation, a project partner.

“Food deserts” exist in neighborhoods that severely lack access to affordable, nutritious foods. Corner stores filled with junk food like chips, soda and cupcakes and other unhealthy products might be the most accessible stores in some neighborhoods.

Berkeleyside recently ran a story about corner stores that stirred quite a debate. I wonder if it would be possible to turn some of these establishments into “healthy corners stores.” Seems like it could be a win-win for shop owners and customers. The Healthy Corner Stores Network, a project of The Food Trust, offers many resources.

On the other side of the spectrum, you can find high quality and organic food in the burgeoning healthy grocery store chains like Whole Foods Market, but are these stores affordable? DJDave raps about paying “80 bucks for 6 things” in the viral video Whole Foods Parking Lot. (You can listen to an equally amusing Bay Area remix here. To find out what is behind the video and the song’s lyrics, read Sarah Henry’s piece on KQED’s Bay Area Bites blog.)

More reading:

• Fresh Works Fund Revitalizing Food Deserts Across California on Philanthropy Front and Center, the San Francisco Foundation Center’s blog
• Food Environments Near Home and School Related to Consumption of Soda and Fast Food – New policy brief from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research
• James Berk of Mandela Foods Brings Produce to His People by East Bay journalist Sarah Henry on her Lettuce Eat Kale blog

Bay Area Food Justice Organizations:

• Oakland: Phat Beets Produce, City Slicker Farms, Mandela Marketplace, People’s Grocery and Planting Justice
• East Palo Alto: Collective Roots
• Berkeley: Ecology Center’s Farm Fresh Choice Program and Spiral Gardens Community Food Security Project
• San Francisco: Literacy for Environmental Justice – Food Justice Program
• Richmond: Urban Tilth
• San Jose: Veggielution

• PND – Philanthropy News Digest
• PhilanTopic
• Bridgespan
• Beth’s Blog
• Have Fun • Do Good
• Katya’s Non-Profit Marketing Blog
• NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network
• Getting Attention Blog
• Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog
• SocialFish
• Nonprofit Blog Exchange
• The Communications Network blog

Guy Kawasaki is the cofounder of Alltop.com. He is also a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures and the author of several books on marketing and innovation. His latest book is Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions. Previously, he was the “chief evangelist” at Apple.

This widget features the latest blog posts on the nonprofit channel:

“I will take Police for 200.”

Question: “If you are stopped by a police officer, what are three things you should do?”

Do you know the answer?

Last night at the Stanford Faculty Club, this clever game of “Law Jeopardy” challenged guests celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (better known as “FLY”) on their knowledge of the California legal system.

This creative spin on the iconic American quiz show illuminates one of many innovative ways that FLY staff and volunteers capture the attention of FLY’s Law Program students, youth ages 14-18 who are on probation, at-risk of probation or incarcerated.

After hearing the words, “If only I knew how much trouble I would get into … ” over and over from incarcerated youth while she was a Stanford law student, Christa Gannon built FLY on the advice from kids in Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall who were facing lengthy prison sentences. It turns out that some youth who break the law may not have been fully aware of the consequences of crime in the first place.

Following the trade show concept, in the “FLY Expo” staff and youth clients shared interactive games like FLY Law Jeopardy along with creative photo montages, books of poetry and other creations by youth whose lives were turned around by FLY’s law, leadership and mentor programs.

After the Expo and a meet and greet in the faculty club’s outdoor atrium, over 300 supporters gathered to hear about the organization’s 10-year journey. They made a convincing case for how every dollar invested in FLY delivers a winning cost-benefit to society. This image, posted on the FLY website, illustrates the point.

As a consultant to FLY, I am proud to support their grant program. You can learn more about the history of FLY on their website and read a recent article on the Knight Foundation blog:

“How do you turn teens in trouble into youth who give back? Social entrepreneurs give tips on engaging youth.”

To learn more about FLY’s founder and executive director, Christa Gannon, visit her profile as an Ashoka Fellow at Ashoka.org.

• Edward Tufte is widely known as the guru of information design and informational graphics. His website links to a feature story about his work titled, “The Minister of Information” in New York Magazine (June 18, 2007)
• Watch for interactive graphics in news articles. Many news organizations and journalists are experimenting with ways to use new tools for creating interactive graphics for online readers. Take, for example, Mission Local, a news site run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. According to this article, they created a map of restaurant health inspections that generated over 8,700 page views the day it was posted.
• A picture’s worth 1,000 words – An article on information graphics for nonprofits by Big Duck.
• GOOD displays a gallery of infographic samples including this one: How to Build a Small Army of Volunteers.
• Data Visualization and Infographics Resources by Smashing Magazine
• Interactive Timeline by Dipity
• Google Public Data Explorer – Create visualizations of public data, link to them or embed them on your website.
• Wordle – Word clouds you generate online (like the one above).
• Take a 3-Minute Vacation and Make Art! -Blue Avocado magazine has a little fun in this article.

While I had heard vague stories about San Francisco’s Old Mint, it wasn’t until I heard a KQED Quest story that I realized that the San Francisco Museum and Historical Society has big plans to revitalize the historic structure into the Bay Area’s first museum dedicated to San Francisco and Bay Area history.

This fabled structure located at 5th and Mission streets in downtown San Francisco was one of the few buildings to survive the 1906 earthquake and fires. You can find out why on a member tour. After the earthquake, the “Granite Lady” was also a rare place where city dwellers could find clean water. Springs that fed Mission Creek filled a cistern in the bedrock below the hulking building. Until city water mains could be repaired, the water collecting underneath the Mint was a precious commodity.

The Old Mint closed its doors in 1937 when the new Mint on Duboce and Market opened up in today’s Castro district. Until then, the Old Mint produced and stored coins. Today the City of San Francisco owns the building, which was sold as surplus by the United States government in 2003 for one dollar. The San Francisco Museum and Historical Society organizes museum events and is leading the Mint Project capital campaign.

The Historical Society has raised one-third of their $95 million goal to finance the renovation of the Old Mint into the first LEED certified National Historic Landmark in the City of San Francisco and California.

Since seismic retrofits have already been completed, the project’s mission is to transform the 19th century landmark into a 21st century, energy-efficient, mixed-use cultural center complete with a living roof, much like the one above the California Academy of Sciences. Two floors of the three-story building will have both permanent and changing exhibits with opportunities for the visitor to engage and interact with the region’s history over time, possibly similar to the Oakland Museum’s new layout. Of course, given its historical landmark status on the city, state and federal levels, they have a few hurdles to clear once the funds are raised.

For three weekends this month the Old U.S. Mint will open to the public. According to the museum’s website, “within the historic vaults of the Old Mint, we will explore the past, present and future of food and drink in the San Francisco Bay Area” in a special exhibit on the Bay Area’s Innovations in Farming and Food.

Amid the staggering losses of traditional news outlets and the layoffs of journalists reporting on local culture and public affairs issues, new nonprofit journalism organizations are emerging rapidly to fill the gaps. They are leveraging new digital technologies and community support to get there.

In an article published in the relatively new Bay Area section of the New York Times (published in print on Fridays and Sundays, online and on some mobile applications), Frances Dinkelspiel calls nonprofit journalism the “Bay Area’s new growth industry.” Yet, as she points out, nonprofit news organizations are not new in the Bay Area.

Well-established Bay Area nonprofit news outlets include KQED public media (founded in the 1950s), Mother Jones magazine (founded in the 1970s), the Center for Investigative Reporting (founded in 1977) and New America Media (founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996). The nonprofit Bay Nature magazine, based in Berkeley, debuted in 2001. One of the founders of Bay Nature was Malcom Margolin, a recognized community leader and publisher of Heyday books (founded in 1974) and News from Native California.

While some of the established organizations have covered broader geographical areas, some of the newest nonprofit news organizations emerging in the Bay Area are focusing on community and civic news.

In the Bay Area, new ventures include the San Francisco Public Press and The Bay Citizen, which is set to launch on May 26, 2010 with a celebration at the Great American Music Hall for founding members. Built on a what is called a “crowd-financing model,” Spot.us is replicating its nonprofit model in other metropolitan areas including Seattle and Los Angeles. According to the project’s Web site, Spot.us “allows an individual or group to take control of news by sharing the cost (crowdfunding) to commission freelance journalists.”

Nonprofit sustainability
All of these nonprofit news organizations, old and new, rely on foundation funding, individual donors and diverse revenue streams, the goal of most nonprofit organizations. A few are membership-based organizations, a familiar concept to viewers and listeners of public broadcasting.

You may have already noticed that collaborations for content generation and distribution are becoming ubiquitous among nonprofit and commercial media. Just the other day, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article on gray whale migration by Jane Kay, a former Chronicle staff writer. The article was produced for DailyClimate.org, a nonprofit news service that covers climate change. I also recently read a San Francisco Public Press article published in the New York Times. And California Watch lists over 50 distribution partners on its website.

Community blogs are also rising rapidly. One good resource for finding locally-focused blogs here in the Bay Area is the BayNewsNetwork run by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and its Knight Digital Media Center. The site serves as a directory and aggregator of over 244 blogs and sites focusing on specific communities in the Bay Area region (called “hyperlocal”).

If you want to find out more about new initiatives and local projects working to reinvent journalism and public-interest news, this weekend you can attend the “Journalism Innovations” conference, produced by Independent Arts and Media, The University of San Francisco, G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism and the Society for Professional Journalists. On Twitter, follow the conversations with the #JI3 hashtag.

“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.” ~ Louisa May Alcott

1. SUSTAINABILITY
• Green business. Over the last few years of the decade, going “green” became very popular for U.S. consumers and for the business sector, where the concepts of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the triple bottom line (people, planet, profit) took off.
• Graduate business programs focused on sustainability and the “Green MBA”emerged.
• Climate change activism. More people and businesses recognized that anthropogenic climate change is real and will have environmental and economic consequences – and set out to do something about it. Was the tipping point Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth of 2006?
2. GREEN LIVING
• Plastic bag bans. Plastic bags are a significant cause of pollution in the San Francisco Bay. The cities of Fairfax, Palo Alto and San Francisco, have banned plastic bags at larger retailers, as have Berkeley’s Farmers Markets run by the Ecology Center. In Washington D.C. stores selling food or alcohol now charge 5 cents for bags with revenue going to a river protection fund.
• Bay-friendly landscaping has become a popular way of reducing water use and planting for the benefit of local wildlife.
• Daylighting urban creeks and rain gardens. In the East Bay, creek advocates continue to revitalize creek habitat as opportunities arise. This interesting story also describes innovative ways one city is capturing rain water and reducing pollution of waterways.
• Living Roofs. Also called green roofs, this innovation in building construction known to help absorb rainfall, insulate, create wildlife habitat and lower urban air temperatures became a popular attraction at the California Academy of Sciences this past year. Literacy for Environmental Justice is constructing one on top of an EcoCenter in southeast San Francisco.
3. FOOD
• Food systems and economies. Yes! Magazine features an enlightening series on topics from urban farming to protecting local farms.
• Take it slow. The Slow Money Alliance is an emerging network of investors, donors, farmers, and activists committed to building local food economies. The Slow Food movement also continues to grow.
• Food justice. Some underserved communities now have grocery stores selling healthy foods for the first time such as this one in West Oakland.
4. SOCIAL ENTERPRISE
• Microenterprise. The development of microenterprise and microfinancing is not new, but with the popularity of nonprofit social enterprise organizations like the Acumen Fund and Kiva, this movement is growing stronger, internationally and locally. In March 2009, Acumen Fund founder Jacqueline Novogratz published the inspirational book, The Blue Sweater. Locally, several Bay Area foundations have prioritized microenterprise development in their giving portfolios with an emphasis on empowering low income women of color and immigrants.
• Social entrepreneurism. This past year, The HUB, a global network of co-working centers for social innovators, came to the Bay Area thanks to support from Good Capital, Social Capital Markets Media and a small circle of angel investors. The first location is in Berkeley’s David Brower Center, and a second one is on the horizon for downtown San Francisco.
• Green jobs movement. For a good part of the last decade Van Jones successfully made the case for simultaneously solving socioeconomic inequality and environmental problems. In January 2009, The New Yorker published a feature about Jones. The successes of the Green for All campaign demonstrate how nonprofits can influence public policy. Another project, the Women’s Economic Security Campaign, published a report specific to creating opportunities for low income women in the green economy.
5. 21ST CENTURY REINVENTIONS
• Reinventing regional journalism. At a time when newspapers nationwide and locally are facing a crippling economic crisis and the traditional business models for journalism no longer work, foundations and donors are funding new nonprofit journalism ventures. In 2010, a new journalism organization focused on engaging communities in civic and community news will launch in the Bay Area.
• Museums are creating more interactive and visitor-centered exhibits using new media tools and more input from the public. Allowing visitors to experience a sense of place and community will also be important. While some visitors might complain that museum admission has become too expensive in the Bay Area, most museums offer a monthly free day, and memberships are a bargain if you visit regularly.
• Libraries in the digital age. In the economic downturn, libraries have seen a rise in patrons. In this San Francisco Chronicle article writer Tim Holt describes libraries as community gathering places “where anyone can read the newspaper, check e-mails, do homework or just sit and enjoy a safe and quiet space.” Like other traditional institutions, the role of libraries is changing in the digital age. The librarian has a new role in teaching lessons about “the reliability — or lack thereof — of information on the Internet.”
6. GETTING OUTDOORS
• Health benefits.The Washington Post reported that doctors are sending patients outdoors for physical and mental benefits.
• Parks and community health. The Trust for Public Land President Will Rogers published an article on the Huffington Post, linking urban parks to community health.
• Nature deficit disorder. A new report aims to reverse an alarming trend: 30% of teens do not participate in outdoor nature activities.
• The importance of play. This past year the Oakland-based Playworks (formerly Sports4kids) launched its first conference, PlayOn dedicated to the importance of play.
7. ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
• Environmental stewardship. Removing invasive plants from Spartina to French broom, restoring habitats, and Saving the San Francisco Bay have inspired community service and garnered resources. This year the first environmental education center in southeast San Francisco and the city’s first 100 percent off-grid building will launch.
• Open space boom. Advocates for open space, including land trusts and conservation groups are seeing a silver lining in the housing market bust in the Bay Area, in the Sierra foothills and across the country.
8. LIVABLE COMMUNITIES
• More choose bikes for transportation. The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition announced on their Web site that “2009 was a year of unprecedented success with a whopping 53% increase in bicycle ridership.”
• Pavement to parks and livable streets: San Francisco is leading initiatives to make paved areas into parks and periodically close streets to traffic to encourage recreation.
9. DIVERSITY
• Parks and diversity. From the release of Ken Burns widely viewed documentary series “America’s Best Idea” to new initiatives in the national park system, promoting diversity and connecting diverse youth (future stewards) to outdoor experiences have become priorities.
• Immigrant integration. New Routes to Community Health publishes illuminating multimedia stories and resources about the lives of immigrants in the United States. Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees provides resources for funders and others working to address the challenges facing newcomers and local communities, as well as resources for Census 2010.
10. SOCIAL CHANGE
• Education reform. Schools and nonprofit educational programs are calling for closing the achievement gap. Federal “Race to the Top” grant applications are due January 19 and awards will go to States that are “leading the way with ambitious yet achievable plans for implementing coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform.” What is California doing?
• Healthcare reform. In late December when the Senate passed its version of health care reform, social media devoted more attention to the subject than it had at any time this year according to the Pew Research Center.
• Advancing equal rights. When San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered City Hall to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples soon after taking office in 2004, gay marriage and rights received national attention. While there have been many setbacks along the way, considerable progress has been made. 2010 will also mark the first time the U.S. Census will count same-sex couples.

Of course, the list goes on. Feel free to send in additional innovation highlights via comments.

My next blog post will be about Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson, author of the best selling Three Cups of Tea.

• White House Press Release
• America Forward
• Nonprofit Times
• The Foundation Center
• Huffington Post

Update on Philanthropy This Week (audio)
Posted: Tue, 14 Jul 2009
Social Innovation Fund and Spending Down Your Endowment

Corporation for National & Community Service
Posted: July 2009
FAQ – Social Innovation Fund – Shows how and when to apply (PDF)