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Innovation in Western PA’s Nonprofit Sector
David Tinker, CFRE
Muskingum College, INFR512, LM1
January 25, 2009
There is quite a bit of innovation happening in our field right now. Innovation allows charities to survive competition, economic downturns, and meet unmet needs of their constituencies. I will highlight four areas ofinnovations and explain how we at ACHIEVA should embrace more innovative ideas. Innovations in our region have included increased integration of technology in processes, creation of new services, evaluation of existing services, and collaborations. However, the most important concept of innovation is to remember that people we serve are the reason we must innovate.
As Rao explains in an article from the McKinsey Quarterly (2009), social movements and groups have had a dramatic impact on innovation. Similarly, Charan and Lafley (2008) explain that innovation is about people. Just like our agency and the thousands of other nonprofits in our region, we were founded by a group of similar-minded people; innovators that grow out of a movement. Our movement was to provide advocacy and programs for people with disabilities and their families. Innovation has allowed us to grow from a grassroots group of family members to our current state of serving more than 7,000 individuals with disabilities and their families and to be listed by the Pittsburgh Business Times as the sixth largest social service charity in our area. As the children with intellectual disabilitiesthat we served began to live longer we have been pushed to innovate and create new programs to serve them well beyond their middle-aged years. As you know, the life expectancy for someone with Down’s syndrome has more than doubled in the past 25 years. That means more programs for folks with disabilities reaching retirement age and seniors with disabilities are needed.
Nonprofits that are considered innovative readily integrate technology into their corporate culture. From using social media, such as blogging and microblogging, wikis, webcasting have allowed the nonprofit to maintain regular on-line communication with their constituency. For those agencies who have education or advocacy as part of their mission, this has been an innovative use of a new delivery channel for them. Email news, websites and on-line video libraries are increasingly important as more individuals turn to the Internet for their information. Technology has also strengthened their brand because the ease of use of increased awareness. Additionally, social networking such as Facebook and Myspace has allowed individuals to easily share an agency’s mission and recruit new friends of the agency. It also allows for a new way to collect donations on-line through ePhilanthropy widgets added to the websites.
Technology has also allowed innovative agencies to reduce costs. One such example is with cloud computing. Cloud computing allows for reduced costs for hardware and maintenance because files and programs can be stored on a server at a remote location. Files can be accessed by any employee with an Internet connection. It is disaster friendly because remote servers have multiple-redundancies built in that we as an agency couldn’t otherwise afford. Reduction in technology expenses allows for these funds to be redirected to new programs and services.
Innovation is all about new services that will enhance daily routines. As was previously mentioned, with the life expectancy of the constituency we serve increasing,we must continually look at the programs and services that are offered in the near and distant future. More programs are needed for the increasednumber of children diagnosed with autism and programs for seniors with disabilities. At the same time there are some disruptive forces that can impact our ability to be innovative and force us to innovate when we weren’t anticipating it. An example of this is the current state budget deficit and the impending changes to the financial reimbursement process for programs. Additionally, the private donors we have are also being negatively impacted by the poor financial market. We have addressed this by creating a new billing fulfillment process and new fund raising programs. These forces will make us have to innovate whether or not we are ready.
In addition to creating new services, innovation can be used to improve existing services. One way to do this is to evaluate the services you offer. This includes analyzing the program evaluation data that you already have. You can also survey your current constituency if you don’t have current data. Additionally, you should speak with people who you do not currently serve to understand why they are not using your services. All of these will allow you to determine the performance of your services and products. New trends and opportunities can emerge from the information gathered and analyzed. These can provide insight as to where to focus innovation efforts.
There are risks involved in undertaking innovation. Being a nonprofit means we have fewer resources to be able to absorb a bad decision. However, using the analysis and techniques described above will allow us to implement innovative ideas with a little less risk and a little more certainty.
Collaborations are one way to incorporate efficiencies from innovations into agencies while maintaining or exceeding ability to serve constituency. They include partnerships, alliances, and mergers of nonprofit organizations. One such local partnership is the Quality of Life Technology Center (QoLT). It is a partnership between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. The QoLT Center is a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center (ERC) whose mission is to transform lives in a large and growing segment of the population. They have actively sought partnerships with groups serving a similar population such as the Three Rivers Center for Independent Living (TRCIL) and study how technology can improve the everyday lives of people with disabilities in their homes and work settings. By partnering the consumers served by TRCIL are movingahead of the curve via access to the top research and technology available. This access can possibly improve independence and quality of life for the people they serve.
Innovation is worth pursuing but you must remember that the end result must benefit the people that you want to serve. The use of technology will provide innovation bypositively impacting delivery of resources, marketing and awareness, and core processes. Innovation will allow us to create new services, tweak existing services, and potentially increase our market share. Collaborations through partnerships, mergers, and alliances will allow us to reduce redundancies while allowing us to benefit from some of the innovations already studied and created by others in our field. Without putting resources into innovation, we will not survive and will no longer be able to fulfill our mission of serving people with intellectual disabilities and their families.
References
Charan, R., and Lafley, A.G., Why Innovation Matters, (May 2008) Retrieved January
23, 2009.
Rao, H., Market Rebels and Radical Innovation, (January 2009) Retrieved January 23,
2009.