PROBLEM:

SOLUTION:
BlueEngine is a startup nonprofit that provides highly-motivated and competent tutors in high-need New York City schools through one-year fellowships for college graduates who want to pursue careers in education. Now in their first year of operation, they currently have 12 fellows working with 8^th and 9^th-graders in a Washington Heights public school.The inspiration for BlueEngine came from Founder and CEO Nick Ehrmann's experience as a Teach For America volunteer in Washington, D.C. The fourth-grade classroom he was teaching was part of an experimental I Have a Dream Foundation program which promised four-year scholarships to young students in order to motivate them toward academic achievement. While completing his PhD in sociology at Princeton, Ehrmann compared the experimental and control groups of fourth-graders and determined that the difference was nearly nonexistent. His dissertation not only led him to see the program as ultimately limited, but also to the belief that metrics were in need of rethinking: “If you don’t see a change, either you’re not measuring things that are changing, or you’re not measuring things accurately; you might have a broken scale.”

Ehrmann began to look for cases of successful interventions, which led him to develop the “theory of change” that forms the backbone of BlueEngine: “There’s a consensus in the literature,” Ehrmann told Dowser. “The strongest predictor of success in higher education is the academic rigor of your high school environment.” Here, academic rigor refers to a particular notion of learning: “what’s happening in the brain when you’re learning,” said Ehrmann, “when you have synapses in your brain that are creating new pathways, pushing the boundaries of your brain’s ability, becoming frustrated when your brain hits a wall and you have to figure out how to get around it.” BlueEngine fellows help students develop the capacities to get around those walls through small-group tutorials.

Fellows are provided with training that is customized to the site they are working in, based on the notion that understanding the cultural and historical context of a school’s environment, including its neighborhood, will enhance teachers’ ability to connect with students.

RESULTS:
As of next year, BlueEngine is more than doubling its number of fellows and expanding to provide tutorials in English/Language Arts and Geometry. They are in an “experimental phase,” which means that they are evaluating the work they are doing as they go, and adjusting their model based on that evaluation. Ten of the current fellows are staying on for another year of service, despite the fact that they are living in New York City on a monthly stipend of $1200 (BlueEngine’s website provides advice as to how to live on such a tight budget).

The 8^th and 9^th-graders who are currently receiving BlueEngine support were given a mock regents test in January, and they scored at the levels of what students their age and level would typically reach in June, indicating that the intensive tutorials have put them ahead by about half a schoolyear.

“BlueEngine lets us do more for students,” said current fellow Shavonda Guilford, who is going on to become a New York City Teaching Fellow next year. “We are constantly giving them feedback. Each student has a [fellow] there to answer questions. One teacher just can’t answer 32 students’ questions. Also we handle things like planning. It lets the teacher actually teach.”

Not only are students benefiting from the tutorials, but the fellows themselves are transformed by the experience. BlueEngine fellow Eric Dufault signed on to the program to get some experience in the classroom before becoming a full-time teacher. “It’s been a challenge learning to work in a team,” he said of his experience. He’ll be going on for a second year of fellowship next year,

PROBLEM:

One of the primary reasons that startups attract top talent is the level of responsibility and control they are able to give to founding employees. Although Anza had a competitive advantage compared to traditional, full-scale organizations, the advantage vanished when competing with for-profit startups. These companies could offer early employees the same level of responsibility that Anza could along with better compensation and benefits.

RESPONSE:
Durbin’s initial approach of posting the job opening for a co-founder and accepting applications yielded mixed results. Looking back on things, he says, “tons of applicants were good, but we needed great.” As a result, he turned to his strong personal network. He found the alumni of his alma mater, Brown University, to be particularly helpful in yielding top candidates.

Once he had figured out how to find qualified candidates, Durbin needed to find the right match. In his mind, it was simple, “I needed to find people who were aligned with Anza’s vision and were going to ‘buy in’ to what we were trying to build.” When discussing the fit between candidates and Anza, he was careful to relay his understanding of the marketplace for top young talent. Durbin recognized that he couldn’t compete on salary and that he would not be able to use the promise of valuable stock options to seal the deal. He also understood that for-profit startups would be able to offer similar levels of responsibility to potential hires. Instead, Durbin focused on selling not only the opportunity for responsibility, but the opportunity for impact. Understanding that many young professionals can be persuaded more by a challenging work environment and the opportunity to make a difference than by a six-figure salary paid dividends for Anza.

RESULT:
In November 2009, Durbin made his first hire, bringing on Brian Korgaonkar as Chief Operating Officer. Acting as a co-founder in all senses of the word, Korgaonkar played an instrumental role in getting Anza off the ground over the next nine months. As Anza began to take shape as an organization, Durbin again leveraged his personal network, this time to hire staff in Africa. He had kept in touch with Tumaini Kwizera, an intern with whom he had built a relationship during a previous international development project in Tanzania. Durbin knew his work ethic and values aligned well with what Anza was trying to do, so he hired Kwizera as as Country Director for Tanzania. In total, Anza has hired three full-time staff and a handful of contractors all of whom have helped it move from idea to reality. This July, the company will begin selling its low-cost pushcart to farmers in Tanzania.

RESPONSE:
A small group of residents and cycling enthusiasts had an alternative vision: they would re-open the shop as an independent nonprofit. Together, the group worked to open what would become Phoenix Bikes, named after the mythical bird that symbolizes rebirth. The group met many times with supporters at the Arlington County Board, who in the end let Phoenix continue to operate, for free, in the same spot as before – a squat concrete building that looks more like an oversized tool shed than a bike shop. The group also tried to persuade the county to support the program with an $8,000 annual grant.

Phoenix’s founders needed more than money, though. In order to operate, they needed legal recognition as a corporation. That would take time. In order to get the re-imagined program up and running, the founders looked to the Greenbrier Learning Center, an after-school tutoring program in Arlington that, legally speaking, took Phoenix under its wing as Phoenix waited for formal incorporation.

RESULTS:
The work seems to have paid off. The county, at least to this point, has continued funding Phoenix with the $8,000 grant. It has also allowed the nonprofit to stay in its concrete shanty, rent-free. Phoenix is also now an independent corporation.

More important though is what Phoenix has grown into.

Phoenix has had as many as 60 student volunteers each year, though Executive Director Kelly Auer says the numbers have dropped to a level the organization can realistically accommodate. One facet of Phoenix is the earn-a-bike program, in which students volunteer 25 hours of their time in exchange for a free bike. In those hours, they learn to identify the parts of a bike, how a bike operates, and basic bike repair skills. After this initial volunteering period, students, if still interested, can pursue one of three additional volunteer programs, including advanced bike mechanics. If they continue to volunteer, students are rewarded with store credit, which they can use to buy more bikes and bike parts.

But where do all these bikes and parts come from? Residents from the region donate their bikes – in hoards, it turns out. Phoenix has so many donations, in fact, that the shop at night is filled almost to the entrance with bikes, which volunteers and staff then move out front in the morning.

This bounty allows Phoenix to fix up and sell used bikes and parts to the public, all of which come at a highly discounted price. And because students work as volunteer mechanics in the shop, Phoenix can give tune-ups and other fixes at a bargain. The organization prides itself on not only providing this very valuable service to the thrifty bike shopper, but on teaching often-disadvantaged kids to be skilled entrepreneurs. And that service, according to Auer, heavily resonates with locals, who are happy to help a good cause by donating their bikes or time.

“In the community it’s inspirational that we’re providing an outlet for kids,” she said. “We’re giving kids confidence that life isn’t so desperate.  I think it’s a community spirit, giving youth a chance.”

PROBLEM

RESPONSE:
Upon entering If We Ran The World, users are prompted to answer the question: If I ran the world, I would... The site spits out a variety of possible actions for you to take linked to your response. With each action, you build a profile, creating not only a list of actions, but an activist identity that is shared across social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Users are viewed by their microactions and “action platforms” (how they would change the world). Users can also create microactions for others to take on.  With a background in advertising and branding, Gallop thinks closely about how to tap good intentions by using them as branding opportunities; for the individual, but also for companies, which can learn what actions and brands users care about so that they can target products to those interests and commitments.

RESULTS:
After just ten months, If We Ran The World users are generating actions that Gallop herself never expected. “We always intended it to be a place to make anything you want happen - not just social change,” Gallop said. “People are starting ventures on this website, people are using the site to change things about themselves, a politician has used the site to run her municipal election campaign, and more recently teachers have said they can use this in schools to generate action.” The site also partners with conferences at what Gallop calls “the moment of intention” to truly move idea-generation into the space of action. Unlike other uses of social media for social good, Gallop says, “On 'If We Ran the World' you can’t lie, because everything is based on what you actually do.” If We Ran the World hopes to develop further to the point where it can show users the picture of themselves created across their social media profiles and offer them ways to formulate it further with microactions. “The concept microaction itself has been around forever,” Gallop says, “the innovative key here is showing how they actually look good and feel better from taking those actions.”

People generally want to volunteer in some capacity; social change organizations generally need volunteers. Soup kitchens and Habitat for Humanity seldom have a shortage of volunteers, because most anyone can do it. But, for a professional who wants to use their specialized skills, it's not so easy to find an organization that wants them. And, how do organizations that need rebranding, for instance, specifically solicit a talented public relations volunteer? Catchafire, an organization masterminded by Rachael Chong matches skilled volunteers with specific projects at social change organizations, pairing human capital with necessary, but otherwise costly, projects in nonprofits.

RESPONSE:

Catchafire was born from Chong's personal experience. As a former investment banker with the drive to volunteer her financial skills, she could not find a single organization willing to accommodate her schedule and use her professional skills. After moving to the social sector, Chong found herself a key player in growing BracUSA which she did successfully after "employing" her skilled friends to do discrete tasks, such as marketing, budgeting, and organizing. She used this positive experience to address two massive needs: more than 25 million professionals with relevant skills who aren't given to opportunity to use them for social good, and organizations that can't afford things they need like a web designer and a marketing strategist.

Here's how it works: Organizations sign up with Catchafire for a nominal amount (currently $200). This amount covers a significant portion of Catchafire's operations, and it also raises confidence that the nonprofit is committed both to the project and to the volunteer. At the same time, folks who want to volunteer their skills upload their resume and browse the menu of Catchafire's partner organization's projects. They are organized by category, and there are projects ranging from little interaction with the organization itself (like logo design) to heavy involvement and facilitation of important conversations (like mission and visioning). Once the vetting and matching of volunteers to projects happen, it's a win-win for the volunteer, who has the opportunity to help an organization out while also developing professionally, and the nonprofit, which saves a lot of money while getting a quality, tangible product. For now, partnerships are limited to those that somehow reach the New York area (more than 700!), but Catchafire is seeking to grow to accommodate the nearly 5,000 volunteers currently in their database.

RESULTS:

The model works. For volunteers, "their motivation is to give back and do good, but they also want to build their resume, gain leadership experience, and network," says Chong, "which is the outcome of almost every project so far." For organizations, "some have definitely come back for additional projects" and feedback has shown how much the resource-strained nonprofits value Catchafire's placement services. It's highly successful, and is trying to increase capacity to expand reach. Right now, Catchafire is in the middle of their $1 million giveaway which seeks to raise $1,000,000 in volunteer service between November 1 and January 31.

PROBLEM:
The environmental advocacy group Heal the Bay has identified marine debris as a core problem – and an issue ripe for political action. “Sixty to eighty percent of urban runoff is plastic,” says the group’s Communications Director Matthew King. “You just need to take a walk along the shoreline after a rainy day and you’ll see. We have to do something about plastic.” For five years, the group has been sponsoring bag ban bills in state and local legislatures, educating on marine debris issues, and leading beach clean-ups and other actions. In spring 2010, when the California plastic bag ban – AB1998 – finally came up in the state senate, the group knew it needed a big push if the bill had a chance of becoming law. But Heal the Bay had no budget for a major media campaign.

RESPONSE:
King met with longtime advertising agency partner DDB, whose group Creative Director Kevin McCarthy is a Heal the Bay supporter and volunteer.  To succeed, they knew they needed to appeal to emotion to personalize the story, and to make the video funny instead of didactic. McCarthy and others agreed to work pro-bono on a nature mockumentary, a film exploring the life of a plastic bag. They brought in Partisan Pictures to produce the film and Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons to do the voice-over. Once they saw the film, King’s colleagues knew they had a powerful communication tool. To promote it, they sent it around to sites like Boing Boing, The Huffington Post, and the UK Guardian. Within a few days it was the second most-watched video on YouTube. “I think it went viral because of the compelling storytelling that combined humor, drama and education,” said King. “I liked that what had been thought of as the villain – the plastic bag – became an unlikely hero as it fought off all these challenges to make it to the ocean.”

RESULTS:
“The [film] drew people in in a way nothing had been able to before,” King said. Although AB1998 did not pass, King considers the campaign a success. Thousands of people beyond Heal the Bay’s usual supporters responded by sending letters. Local legislators – including Arnold Schwarzenegger, who watched video with his staff – have taken up the plastic bag ban cause. Schools and other institutions across the country have asked for copies of the video to distribute. The video demonstrated the power of storytelling and entertainment in campaigns that can otherwise be filled with “so much doom and gloom,” said King. “The outstanding production values, Jeremy Irons' understated narration, the stirring music and the bits of humor all made for an entertaining – rather than hectoring – film.” He added: “This made us look like a creative risk taker and smart communicator and advocate – and it now really is a calling card for us.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

PROBLEM:
VolunteerMatch, an online service that matches volunteers and organizations, had operated for about a year when it faced a wrenching choice: either become a for-profit business, which would allow the organization to grow quickly by accepting investment from venture investors, or remain a nonprofit, which would mean maintaining a strong social mission but expanding at a slower pace.

Angel investors had backed the launch of the fledgling service, but more money was needed to scale up nationally. VolunteerMatch’s management and board wondered how to fulfill a promise made to funders during the organization’s first capital campaign: after the initial philanthropic investment, VolunteerMatch would be self-supporting.

A group of venture capitalists (VCs) offered VolunteerMatch the financing it needed for its next growth phase, but there was a catch: the organization would have to go for-profit, offering the VCs an opportunity to capitalize on their investments if the company was sold or went public. The founders and the board worried that social organizations would stop dealing with the site if it turned into a business. Meanwhile, investors wanted the right to withdraw from the deal if VolunteerMatch failed to meet its growth targets. Greg Baldwin, VolunteerMatch’s president, recalls that the choice he was faced with “couldn’t have been any more agonizing: Do you want to be rich? Or do you want to do the right thing?”

RESPONSE:
Internal discussions centered around maintaining credibility and trust among VolunteerMatch's clients. After debating the options ”ad nauseum,” Baldwin recalls, VolunteerMatch decided to remain a nonprofit. A philanthropist on the VolunteerMatch board helped rally donors to contribute enough money to expand the service nationally. And in 2000, major foundations, including Atlantic Philanthropies and the Ford, Knight, Packard, Omidyar and Surdna Foundations, funded a capital reserve account that would help cover expenses when revenues fell short.

RESULTS:
VolunteerMatch has grown steadily, but, as predicted, more slowly than venture investment would have allowed. The organization has worked to keep expenses down. When shortfalls occur, as in 2009 when the $3.5 million in revenues fell $200,000 short of overall expenses, they are covered with the capital reserve account or individual donations. But VolunteerMatch has not had to seek major capital infusions to maintain its work.

Today, VolunteerMatch has millions of visitors each year and boasts that it is “the preferred internet recruiting tool for more than 73,000 non-profit organizations.” Baldwin says that he and the founders have no regrets that VolunteerMatch has not made them rich. “It was the classic, ‘Are we prepared to take the road less traveled in order to better serve the non-profit community?’ It was really hard, but hanging on to that idea and making sure it would work was really important to us.”

Photo: VolunteerMatch

PROBLEM:
KaBOOM! aspires to create a “great place to play within walking distance of every child.” Founded by Darell Hammond in 1996, the DC-based organization grew steadily in its first decade, building hundreds of playgrounds in low-income neighborhoods around the U.S. Along the way, it helped to revolutionize the playground-building industry, making it less about making money and more about enlivening communities.

In the early years, KaBOOM!'s model was to enlist and manage volunteers who would assemble playgrounds, while businesses picked up the tab. It worked well enough that KaBOOM! attracted a stable of high-profile corporate funders, including Home Depot and Ben & Jerry’s.

But around 2004, KaBOOM! ran into the challenge that confounds ambitious social organizations: despite its growth, it couldn't come close to matching the scale of the problem it was tackling. “We were doing great on the core model,” said COO Bruce Bowman. “But the reality was we were only making a dent in the problem. We were building hundreds of playgrounds when we needed to be building thousands.”

RESPONSE:
How to increase impact? KaBOOM! considered several options. Should the organization form local chapters or affiliates, self-financed but controlled by the main office? Should it evangelize its model and encourage others to follow suit? Should it assume more of an advocacy role, pushing for high level policy change? “We talked about different ideas,” recalled Kate Becker, who oversees playground building for KaBOOM! "Nothing resonated."

Then, an idea surfaced that matched the ethos of an organization that, from day one, had counted on the generosity and initiative of strangers: Why not just give away the model for people to replicate on their own? So KaBOOM! assembled a step-by-step guide on its website explaining everything a community needs to do to build its own playgrounds.

What's distinctive about KaBOOM!'s approach is that while plenty of organizations use the Web to solicit donations of money or time, relatively few have mastered the art of helping others to effectively organize themselves.

RESULTS:
It took a few years to refine the new strategy, but by 2009 it was yielding impressive results. In that year alone, KaBOOM! helped other groups construct 1,600 playgrounds around the U.S.--almost as many as it had built directly during its first 14 years. Today, local communities build 10 KaBOOM!-influenced playgrounds for each one KaBOOM! builds itself.

The new model has brought new challenges. “We’ve probably made every mistake there is,” Bowman said. Ceding control to local communities meant changing the culture of the entire organization. It was particularly tough to find talented web developers who fully appreciated KaBOOM!'s mission. And the jury is still out on whether the new strategy is financially sustainable. (Funding so far has come mainly via a $14 million commitment from the Omidyar Network.)

At this point, it appears that KaBOOM!'s approach has paid off. It has increased impact by a large measure. It has also gained valuable experience in the hows and whys of community organizing. "Breaking New Ground" draws out seven key lessons for organizations that seek to use the Internet to expand their reach. They include: "nurture your online community via its leaders," "treat your online strategy as mission-critical," and "give up credit to increase your impact."

"The idea of giving away a nonprofit model isn’t itself new," notes the Monitor study. "But KaBOOM! is one of the first to put this approach online, and bring it into the 21st century. In doing so, they have truly broken new ground."

Photo: KaBOOM!

But Fortunato, a successful social venture capitalist, had concerns about execution. The process for vetting and coordinating partners—the local organizations that deliver the coats—needed streamlining. “There was duplication in a lot of areas," she explained. "A child might go to school one place and to an after-school program somewhere else and get one coat at each place. It just didn’t make sense from a logistical or cost perspective."

Fortunato also saw an opportunity to expand Operation Warm's mission for greater impact. In particular, she wondered about other outcomes that could be leveraged through the attraction of a brand new coat.

RESPONSE:
Fortunato drew on the cross-section of skills she'd honed as the founding CEO of Social Venture Partners Delaware, which focuses on funding and strengthening the management of early childhood education programs.  Here, at Operation Warm, they were "giving away valuable merchandise" to partner organizations without adequately tracking the outcomes. Instead, Fortunato thought, they ought to allocate coats "as a responsible donor would invest funds”—that is, only after carefully vetting the recipients. So in 2007 Operation Warm set up a rigorous process to assess partner organizations on measures like leadership, ability to prioritize needs, and capacity to reach many people (their goal was to find groups that could effectively distribute 1,000 coats or more).

To broaden impact, Fortunato introduced the “value component”—a means of extracting more value out of each coat. For example, one partner, Harlem Children’s Zone in New York, required its students to sign a pledge that they’d read three books before they could receive a coat. This small accountability measure added social impact to the program, and has been replicated successfully. (Operation Warm leaves the details of the value component to its partners, who have a better feel for the populations they serve.)

RESULTS:
Since Fortunato took over as president, Operation Warm has developed more than 10 new partnerships with vetted organizations nationwide while launching initiatives that broaden its mission and deepen its reach.

One example is "Warm Coats...Open Minds," through which college students run coat drives for low-income children near their campuses. Operation Warm provides logistical help and assists with fundraising ideas.  This particular program has a green twist: the students collect bottles that can be recycled into coats. They also reach out to local elementary students with a curriculum, developed by Operation Warm, which teaches the importance of protecting natural resources. Fortunato's goal: “I want to leverage all that we can with that coat.”

Photo: Glen Riddle Rotary Club

PROBLEM:

After late 2008, many organizations froze their hiring. “[F]rom one week to the next our earned income was cut almost in half, leaving us with a hole of more than $100,000 each month," explained Idealist’s founder, Ami Dar. Meanwhile, foundations, also suffering losses, cut back on giving. After surviving "on faith and fumes" for 16 months, Dar knew Idealist needed to find alternative sources of revenues—and quickly.

RESPONSE:
He turned to his user base. Rather than increase usage fees, an idea that was considered, he decided to send a plea to 500,000 site members this past February: "If over the past 15 years Idealist has helped you or a friend find a job, an internship or a volunteer opportunity; connect with a person, an idea or a resource; or just feel inspired for a moment, now we need your help." He went on to detail Idealist’s predicament and request support.

RESULTS:
Over 7,500 people stepped forward, contributing close to $250,000. The donations have provided vital breathing space while Dar pursues other tree-shaking strategies to raise an additional $250,000. Dar believes Idealist’s “authenticity and transparency” accounted for the response. “We let ourselves be vulnerable,” he said.

Dar also rallied Idealist’s users to vote for the organization in the Chase Community Giving online competition, which resulted in a $125,000 prize. But in order to close gaps, the organization has had to make substantial staff cuts. It streamlined operations, consolidated its Buenos Aires office, and halted all non-essential employee travel.

Dar believes the crisis forced the organization to become more efficient. But Idealist is not out of danger yet. In recent years, large foundations have become reluctant to fund infrastructure organizations like Idealist, Dar said. He is hard at work developing new financial models to sustain and ultimately strengthen the organization. We’ll be following his progress closely.

For more on Dar and Idealist, check out this interview.

Photo: In Defence of Marxism