What are the most effective ways to identify new program ideas for your non-profit organization?

Develop relationships with community researchers. Official titles don’t make you the expert. If you feel intimidated by community input it’s a problem and you’ll find your programming failing. With over 25 years in nonprofit leadership, I’ve seen this time and again. Also be willing to pay community based guides to help you with program planning. It shows a level of respect and it’s a great use of resources.

The very first nonprofit I worked for was a start-up program that began with a 35K planning/ feasibility study grant from The Levi Strauss Foundation to economically support low-income women. I came on as an Americorps/VISTA to help get it started. We started researching all the resources in the community that were there to support low-income women and what business and economic resources they had access to. We conducted a series of focus groups and surveys with women to understand the barriers they faced and how best to think about designing the right program for them. We researched other organizations in the state to understand their programs and collaborated and used their curriculum and models where possible too.

Listening to your stakeholders is certainly crucial in identifying new program ideas. However, I believe in a more proactive approach - co-creation. Involve stakeholders not just in initial discussions but throughout the entire program development process. This ensures that solutions are not just addressing their needs but are also tailored to their context. Co-creation fosters a sense of ownership among stakeholders, which can lead to greater support and participation when the program is launched. Ultimately, it's about making stakeholders active participants in change, not just recipients of it.

Researching is a must in order not to recreate the wheel or to open doors to collaboration. A lot of what I've seen happen is that various programs arise that duplicate services and are only differentiated via slight nuances. Sometimes the nuances make a big difference. It's important because funders have limited dollars to go around and so showing you have done research and you are not duplicating services and collaborating where possible is important.

Prototypes can go hand in hand with collaboration. Look to what is already being done. In my 1st non-profit start-up, we pilot tested 3 training programs with adult public education, a domestic violence center and a non-profit English training program at a women's college. This would help us reach our target audience and we could then gather important data on how the pilots went, as well as interview and get feedback from constituents. It took 3 years to get the pilots up before raising (finally) a $10,000 program grant to actually write a curriculum. This was after multiple funder rejections because we did not have a pilot. If you don't have resources to start, start with what you have, collaborate and go from there.

When innovating with new non-profit programs, I like to consider low-cost and easy ways to test my ideas before spending money and resources to execute a program idea that is largely unproven. In this way, prototypes can save us time and money, which is crucial. Instead of spending endless time hypothesizing or researching a new program idea, why not create a small and testable sketch of the program? For example, you can hold a small event (or series of events) and use it to source future program interest. You can also develop informational resources (online courses, guides, etc.), to test and see where your target audience's interests may lie. Lastly, you can commit to starting on a small scale before making programs larger/more robust.

While experimenting with prototypes is a valuable step in program development, I believe that it's equally important to cultivate a culture that embraces these 'experiments'. In my view, every prototype, whether successful or not, should be seen as a learning opportunity. Encourage teams to take risks and innovate without fear of failure. Foster an environment where feedback and iterations are welcomed. This way, the prototype phase becomes more than just a testing tool - it becomes a platform for collective learning and growth. This mindset can help turn even unsuccessful prototypes into stepping stones towards more effective solutions.

Hire a facilitator who is skilled at harnessing the collective intelligence of your team and partners. There are powerful methodologies that are designed to facilitate group ideation and more.

Look outside the typical nonprofit network, those we always partner with, to gain new collaborations and ideas. Making these important connections not only opens up idea sharing, but also identifies others that may benefit your cause.

Evaluating impact is indeed crucial, but in my perspective, it should be a continuous process, not just a final step. Continuous monitoring and evaluation allow for real-time adjustments and improvements, maximizing the effectiveness of your program. Moreover, I believe that it's essential to consider both tangible and intangible impacts. While quantitative data provides measurable outcomes, qualitative feedback captures the human aspect – the emotions, experiences and perceptions. This holistic approach to evaluation ensures that we're not just making a difference, but making the right kind of difference.

Evaluation takes time and it's often important to consult with experts who know how to set up and track outcomes and outputs over time. In my work at my first start-up nonprofit C.E.O. Women, we participated in a national data collection and evaluation project called Microtest for organizations helping to eradicate poverty through small business development and microlending. We would align our indicators to reflect the standards in our industry, hire a summer team to do a laborious survey and interview process and then send the data to the Aspen Institute to be evaluated and aggregated with programs in our industry to see our organization impact how our industry made impact.

Facilitators are people that can help you harness the collective intelligence of your team to innovate, change, make decision while create a fun and meaningful experience for all.

?Start with your mission and with the people you serve. Otherwise it is easy to deviate into “Mission Drift”. ?Co-create, listen to others, be open to unlearning your ways. Collective intelligence is key to understanding complex, systemic and interrelated challenges. ?Do not design programmes only to meet your economic goals. Of course we need to be sustainable, but losing sight of our mission will dissolve us.

Building programs does not always have to be developed from the bottom up. Visionaries using their intuition can create movements that create the right ecosystem and environment around which programs can develop. When I started brown girl surf, a movement to diversify and create change within the surf world, I did not start by building a program. I created a strong mark, movement philosophy and platform with the idea that the ecosystem of community, creators and ideas would naturally grow around it. It attracted creators to address issues they saw in their communities and create programs. It is an example of using vision and intuition as opposed to using traditional logic model programming stemming from business culture.