Cases in Innovative Nonprofits

Organizations That Make a Difference

Ram A. Cnaan, Diane Vinokur-Kaplan, Ram A. Cnaan, Diane R. Kaplan Vinokur

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781452277707
• eBook ISBN: 9781483324326
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Become an innovator in the nonprofit world  

Student friendly and readable, Cases in Innovative Nonprofits provides readers with current comparative case studies of innovative nonprofit organizations that are meeting the needs of humanity in both the U.S. and abroad. Edited by well-known scholars, Ram A. Cnaan and Diane Vinokur-Kaplan, this text provides inspiring examples of social entrepreneurs who have instituted new services to meet the needs of both new and long standing social problems. Each case features either an unidentified need and its successful response, or an existing need that was tackled in a unique and innovative manner.  

The text is purposefully organized into four parts:
Part 1: Two conceptual chapters give the reader an understanding of what a nonprofit social innovation is and tools to analyze various social innovations in this volume and elsewhere.
Part 2: Ten cases reveal the innovative formation of new nonprofit organizations.
Part 3: Three cases emphasize innovation through collaboration.
Part 4: Five cases demonstrate innovations taking place within an existing nonprofit organization.   

By using a simple, identical format for each case, this text facilitates student learning through comparative review, providing a deeper understanding about the complexity and steps required to achieve nonprofit social innovation.

Chapter 1 Social Innovation: Definitions, Clarifications, and a New Model

Ram A. Cnaan

School of Social Policy and Practice University of Pennsylvania and Graduate Institute for Peace Studies Kyung Hee University

Diane Vinokur-Kaplan

School of Social Work University of Michigan

Nonprofit Organizations and Social Innovation

According to the Independent Sector (2012), in 2011, there were more than 1.6 million tax-exempt organizations in the United States—a number that has approximately doubled in the last 30 years—and many more worldwide. They are active in many fields, including education, welfare, arts, culture, health, advocacy, and the environment. Their contribution to our quality of life is immense. In fact, without the contribution of nonprofit organizations (NPOs), life in many communities would be quite bleak. Among the noted reasons for the existence of nonprofit organizations, functioning alongside the state and the for-profit sectors is their potential to be innovative and responsive to meet human needs more quickly and creatively than all other types of organizations. This book provides many examples of charitable nonprofits doing just that, and it is limited to those organizations serving the public good (501(c)(3)-type organizations). (Public and business innovation are beyond this book’s purview.)

With the emphasis on innovation in nonprofit activities, it is not surprising that a Johns Hopkins University (2010) survey has revealed widespread innovation among the nation’s nonprofits. The study found that a vast majority (82%) of responding NPOs reported implementing an innovative program or service within the past 5 years. These are indeed amazing statistics regarding innovation.

Indeed, this estimate of four fifths of all nonprofit organizations innovating seems rather too optimistic. The sample was relatively small (N = 417) and may have attracted the more innovative NPOs to participate. But this was probably only a small part of the problem. The key problem, in our view, is that while nonprofit innovation is highly celebrated in the sector, there is no clear understanding of what qualifies as innovation and what does not. For example, if an NPO decides to follow funding opportunities and start serving a new group of clients, is it an innovation or mere survival adaptation or both? If an NPO adds an auditing department, is it an innovation or a normal sign of growing organizational complexity? What qualifies as a real social innovation is a serious dilemma for which there is currently no clear answer.

In this introductory chapter, written by the book editors, we first discuss the problematic nature of deciding what an innovation is; by citing a few of the most commonly used definitions of innovation, we show that they are limited in their breadth coverage. In the rest of the chapter, we try to develop a model that presents a more comprehensive view of nonprofit innovation, one that can be used to define many initiatives as innovations while still distinguishing the unique characteristics of each innovation. It should be noted that this opening chapter concentrates on definitional issues, while Chapter 2 by Björn Schmitz provides a broader conceptual analysis of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, social enterprise, social business, democratic enterprise, and their interrelationships. We opted to avoid duplication and focus in this chapter on an attempt to provide a new conceptual road map to categorizing nonprofit innovations. We are aware that for some readers this road map will be a useful tool in distinguishing between the nature of various innovations, while other readers will prefer to dive directly into the cases.

The two opening conceptual chapters do not cover the “how to” of innovation. These chapters attempt conceptually to tackle the muddy definitional world of nonprofit social innovation. A more practical understanding of the innovation process is reserved for the concluding chapter in part 5. In this final chapter titled “Lessons Learned: What Do We now Know of Innovative NPOs and Can They be Replicated?” we provide a summary of the themes that emerge from the cases in this book. These themes are more practical in nature, because they try to find commonalities between the cases that come from different countries, regions, and fields. The summary provides an understanding of what it takes to be innovative, from the conception of an idea to its full implementation. We should note that the concluding chapter is not an action guide, but it provides an outline of the practical dimensions of carrying out nonprofit innovation.

In addition to these three conceptual chapters in Parts 1 and 5, the book is divided into three parts. In the first part of social innovation cases, we present cases in which the innovation involved the formation of a new nonprofit organization. This part of the book contains Chapters 3 to 12 and contains the cases of Welfare Reform Liaison Project (WRLP) (Chapter 3), HelpHOPELive (Chapter 4), Café au Play (Chapter 5), The Mind Trust (Chapter 6), GiveIndia (Chapter 7), The Social Innovation Foundation of Hungary (Chapter 8), Resto van Harte (Chapter 9), Seacology (Chapter, 10), Dialogue in the Dark (Chapter 11), and Krembo Wings (Chapter 12).

The second part of the cases is composed of cases emphasizing collaboration. While all innovations require collaboration, in some innovations collaboration is the essential ingredient. This part of the book contains Chapters 13 to 15 and contains the cases of The Center for Rural Development in Appalachia (Chapter 13), Living Cities (Chapter 14), and the New York City Collaboration (Chapter 15).

The third group of cases focuses on innovations that occurred within an existing nonprofit organization. In some cases, this meant that the organizations as a whole changed and in others that the change was partial or related to a certain part of the organization. This part of the book contains Chapters 16 to 20 and contains the cases of the YMCA (Chapter 16), Third Sector New England (Chapter 17), Metro TeenAIDS (Chapter 18), the Jungbo Foundation in South Korea (Chapter 19), and two faith-based social service organization in Germany (Chapter 20).

In the classical sense of social innovation, NPOs promote innovation because they are able to see a problem to which most people are oblivious or to come up with an innovative solution. Clearly, such daring organizations are led by people who are courageous and who possess a creative worldview. We aimed to highlight cases of successful innovations both in the United States and internationally. We do so to show that innovation in nonprofit organizations is not exclusively American. Innovation in nonprofit organizations is a worldwide phenomenon. Sometimes, organizations in one culture can replicate and adopt an innovation from another culture and other times the innovation is applicable only in one culture or locale. Regardless, the process of innovation is universal and we believe that one can learn from successful innovations regardless of where they take place. We hope that those who read this book will think creatively and analytically about them. By focusing on the innovative cases we have selected and the thematic analysis we present in these two introductory chapters and the concluding chapter, readers will gain an appreciation and inclination to think creatively and, hopefully, come up with additional successful nonprofit innovations.

The Quest for Social Innovation

It seems that just about everyone today is encouraged to be innovative. Almost every nonprofit management job advertisement expects the potential candidate to be able to innovate. Every review of directors or presidents of organizations assesses such individuals’ achievements in innovating within their organizations. Creativity and innovation are the current major characteristics required of leaders and successful managers, and those individuals who just do reliable, routine, and high-quality work are often looked upon as lacking something. Professional literature reflects the same quest. For instance, in the for-profit realm, Crossan and Apaydin (2010) conducted a meta-analysis and found that articles on innovation in business and economic journals grew, on average, 14% per year from 1981 to 2008.

The quest for innovation is not unique to any sector, because even the public sector has been called on to be innovative (Borins, 2008; Osborne & Brown, 2011). For example, when President Barack Obama was elected to the White House, he reorganized an existing office to become the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. One of the Office’s principal activities is handling the Social Innovation Fund, which holds a total of $124 million. Indeed, social innovation is the current mantra in most human service organizations.

Why this massive quest for innovation? We live in an era of rapid change that has brought forth rising citizen expectations, emerging new social problems, demand for social services that were previously unattended, limited public fiscal resources, and the perception that we face complex social problems that cannot be remedied by standard solu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Acknowledgements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Social Innovation: Definitions, Clarifications, and a New Model
• Chapter 2 Social Entrepreneurship, Social Innovation, and Social Mission Organizations: Toward a Conceptualization
• Chapter 3 Welfare Reform Liaison Project (WRLP): From Job Training to Community Development
• Chapter 4 HelpHOPELive: Meeting Financial Needs in Medical Crises
• Chapter 5 Café au Play: Creating a Family-Centered Social Space in Portland, Oregon
• Chapter 6 The Mind Trust: Innovations in Urban Education
• Chapter 7 GiveIndia: Web Donations in an Emerging Philanthropic Market
• Chapter 8 Personal, Societal, and Political Conditions of Successful Innovations: A Case Study of the Difficult Survival of the Social Innovation Foundation (Hungary)
• Chapter 9 Resto VanHarte: A Dutch Restaurant Assisting Others to Overcome Social Isolation
• Chapter 10 Seacology: A Win-Win Collaboration to Protect Island Environments and Peoples
• Chapter 11 Dialogue in the Dark: Mainstreaming Blind People in Germany
• Chapter 12 Krembo Wings: A Youth Organization for Children With Disabilities in Israel
• Chapter 13 The Center for Rural Development in Appalachia: Linking 45 Counties for Better Service Delivery
• Chapter 14 Living Cities: Reinventing Philanthropy to Serve Poor Communities
• Chapter 15 Overcoming Constraints in the U.S. Human Services System: How New York City Uses Collaboration to Encourage Innovation
• Chapter 16 The YMCA: A Pioneer of Organizational Innovations
• Chapter 17 Helping Social Change Bloom: Two Capacity-Building Innovations at Third Sector New England
• Chapter 18 Metro TeenAIDS: Serve and Advocate
• Chapter 19 Empowering Social Workers in Social Service Organizations in South Korea
• Chapter 20 Social Innovations in Mature, Faith-Based, Social Service Nonprofit Organizations: Two German Case Studies
• Chapter 21 Lessons Learned: Themes Observed From Successful Nonprofit Social Innovations
• About the Authors
• Index
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