A New Vision Means New Offerings

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This blog post was co-authored by Tara Kirkland, Greenlights’ Chief Programs & Services Officer, and Amber Fogarty, Greenlights’ Director of Learning & Leadership.As you read in Matt’s recent blog post, Greenlights has a bold new vision for our community. On the road to setting this vision, we realized that if our most stubborn community problems were really going to get solved, we’d need to rethink the programs and services we’ve traditionally offered.Our commitment to fostering learning and collaboration has not wavered. Greenlights will continue to offer nonprofit leaders the tools, information and strategic advice they need to advance their missions – that’s a given. But if we want to significantly affect these complex community issues, we need to help the people and organizations interested in making big change achieve big results, no matter where they sit in the “social sector.”

New offerings in 2015

This year, many of our programs and services will focus on building the capacity of institutional funders, individual investors, nonprofit and social enterprise leaders, and other mission-driven individuals. We’ll intentionally shine a light on local social innovation, collective problem-solving, system leadership and creative financing. Some of these shifts are already taking place, and some are still evolving.

1. Mission Meet-Ups– Our member community is diverse, active and pretty darn wise. We’ve created Mission Meet-Ups to give nonprofit leaders a chance to learn from one another and collaboratively discuss hot topics affecting our social sector. We’re just wrapping up a series of meet-ups around our latest research, On the Verge. Look for these meet-ups to become a regular offering for our members on a variety of topics, creating the space for nonprofit leaders to engage in powerful, results-focused conversations.

2. AustinNext– On June 3, we’ll convene business, philanthropic, civic and nonprofit leaders for a hyper-local discussion on innovative approaches to lasting social change in our community. AustinNext will spotlight leading organizations and programs that are tackling Austin’s growing economic divide in exciting, new ways. Examples include the Community First! Village, Pay for Success financing, and “breakout-ready” programs participating in our Accelerator. AustinNext isn’t just about learning, it’s about doing, and encouraging everyone to commit to changes that affect Austin’s future.

3. Mission Driven– We recently announced a new fall conference called Mission Driven, a summit for social innovation. Mission Driven will bring together the best and brightest nonprofit leaders, funders and investors, and other community changemakers – in Texas and beyond – to explore innovative strategies and solutions that cross sector lines, and are achieving results to better solve complex social challenges.

What’s on the horizon?

Peter Senge and fellow authors recently blogged on the topic of system leadership, saying “The deep changes necessary to accelerate progress against society’s most intractable problems require a unique type of leader—the system leader, a person who catalyzes collective leadership.”As part of our suite of services, we’re committed to creating a pipeline of diverse, mission-driven leaders to leave an impression on our Central Texas community. We’ve undertaken a comprehensive assessment of our traditional professional development offerings to determine how we can better help develop and support system leaders. Look for the first of these new programs to roll out this fall.And that’s not all! We’re also developing…

• New professional development opportunities that are aligned with ourEffectiveness Framework, including an online self-assessment tools for nonprofits
• Intensive learning and leadership offerings for teams focused on improving nonprofit effectiveness and impact, such as our upcomingStrategic Business Planning Intensive
• Increasedopportunities for donors and investors to better understand nonprofit effectiveness and making strategic investments that lead to big impact with measurable results

We’d love to hear from you as we continue to make this shift. What ideas do you have for how we should evolve our programs and services?

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