New Resources from Scaling What Works
Pathways to Grow Impact: Philanthropy's Role in the Journey
This publication from GEO’s Scaling What Works initiative shares new learning about the variety of strategies nonprofits are using to create more value for communities, without necessarily increasing their budgets, and the types of grantmaker support that strengthen these efforts. Pathways to Grow Impact resulted from a collaborative project with Ashoka, Social Impact Exchange, Taproot Foundation and TCC Group to answer the question: How can grantmakers best support high-performing nonprofits in their efforts to grow their impact?
Learn and Let Learn: Supporting Learning Communities for Innovation and Impact
This publication explores how learning together can contribute to achieving better and more results. This guide offers key findings from a research report produced for GEO by the Research Center for Leadership in Action at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. In particular, Learn and Let Learn draws from in-depth case studies of six learning communities to identify nine key insights for grantmakers about what goes into building successful learning communities.
Strategic Co-Funding: An Approach for Expanded Impact
Co-published by GEO and REDF, this update to REDF's 2008 article "Out of Philanthropy's Funding Maze: Roadmap #1, Strategic Co-Funding," is designed to re-introduce the idea of strategic co-funding and highlight effective strategies and contemporary examples.
Briefing Papers
Reframing the Conversation: A GEO Briefing Paper Series on Growing Social Impact
Conversations on scale and innovation continue to dominate philanthropic discourse as the social sector forges new pathways to achieve greater impact with limited resources. Motivated by the desire to explore and expand upon current approaches to growing social impact, invite wider participation in the scaling conversation and showcase practical examples and peer-to-peer advice, we developed this briefing paper series as part of the Scaling What Works initiative. Authored by Dara Major and other contributors, the collection pulls together the best thinking, research and actionable approaches to scaling impact and provides additional resources for grantmakers that want to dive deeper into paper concepts and questions. + more
Lessons Learned Funder Guides
Lessons Learned from the Social Innovation Fund
The launch of the federal Social Innovation Fund has drawn new attention to how private and public sector funders can channel scarce resources to issues, communities and nonprofits in a more collaborative, strategic and effective way. This collection of funder guides shares the experiences of grantmakers participating in the Social Innovation Fund with the broader grantmaking community. Featured organizations offer advice for peers that might want to participate as intermediaries or funding partners for Social Innovation Fund grants or support scaling impact in other ways. + more
Stories of Impact from the Social Innovation Fund
The Social Innovation Fund is an initiative of the Corporation for National and Community Service that seeks to transform lives by catalyzing broader impact of effective nonprofits in communities across the United States.
To share information about Social Innovation Fund grantees, GEO, through the Scaling What Works initiative, and the Corporation for National and Community Service are collecting stories that feature individuals and families who have benefitted from the programs and services of nonprofits receiving support through the Social Innovation Fund. +more
