The Risk and Rewards of Mergers as a Nonprofit Growth Strategy

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this final episode of this special series, Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, and Mark Suzman, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, share how they’re redefining the role of philanthropy in addressing public health crises and preparing for future pandemics.   A full transcript is available here.

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this episode, Larry Kramer, president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and La June Montgomery Tabron, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, discuss the origins of wealth inequality and its impact on American democracy. They also share how their institutions are creating new pathways for all communities to access secure and vibrant futures. A full transcript is available here.

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In this episode, Tonya Allen, president of the McKnight Foundation, and John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, address the growing threat of a changing climate. They discuss how they’re answering the global call for solutions that promote equity and protect vulnerable communities and encourage others in the philanthropic sector to act at this critical time. A full transcript is available here.

Powering Needs, Empowering Lives from Uncharted Ground, a podcast series produced by SSIR and Jonathan Levine. Each episode of Uncharted Ground tells a documentary-style story about one nonprofit or social entrepreneur’s journey to solve a daunting global problem. This episode travels to India where a social enterprise called SELCO has been transforming the lives of the rural poor with affordable solar power for 25 years. Now, SELCO is expanding its impact by helping other entrepreneurs replicate its model around the world. It’s a story full of lessons about how to design products and services that dramatically improve lives and build sustainable businesses at the same time. Listen and subscribe to Uncharted Ground here, and leave us a review or a comment letting us know what you think. For show notes and a full transcript of this episode go to ssir.org/podcasts.

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the series, leaders from across the social sector share insights about how they are innovating during challenging times and societal division. In this episode, Crystal Hayling, executive director of The Libra Foundation, and Sonal Shah, founding president of The Asian American Foundation, discuss how their organizations are transforming the way race is discussed in America and how to improve understanding about racial concerns that will lead to a more inclusive society.

“Crisis and Change: Conversations With Leaders” is produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and Stanford Social Innovation Review. In the series, leaders from across the social sector share insights about how they contend with challenging times and societal division. In this episode, Susan Urahn, Pew’s president and CEO, and Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute, discuss the deepening political polarization, increasing misinformation, and growing mistrust that has affected public debate—and how they find common ground to forge meaningful change for the good.

Political polarization. Climate change. Racial reckoning. Income inequality. A global pandemic. Since 2020, all five of these immense challenges have emerged or deepened, commanding our attention and prompting major societal and cultural shifts. In this special series produced in partnership by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Stanford Social Innovation Review, we talk with leaders from across the social sector. They take us behind the scenes, sharing approaches and case studies of innovation and resilience during these unprecedented times. 

The entertainment industry has become an important partner to the nonprofit sector, inspiring people to become active around social issues such as climate, poverty, and human rights. What can campaigns for change learn from narrative storytelling experts? How can nonprofit leaders successfully partner with entertainment companies? In this recording from SSIR’s 2019 NMI conference, the writer, director, and actor Jessica Blank moderates a discussion with Nicole Starr, vice president for social impact at Participant Media; Marya Bangee, executive director of Harness; and Courtney Cogburn, associate professor at Columbia University School of Social Work. “It's about how you create an ecosystem that can allow for authentic stories to be told,” says Marya Bangee. “Culture change precedes policy change."

Even as nonprofits are put on the defensive by political polarization, inequality, climate change, and other threats, many of them still seek out opportunities to expand their impact. For those dissatisfied with small steps forward, mergers present the chance to leap ahead. But it won't be easy.   "It takes a lot of time," says David La Piana, managing partner of La Piana Consulting. "There are opportunity costs, things you could be doing but you won't because you're dedicating energy to the merger. And it is risky." In this recording from SSIR's 2019 NMI conference, La Piana discusses common roadblocks to successful mergers and strategies for surmounting them.

Scholars have noted that most new ideas are poor ones that won’t be adopted. So how can organizations integrate innovation productively and prevent it from having unintended consequences?  In this recording from SSIR’s 2019 NMI conference, Christian Seelos, coauthor of the best-selling book Innovation and Scaling for Impact and co-director of the Global Innovation for Impact Lab at Stanford PACS, explores the “innovation pathologies” that can derail the best intentions. He also discusses the ways organizations such as Aravind and BRAC have sidestepped these threats by blending innovation with scaling. Seelos argues that process is what's important: "If you operate innovation from an attitude of learning ...  you cannot be frustrated and you will never fail. Innovation is just replacing uncertainty with knowledge.”