Next Stage - Social Impact Services

Social good strategy to amplify your impact

joshjacobson

A Decade of Growth: Insights from Next Stage’s Journey

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Tomorrow night, we look forward to seeing so many of our friends and colleagues at our 10th Anniversary Celebration event where we will also reveal the selected organization for The UnFundable Project grant.

This milestone has made me reflective of late – on where we’ve been and where we’re going. It has also caused me to take stock of what I’ve learned from a decade as an entrepreneur. Because folks, there have been lessons… so many important lessons. Today I’ll share a few.

Lesson One: Purpose Fuels Action

It may be surprising to know that I was a bit of a slacker for much of my early years, skating by with minimal effort. You know the type: I was the kid cramming for the test or dashing off the book report in the back of the bus on the way to school.

Relocating to Charlotte and starting a career as a social impact consultant awakened something dormant inside me. I had only worked as a practitioner inside nonprofit organizations up to that point. Being on the other side of the table was a big adjustment, but once it was made, I never looked back. I love my job. It is probably the last one I will ever have, and I am perfectly fine with that. The opportunity to work with so many different organizations, to live inside so many disparate missions, is what gets me fired up in the morning. Where some people would see the chaos of colliding priorities, I gain energy that powers each new day.

I’m not sure there was a specific moment when it all clicked into place, but there is no doubt that purpose is at the heart of Next Stage. As a team, we feel a calling to do the work that we do. It urges us forward to continually disrupt what we think we know about how the world works.

I believe that there is a purpose inside all of us, and you are truly lucky if you can make that purpose your life’s work. It is a wellspring that makes everything possible.

Lesson Two: It’s Better Together

No one tells you when you start a company how lonely it can be.

My office when Next Stage was first launched was not an office at all – it was our family dining room table. Each night I would move the stack of paperwork down to one end so my wife Adara and I could eat dinner without getting spaghetti sauce on a recently-signed contract. [Sidenote: My wife has been so patient and understanding throughout this journey. None of this would be possible without her support.]

A big change came when I joined a coworking community and realized how great it was to be around other people. You can forget how important human connection is to maintaining positive energy and hopefulness. That move eventually led to hiring employees and committing to office space – all significant milestones.

Without a doubt, the thing I am most proud of is having built such a talented, values-aligned group of professionals who fuel our work. We recently made a commitment to advancing collaboration as our organizational mission, and that starts with our own team. Next Stage is a movement of people who choose to work together to advance social good. We complement each other with knowledge, skills and lived experience that strengthens everything we do.

It took me a while to figure it out, but I eventually arrived here: If you want to keep your impact small, go it alone. But if you truly want to change the world, the only way forward is together.

Lesson Three: Vision Drives Belief

So much of one’s early years are defined by boundless potential. When you’re young, anything is possible and the options feel infinite. But as time goes on, you start to realize that every choice you have made has led you further down a path. Eventually, the direction of that path begins to take shape.

I’ve described this in the past as a branching tree. Twenty-five years ago, I had no idea that decisions that seemed so arbitrary at the time – choosing that internship, relocating to this city, taking that get-to-know-you coffee – would be so defining of my life. When you are at the start of that branch, it seems like it extends out into forever, and each decision, no matter how small, seems only to take you to the next moment, to the next opportunity.

I am now old enough that I can look back on the branch I’m on and know exactly how I got here. And out in the future, I am also now old enough to know the branch doesn’t actually extend forever. If I squint, I can see way off in the distance where the divergent branches reach their destination.

When we work with our clients on strategic planning, we challenge them to establish a time-limited vision – “where do you want to be ten years from now.” Of late, we’ve been taking our own medicine. I recently wrote about our new strategic plan, which defines who we are and how we want to make a difference in the world. It commits us to a specific branch – one we are choosing for ourselves.

Our ten-year vision is now crystal clear, and every client, partner, contractor and new hire is joining a movement of people who believe the world can be what we want it to be. We look forward to partnering with you on the road ahead.

A Decade of Good: Looking Back and Looking Ahead as Next Stage Marks Year 10

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This month, Next Stage turns 10 years old! What began at my kitchen table has grown into something far more ambitious. As we launch the second decade of our company, I’m excited to share that ambition with you today.

Last month, we formally approved a three-year strategic plan – a first for our company. That may be surprising if you know how many plans we have developed for clients over the last decade. What’s the saying about the cobbler’s children walking barefoot through the world? Suffice it to say, this is the most robust expression of our aspirations ever committed to print.

We have never had a more clear North Star for where Next Stage desires to go. Over the last 18 months, our team has developed a new mission and theory of change for our work that creates cohesion across a number of concepts. What we once thought were disparate ideas are now being harnessed in service to a new organizational horizon.

Building Belonging at the Intersection of Social Good

Our new purpose statement is building belonging at the intersection of social good. The tenets of this include:

  • Building more cohesive infrastructure and collaboration between six primary sectors (nonprofits, the private sector, municipalities, philanthropic institutions, faith institutions and community-based organizations), channeling more resources to address pressing social causes;
  • Developing a more equitable ‘supply chain of social good’ that ensures decision-making and resources are invested in those who are most proximate to people being served, where trust can be fostered as an asset.

We feel best positioned to support initiatives focused on breaking down walls that contribute to systemic barriers. This work leads us to more community-and-neighborhood-based frameworks that shift power to where trust is most authentically residing. We believe trust capital is the most important asset to overcoming the failure of systems.

It’s a big concept, we know. So what does that mean in practice?

We are called to build a new methodology for collaboration. The pandemic made undeniable what we have all known for decades — that the silos of service delivery are inefficient and ineffective. Greater cohesion and collective effort are needed if we are ever to make inroads on the toughest social issues.

To make that happen, we believe institutions and their leaders must build belonging at that intersection. And not just performative engagement but authentic, hands-on collaboration that is recognized as just as important as the work these institutions individually lead.

In other words, we desperately need each other and must spend more time creating infrastructure and trusted relationships at those intersections.

We’ve explored this in several ways. Our Profit & Purpose series of community reports outlined what we believe is an important bridge between the private sector and nonprofits – one of mutual benefit that has the potential to transform social outcomes. Our recent Inside Out report, making the case for community voice, suggests a need for strengthening between nonprofits and the people they serve.

These are important intersections, but hardly the only ones needed to generate the outcomes we desire. Our next horizon aims to link the six sectors listed above and create new ways of working together for the greater good.

Our Three-Year Strategic Goals

Our plan has three primary goals:

1. Begin the transformation from a Charlotte-based management consulting firm into a national social innovation company.

The language here is important. We are proud in recent years to have been working with clients throughout the country. Where we once considered these as infrequent interruptions to our primarily Carolinas-focused work, we are now realizing a larger geographic frame.

We are also finally using the terminology that best suits us. We dropped Consulting from our name a few years ago and have taken to calling ourselves a “social impact company.” But going forward, we want to own what we truly believe we are — a social innovation company. We have sought to help institutions navigate change by onboarding fresh ways of working. This is the main idea of our work in an increasingly more national context.

What does that mean for our work in the Carolinas, and especially the Charlotte community we’re proud to call home? We will never abandon our commitment to local and regional partners. This work serves as both an opportunity to improve outcomes for people where we live and a chance to learn by working at the frontlines of social good.

Over the next three years, that research will inform the development of new service lines including two new offerings in 2024: Community Voice and Collaboration Management. We are also conducting new pilots on our digital community of practice platform – Cultivate Impact™ – toward formalizing it as a part of our solutioning process.

2. Evolve our operational infrastructure and workplace culture to be more optimized, team-based and sustainable.

The biggest difference between the Next Stage of today and the modest consulting firm that declared its existence in 2014 is the collection of talent we have assembled. Our company now comprises seven full-time staff members and a diverse team of contractors and subject matter experts. We are a collective of passionate do-gooders (who we call ‘Next Stagers’) working together to live our shared values.

Our growth led us to establish a base of operations in an office on Central Avenue in the Plaza-Midwood neighborhood of Charlotte. We are so proud of our space and of the mural that greets visitors. Through ArtPop’s Inspiration Projects program, we commissioned artist Darion Fleming to transform our office entryway with a mural depicting his take on our theory of change. It now also adorns the top of our weekly newsletter, appropriately renamed The Intersection.

The onboarding of an office was needed in part as a result of a team-based shift in our work. We are now facilitating more long-term, multi-year engagements with clients that bring our entire team forward to advance positive outcomes. This shift has led to a far healthier and more sustainable approach to working.

Our new strategic plan calls for continued development of our internal operations to support this new way of working. We will leverage technology and project management tools to strengthen workflows and foster cross-team collaboration as we grow our staff team. We are also deeply committed to developing a workplace culture to encourage personal and professional growth while prioritizing both individual and team health and well-being.

3. Grow awareness, engagement and buy-in, realizing the resources needed to fuel the company‘s mission of social change.

From the very beginning, we have always described Next Stage as a social enterprise. We are shaped by our values and guiding principles, working with and through our clients to make the world we want to see. Every investment in our services sustains a commitment to a social mission that manifests in a variety of ways.

We were proud to launch Charlotte’s first incubator for emerging nonprofit organizations in 2018. In recent years we have produced a number of thought leadership reports and have produced roundtable discussions highlighting what’s next for innovative partnerships. Going above and beyond to deliver value to the community has always been central to our work.

With increased ambition comes the need for larger platforms of engagement. We desire to foster collaborative networks that bridge people across distance, creating peer learning opportunities that lead to deeper understanding across difference.

The next three years will include new thought leadership deliverables, increasing our focus and reach. We are creating new ways to bridge our brand marketing efforts to client services that make access to learning more equitable and achievable for all. We know that will lead to a growing base of client work that will fuel our continued focus on social innovation.

Our Commitment to You

If you’ve read this far, you are very likely a person we are proud to call a partner, colleague and friend. We have only arrived at this point in our evolution through the collaboration and buy-in of countless social good professionals. We thank you for your belief in us.

As we work to realize our ambitious vision, we aim to stay rooted in what got us here — hard work, determination and passionate belief in the power of humans caring for other humans. We will continue to provide high-quality services to clients in the local, regional and national context. We are the friendly neighborhood Next Stage we’ve always been, only now with a new calling and language describing our organizational purpose.

We look forward to seeing you on February 8 for our anniversary event where we will announce the selected organization for the UnFundable Project grant. If you didn’t receive an invitation and want to attend, we’re sorry, it was just an oversight on our part – drop us a line here.

An Argument for Trust-Based Philanthropy

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Last week we did a thing – we announced The UnFundable Project, an opportunity for a Mecklenburg County nonprofit to receive a $10,000 allocation from Next Stage for a project “that would typically struggle to receive investment in a traditional grantmaking process.”

We are doing it as a celebration of our tenth anniversary as a company, and it’s pretty on-brand for us. We’ve spent a decade ‘stirring the pot’ for social impact, challenging our community to consider new and different ways of getting stuff done. It feels natural for us to use a milestone like this to shine a light on something we believe in wholeheartedly: trust-based philanthropy.

Today I’m going to give you some of the backstory on what inspires us to trust nonprofits and why we launched this initiative.  

Dan Pallotta and ‘Uncharitable’

I’ve written over the years (here, here and here) about the important role Dan Pallotta has played in my formation as a consultant. Back in 2014, in the wake of his game-changing TED Talk, he came to the McGlohon Theater in Charlotte to inspire those of us lucky enough to be in the room. It was incredibly formative.

I had watched the talk countless times by that point. Indeed, it had been a part of what inspired the launch of Next Stage earlier that year. The message resonated so strongly – “the way we think about charity is dead wrong.” I had felt that way myself so often as a nonprofit practitioner, raising funding from individuals and institutions. It always felt sort of icky, inequitable, and just… off.

To be successful at fundraising is to hone in on the motivations of the individual being solicited, to align your fundraising message to the specific person making the charitable decision. It must resonate with them if it is going to move that person to action. All giving is ‘selfish’ in this way because it activates the pleasure receptors (what Penelope Burke calls warm-glow altruism) of feeling good about giving. A strong resource development professional is gifted at positioning the organization’s mission to align with the prospective donor’s ‘why’ – why they would willingly part with their money to support a nonprofit cause. And in this, ‘the customer is always right.’

Except, what about when the donor or funder is wrong? Is that even a thing? Can the person who wants to do good by donating money actually be a part of the problem?

According to Mr. Pallotta, absolutely. And his advocacy to get people to think differently about charitable giving quite literally changed the philanthropic industry. He challenged the ‘15% overhead myth’ and got Guidestar, BBB and Charity Navigator to change how they ranked nonprofits against the false premise that such financial ratios are a priority indicator of organizational performance.

If you have an interest in learning more about his work, his founding of the Charity Defense Council, and his ongoing efforts to build a social movement around challenging norms, he has a new movie coming out called Uncharitable, based on his book of the same name. Though a local screening for next week is sold out, I have a feeling it will be coming to streaming services soon.  

The Broken System is Still Broken

So, clearly, Mr. Pallotta solved philanthropy and it’s perfect now, right? Rejoice!

Of course not.

While the overhead myth was a particularly important dragon to slay, it was always a symptom of a much more insidious problem – a central lack of trust. Nonprofits and the people who support them too often have a delta of trust in both directions.

As I’ve shared in many talks, the root of this is generational and historical. The WWII Silent Generation was generally a very trusting generation, apt to support causes that met needs at both the local and global levels. That led to a rise in nefarious charities that took advantage of their generosity. The Baby Boomer generation, which had lost faith in institutions following the Nixon administration and the Vietnam era, began to conflate government and the nonprofit sector. It was Boomers who first introduced the overhead myth, the concept of ‘duplicating service,’ and generally aspired to see much greater accountability for nonprofits.

The idea of ‘holding nonprofits accountable’ continues to inform most grantmaking activities. In addition to an in-depth application for support, an organization must lay bare its entire financial self to assure a grantmaker of no ‘funny business.’ After the grant is made, reports must be submitted that demonstrate impact in predetermined formats selected by the grantmaker meant to create an apples-to-apple comparison across the gift-giving portfolio – whether it fits the organization’s services or not.

These expectations set forth by institutional grantmakers have a trickle-down effect on individual donors at all levels, who often harbor a mistrust of the very organizations they charitably support. I have personally heard all kinds of ridiculousness sitting across from well-intentioned people about what they think is happening back at the nonprofit’s office once their check is cashed.

For its part, nonprofits have a healthy lack of trust for these individuals and institutions as well. Wouldn’t you? Who wants to be treated like a child? It is difficult to think of someone as a partner in the work when there is a central lack of trust in decision-making. This unequal relationship – complete with the ‘funder voice’ talking down to the grant seeker – is far too common, despite Mr. Pallotta’s best efforts to date.

The Rise of Trust-Based Philanthropy

Trust-based philanthropy got its start a little more than a decade ago at The Whitman Institute, a San Francisco-based grantmaking institution that has since ended operations. Following the financial crash of 2009, the funder elected to escalate its giving rather than pull back as many others were. They focused on multi-year, unrestricted giving and grant check-ins that were heavy on relationship-building and lighter on paperwork and reporting.

It was an approach to grantmaking that inspired others, and soon the institute’s leadership was hosting formal and informal discussions about how it approached trusting the nonprofits it elected to support. In January 2020, it led to the founding of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project. COVID hit a few months later, and the rest is history.

I won’t attempt to restate all the richness on the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project’s website. They focus on working with grantmakers to transform their culture, structures, practices and leadership. It’s an amazing framework and I’m excited that Charlotte-based institutions like Foundation For The Carolinas and Women’s Impact Fund have hosted conversations about it.

But as many of us know in the nonprofit space, institutional funders make up a modest (though significant) percentage of overall philanthropy in America. The vast majority of contributed dollars (like more than 80% of charitable giving) come from individual donors.

Unfortunately, individual donors don’t typically view themselves as needing professional development to be better donors. In fact, most nonprofits are unwilling to take their donors to task for the wrongheaded things they think for fear of losing their support. Instead, the ‘toxic donor’ is met with forced smiles and eye-rolls when they aren’t looking.

That’s why Mr. Pallotta’s film is so important, and hopefully the same sort of energy behind Next Stage’s UnFundable Project. In partnering with The Charlotte Ledger, we hope to get the word out about the importance of trusting nonprofits.

Here’s why I think you should lead with trust when making contributions to nonprofits:

Oversight by the Board of Directors

Even if you didn’t trust the Executive Director or Gift Officer asking you to support the organization (which begs the question – why?), nonprofits have a built-in accountability structure in the board of directors. Many unpaid volunteers throughout our community take on fiscal responsibility for our nonprofit organizations through their service as members of a nonprofit’s board of directors – it’s an amazing thing!

While they aren’t typically sitting with the Executive Director every day, watching every move, they shouldn’t have to. They are responsible for hiring that person and thus tend to have trust built with the administrative leader. While some boards fall down on their charge, in my professional capacity, I have seen hundreds of boards and have found them to be mostly competent and diligent in their oversight.

Experience and Proximity

Nonprofit organizations are often led by people with much more experience in the field than the person making a charitable gift. Just as I am not in the habit of micromanaging service providers in fields outside of my understanding, so too do I tend to trust the nonprofit leader who lives and breathes the organization’s mission statement. They have earned that respect, whether through academic credentials, on-the-job experience or lived experience.

Beyond that, the nonprofit is closest to the issues and causes we are trying to address. They are often ‘boots on the ground’ in the community, listening to the needs of people and experiencing the conditions informing success first-hand. Funders and donors typically have little or none of that first-hand experience. And if they do, it is not as contemporary as the person sitting across the table who does this work every. dang. day.

One Bad Apple Doesn’t Spoil the Barrel

Those who champion stronger controls on nonprofits are quick to point out examples of negligence leading to bad outcomes. I am not saying that all nonprofits are doing what they are supposed to be doing. While bad decision-making is far more likely a function of lack of understanding than management malfeasance, that sort of thing definitely exists. I’ve seen it.

But just because one organization did something wrong doesn’t mean that wrongdoing is just under the surface of every nonprofit, just waiting to burst forth when everyone’s guard is down. You are far more likely to find wrongdoing inside the walls of the private sector where we invest our life savings than in the community-based nonprofit down the street. And it is time we acknowledged this out loud as people connected to the nonprofit sector.

So that’s what is behind The UnFundable Project – a desire to highlight the importance of trusting nonprofits and the people who make them go. They are most often tireless crusaders for people in lesser positions. And in this, we see our role as championing them when their own speaking out could cause a backlash.

It is time we changed hearts and minds about the role of nonprofits in society. Help us spread the word – tell a nonprofit about our grant, and then tell a neighbor why we’re doing it.

Solving the RTO Dilemma Can Be a Win-Win-Win

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What Hybrid Means to Us

Earlier this year, Next Stage moved into its own dedicated office space. We had previously moved between co-working facilities, but the growth in our team suggested the need for a permanent home.

Having just passed the six-month mark, I can confidently say it was the best decision for the company. We now have a physical manifestation of our values, vision and commitment to working at the intersection of social good.

Our 1,600 sq. ft. space has a couple private offices but is otherwise made up of one large room with furniture configurable for a variety of uses, including several small tables, a standing desk and a couch. We do in-person team meetings on Monday and Friday mornings. The in-office time that follows is filled with 1:1 or team collaboration. Outside of those meetings, the office is available to the team to use as needed.

A hybrid work environment works well for our team. When we aren’t out in the community with our clients, teammates are empowered to decide for themselves where they are best positioned to do their work.

At the heart of it all is trust. We are a small team and I have personally hired each person who works at Next Stage. Believing in the work ethic of those who join our crew is among the most important factors when identifying talent. Encouraging them to find the right mix of in-office and remote engagement is an extension of our values of purpose, collaboration and belonging. It’s just who we are.

We were working this way long before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic forced many into remote or hybrid models. We’ve never had to make a remote or hybrid work announcement. And we’ll never need to make a return to office (RTO) announcement either because we’ve never been an in-office company.

But now companies in America have a decision to make. And the survival of our inner city centers of commerce is at stake.

The ‘Urban Doom Loop’

The headline of a recent Washington Post article caught my attention:

How the ‘urban doom loop’ could pose the next economic threat
A commercial real estate apocalypse particularly in midsize cities could spiral into the broader economy.

Yikes. The article does a really nice job of outlining how companies not renewing their leases for high-priced offices in center city areas creates a domino effect on the rest of the economy. When workers aren’t around, retail businesses close up shop, residents move out of the center city, and tax revenues decline leading to fewer services and eventually fewer residents.

That’s the ‘urban doom loop’ – a suitably horrifying name for an economic trend that has been slowly building since the onset of the pandemic.

In our own city of Charlotte, commercial and residential real estate projects continue to expand in all directions while the Uptown area in the center city is hurting. A Charlotte Observer headline from June noted that one out of every five Uptown office floors sit vacant.

When we talk about corporate social responsibility, we tend to forget the role the private sector plays in placemaking and economic impact. Much the same way we might argue that housing instability is an issue that corporations have an ethical obligation to address, so too is the sustainability of a city’s urban core an issue of intersection. This is particularly true since it is the policies of these companies that are contributing to the challenge.

Once opened, the Pandora’s box of remote employment and hybrid workplaces have not been so easy to put away. Companies and employees have been playing a chess match for several years now, with an uncomfortable détente achieved of some ‘mandatory’ in-office time (typically 2-3 days per week) balanced by a continuation of work-from-home. In some cases, individual managers have authority to determine the efficacy of holding to corporate policies.

The result is office buildings that look more like ghost towns than bustling centers of commerce.

Remaking the Urban Landscape

Something’s gotta give. This trendline has the potential to have lasting impacts and standing pat is not an option. Our conversations with some employers suggest that the long-predicted recession in 2023 was planned to serve as a bully pulpit for curbing work-from-home policies. The threat of layoffs would have made it easier to attract workers willing to go back into their offices. But the recession has yet to come, and waiting around is just prolonging the challenge.

Instead, we are hopeful to see more creative solutions.

In Charlotte, Center City Partners recently launched the Reimagining Vintage Office Design Competition to share ideas to adapt office spaces for more modern uses, to “add a range of additional destinations and economic activities to strengthen Uptown as a regional asset.” It may be strange to think of Charlotte office towers as “vintage,” especially since the vast majority of them are only a few decades old. But when one considers the shiny new buildings being erected in South End, the point is clear.

What RTO means for Social Responsibility

We have an idea – make more spaces for nonprofits in these office buildings and encourage them to directly engage with private sector employers.

As we’ve previously outlined in our Profit & Purpose series, generational change has included increased expectation of finding ‘meaning in the workplace.’ Employees who have traditionally worked in cubicles to drive profitability for shareholders and executives are questioning their life’s purpose. The ‘Great Resignation’ was really the ‘Great Reprioritization’ as early career professionals left roles that they found unfulfilling for careers that aligned with their values.

This is the real urban doom loop that all employers should be tracking, no matter the location of their office buildings. The increased demand of values-alignment has created powerful employee resource groups (ERGs) that encourage community-building. It has also led to more partnerful approaches to social impact efforts.

For many companies, this expression remains too transactional. Employees are less interested in one-off service projects than in ongoing engagement opportunities with causes that are meaningful to them. We have advocated for bringing nonprofits inside the workplace, with lunch-and-learns and hands-on activities that break up the work day.

Win-Win-Win

Guess what colocating nonprofits and companies together also encourages? The return of employees to their workplaces! It is difficult to have meaningful engagement with a cause from the comfort of one’s home office.

Bringing nonprofits and private sector employers together under one roof evolves the strategy of corporate responsibility into something far more partnerful. Desiring to build the STEM workforce of tomorrow? There’s a nonprofit for that. Seeking to demonstrate smart growth strategies in a rapidly changing city? There’s a nonprofit for that too.

Why any nonprofit should be forced to spend hard-won charitable dollars on occupancy in an out-of-the-way office building is beyond me. Not when office buildings sit vacant and employees long for more meaning in the workplace. It’s a win-win-win that makes sense for everyone involved.

Will it solve RTO alone? Of course not. But we need to be thinking about a combination of strategies working collectively instead of hoping for a magic bullet of economic recession to solve this challenge. And this is a strategy we think has significant potential as a part of a larger solution.

We just need to find a company willing to give it a try. Any takers? Reach out and let us know. We’d welcome the chance to work with you to make RTO a win-win-win opportunity for our communities.

Filed Under: ESG

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming…

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The Seven Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being

Frankly, sometimes I feel burdened by my calling.

It would be so much easier to develop a simple approach to our work at Next Stage and just put it all on cruise control. Why work so hard? I feel the occasional envy of entrepreneurs who invent a single process or product – a widget of some sort – and it just works out gloriously as one’s life work. Wouldn’t it be great? <sigh>

Social impact is not so simple. The world is in such a state of constant change, with analytics becoming more sophisticated, that clinging to the way we’ve always done it just isn’t an option. We believe we must continually look to reinvent against a backdrop of always-moving factors, taking the best of the last model and folding it into new methodologies deserving of testing.

Next Stage is fueled by social innovation, and it requires a willingness to pioneer new approaches in hopes of discovering the holy trinity of impact – effective strategies that lower costs and are more equitably accessible to all.

It can feel like we’re on an island, with people too busy with today’s challenges to invest their time and energy in tomorrow’s solutions. We search for an evidence base that helps to translate what we believe – our theory of change developed through engagement with more than 200 institutions across nearly a decade of work – that we won’t make significant progress until we work together at the intersection of social impact.

And sometimes, we hit the jackpot, like with The Seven Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being.

We are excited to share with you the “one ring to rule them all” framework we believe needs to be central to our work at that intersection.

“What about mission creep?”

This is a reasonable response to what many organizations are realizing about their work in the years following the world-wide disruption of COVID-19.

It has been drilled into the collective consciousness of nonprofit organizations that they should avoid expanding the scope of their work beyond reasonable boundaries of focus. Organizations advancing education, for example, should “stay in their lane,” even as they realize students without access to food are unlikely to retain much of what they are taught. Nonprofit leaders are encouraged to collaborate, but also to be careful with how they position themselves as responsible for outcomes they don’t directly create through their own services.

The result is most often silos of impact, where service providers track data meaningful to their own mission but rarely collaborate with their partners to analyze the larger picture.

Everywhere, that is, except in health. We’ve outlined this before, how the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health (SDH) published a report in 2005 that outlined how one’s health is determined much less by care provided in a clinical setting but rather by many other factors – things like housing, education, food access and environment.

For nearly 20 years, health-focused organizations have struggled with this knowledge – “how do we manage conditions that are outside the scope of our clinical work?” In effect, “how do we avoid mission creep when everything is telling us that staying in our lane isn’t working?”

A New Ecosystem for Equitable Outcomes

It took time, but there is finally an answer to that lingering question.

The Seven Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being is an approach developed over the last decade by Bobby Milstein and ReThink Health, an initiative focused on “discovering what it takes to design and execute transformative change and produce better health and well-being for all.”

The framework comprises 75 indicators across seven domains, conceptualizing holistic well-being through collaboration. It is a significant advancement of the social determinants of health conceptually into a measurable framework that unites health and human services into a cohesive roadmap. The rigorously researched and evidence-based game plan calls for a new health ecosystem that is systemic, transformative, stewarded, multi-sector, regional and equitable. These are all of our favorite words!

So groundbreaking is the framework that no less than 44 federal health agencies have signed on. The Federal Plan for Equitable Long-Term Recovery and Resilience (ELTRR), published at the end of 2022, is built on the infrastructure of the Seven Vital Conditions and harnesses investment from the federal government over the next decade to see this new ecosystem realized.

Want goosebumps? Check out this quote from the cover page:

“Recovery to pre-pandemic conditions is thus unacceptable as doing so would eliminate the likelihood of improved resilience for the nation. Instead, we must better position public systems to evolve in ways that seek to address individual and community well-being as the primary outcome of policy, programs, and funding opportunities.”

It isn’t enough to get back to where we were. We need to build something better.

Next Stage’s Domains of Impact

Needless to say, we’re pretty excited at Next Stage. The Seven Vital Conditions provides a context that unites our work.

We had already been working to bring together our disparate efforts focused on collaboration management, community voice, movement-building and social impact for business into a more cohesive frame. We could see how these efforts overlapped, but it was sometimes difficult to translate it into an elevator speech.

Over the last year, Next Stage has begun to redefine its work in domains of impact – sectors of social good with networks who identify together as having shared mission and external factors influencing success. In working in those domains, we are also able to spark connections across domains, building bridges to realize the new ecosystem described in the Seven Vital Conditions.

Impact for Health at Next Stage

The first domain we launched last year was an easy one – Impact for Health. Not only had Next Stage built up credibility through 20+ engagements with health-related organizations, but the very nature of the social determinants of health aligned to our desired work at the intersection.

With Randy Jordan joining our team as Chief Advisor for Impact for Health, and Tim Gallagher bringing his expertise as a Senior Consultant, Next Stage is realizing “new ways of doing things” that lean heavily on our work in other domains, e.g. housing, education, food access, and the environment.

Critical to this work is trust and connection, what the Seven Vital Conditions describes as Belonging and Civic Muscle:

Higher levels of social cohesion are associated with higher levels of trust, cooperation and social capital, providing the necessary foundations for creating healthy patterns for working together across groups and sectors, building the ‘civic infrastructure’ for community members to co-create a shared future.

Strategies will only succeed if we work together to realize them, building a “sense of being valued and cared for” that leads to greater participation in community.

This is the north star for our work at Next Stage, and it has been for some time. We just didn’t know what to call it. Cultivating belonging and civic muscle requires attention, intentionality, and yes, investment. These outcomes won’t just happen without it.

Seeking a partner for your work at the intersection? We’d love to talk. Shoot us a message – we’d welcome the chance to explore this exciting framework with you in greater detail.

In Microcosm: Social Responsibility in a Rural Context

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“Thank you for your courage in attending this session.”

When presenting on the addendum to our Profit & Purpose report, I start by acknowledging the audience. At a time when corporate social responsibility is making headlines for the wrong reasons, people who work at nonprofit organizations are often confused about how to approach local businesses for support. Diving into why it’s so complex is not for the faint of heart. 

This is how I found myself in Asheville last week speaking at Philanthropy Institute 2023, an annual conference presented by the Association of Fundraising Professionals chapter in Western NC. It was an uncommon backdrop — corporate social responsibility has typically been thought of as a framework for urban communities with large professional services companies inside skyscraper office buildings. Philanthropy in Western North Carolina has more often been defined by large foundations like the Dogwood Health Trust and leadership gift-making by individual donors.   

But something important is changing about how companies based in rural and more sparsely suburban communities interface with social good. And it has the potential to be game-changing for residents who live in disinvested neighborhoods there. 

Recently, our company has had a bit of an epiphany: stakeholder capitalism driven by socially responsible investing is driving a new supply chain of social impact. It is a trendline that brings together quite literally everything Next Stage has championed in recent years – the importance of community voice, the power of trust-built sites, collaboration as a critical imperative, the social determinants of everything, and the vital role community health plays as connective tissue.        

It made for one heck of a conversation last week in a room full of people who I’m sure are still processing all that was shared. It’s a new way of thinking that I’ll gladly share with you here.

Can we just call them… Social Impact Offsets?

One way to understand how social responsibility is changing for companies with operations in rural areas is to explore global standards for sustainability impacts. A good place to start would be with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which outlines a set of standards for how companies electively report on their impacts on the economy, environment and people. We go in-depth into this process as a part of our recent Profit & Purpose report. 

Suffice it to say, companies that desire to benefit from socially responsible investing avail themselves to assessment by third-party groups, like GRI, to aggregate environmental, social and governance metrics for consideration by investors. Ethical investing has become a worldwide trend, representing $1 out of every $5 invested. Companies simply can no longer ignore a trendline representing that much investment.

The key to this rating system is in their balancing framework. No one metric is considered alone, rather a score is determined by looking holistically at a company’s entire ethical footprint. That is important as corporate executives explore their materiality – the company’s unique drivers of societal impact – and design the best way forward.

There are so many unintended downsides in the day-to-day decision-making of companies. A bank rejecting a family for a home loan may be making a good business decision based on a low credit score, but that is also contributing to poor social and economic mobility for people experiencing poverty. It is a minefield for companies that must examine everything they do through a new lens.

This is especially true for companies wrestling with environmental sustainability challenges. Manufacturers with complex supply chains, companies extracting natural resources, agriculture producers optimizing their crops and other private sector businesses that predominantly work in rural and sparsely populated suburban settings can be those most disrupted by poor performance on impact reporting standards.

For the very largest of these companies, secondary markets for carbon offset credits are an essential tool. Some processes people count on every day to feed their families, power their homes and make transportation feasible have negative environmental impacts not easily solved. While R&D departments work on innovative solutions, socially responsible investing is squeezing capital from these companies. And as outlined recently in a Freakonomics podcast, this has the potential to have the exact opposite outcome as initially intended.

But what if there was a secondary market for social impact, allowing a company with complex sustainability efforts a chance to counter-balance with positive social metrics? And what if those companies not only activated this marketplace with investment but also with the entire engine of its business model? Would we call that secondary market ‘social impact offsets?’

There is evidence in the European and Asian markets of this exact way of thinking. While it might take time for the concept of social impact offsets to make its way to the politically charged United States, it is surely coming. 

It is a framework that smart companies should be seeking to harness now.

Collaboration in Rural Communities  

Heads up – that marketplace of social impact offsets already exists and it’s called the nonprofit sector. Organizations that generate impact through programming and companies with resources to fuel that engine of impact are discovering new forms of mutual benefit.

For companies with complicated sustainability challenges, the lure of social impact offsets may be just the solution they are seeking. That doesn’t mean it will be easily realized.

Creating positive social impact in small towns is incredibly difficult. Beyond limited financial resources, a lack of public transportation, credible service providers and resident trust in systems creates a landscape of challenging factors. And yet, the small size of the community also makes it much easier for a company to demonstrate how its self-interested efforts help move the needle for social and economic mobility. 

The emerging concept of demonstrating ‘impact in microcosm’ invites new ways to construct social impact offsets. The targeted work is best pioneered in a rural context, where corporate social responsibility is more often thought of as ‘big city talk.’

Next Stage believes ingredients to make this happen include:

  • New Methods of Service Deployment – The lack of health and human service providers in rural communities is a significant barrier to overcome. New models leverage trusted sites, coordinate service delivery institutions, and harness direct service providers to create social impact supply chains to activate nonprofits in urban and suburban areas nearby to bring additional services to underserved communities. This regional hub model is ripe with potential.
        
  • Public-Private Collaboration – Companies pioneering these models will be hard-pressed to deliver them without multi-sector investment. The sustainability of service delivery increases as public sources of funding align with foundations, faith institutions, and private philanthropy. Corporate investment is best used to build capacity and scale interventions – resources that traditional philanthropy and government agencies are typically less nimble to provide.
  • Models Built for Measurement – Regional hub service models work best when they are able to generate meaningful impact metrics to demonstrate forward progress. As nonprofits and the companies that invest in them join on the same side of the table, measurable impacts in community become more possible. To us, this sort of progress is what we need to see for a ‘social impact offset marketplace’ to be fully formed.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are different. At Next Stage, we are actively working with employers and nonprofit networks throughout the Southeast to realize new impact models. This construct is something we feel can truly change the world.

If you represent a company, municipality, aligned foundation or regional framework and would like to discuss these concepts in greater detail, contact us today for a free consultation.