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The Moneyball of Social Impact

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This month we are celebrating Next Stage’s ninth anniversary. Nine years?! Are you serious? It astonishes me how much time has passed. And yet in the same breath, it feels like only yesterday I was sitting at my old kitchen table, trying to figure out what it meant to own a company.

I think I’m proudest of having lost the Next Stage pub-style trivia Haley designed for our team meeting this past week, with questions culled from the nine years of the company’s existence. That others on our team know more about Next Stage’s history than me? That’s pretty special.

Another anniversary? It was 20 years ago that Michael Lewis published Moneyball, a book that in some ways contributed to laying the core philosophies for what would become Next Stage. I was reminded of it multiple times this past week, and it serves as inspiration for this essay.

We Are Family

Moneyball is one of the first books post-college that I can distinctly remember not just reading, but obsessing over. Some of that relates to my lifelong love of baseball. Or rather, my lifelong passion for a specific baseball team – the Pittsburgh Pirates. I was born into a family with Pittsburgh connections and ever since I could hold a baseball, I have been a bit fixated on the Battlin’ Buccos.

And yet, the Pirates are a very bad baseball team. They have been most of my life. As a small market franchise with an owner unwilling to invest what it takes to compete, I am relegated to cheering for victories that are sort of random – where the team picks in the draft, the development of players in the minor leagues, and incremental improvement as demonstrated by statistics. Where others root for pennants, I tend to geek out on analytics.

That love of statistical analysis was forged with Moneyball, a book that followed the 2002 season of the Oakland A’s and highlighted the unique approach to winning led by the team’s general manager, Billy Beane. Rather than go after players who had classically strong performance attributes, the A’s sought those who were undervalued in the marketplace, and yet performed in ways that made for a successful team.

It is an asset-based approach, of finding the competitive advantage that is often hidden from view, that felt so fresh and inspiring. The applicability to social good is obvious – like the Oakland A’s, most nonprofits are cost constrained and have to find system hacks to make progress.

They would go on to make a movie from the book with Brad Pitt in the GM’s seat, but back when it was published, I pictured someone else. Someone… more like me.

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

I realize now that my love of the hapless Pittsburgh Pirates has fully informed much of my life. I am forever a fan of the underdog. No matter the situation, whether in sports or life, I find myself almost always choosing the side with the least opportunity to succeed. My compass has been wired for social justice in this way, of believing that an unequal playing field is just wrong.

And while I am an advocate for system change – like a salary cap in baseball or a change to public policy to assist disinvested people – there is also something I love about the challenge of overcoming great odds. Like Billy Beane, I enjoy that outsider status, of finding ways to be competitive even against the backdrop of an unjust system.

It is certainly the mindset that caused Next Stage to launch Cultivate as an incubator for emerging nonprofit organizations in 2018. Pre-pandemic, it was incredibly difficult to get local leaders of social impact to make time for small nonprofits early in their founding. “Too small, too little experience, too inconsequential.” And yet, we knew the founders of these organizations as true disrupters, often with lived experience, who offered new ways of doing things that deserved to be recognized. They also had the trust of the people they sought to serve. They were so worthy, in our eyes, and the lack of an onramp to the systems that support nonprofits was, we felt, unjust.

So, we built a curriculum to help “the little guy” get a leg up, find the marketplace where they could be competitive despite their size, and grow a plan for increasing their impact. It was in keeping with the work Next Stage has done since its humble beginnings, of identifying strategies to help level the playing field by looking to grow impact, resources, capacity and trust in places where others don’t.

The Hidden Side of Everything

I was reminded of Moneyball while listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Freakonomics Radio, based on the musings of its host, Stephen Dubner. The original Freakonomics book was another seminal influence on the founding of Next Stage, published in 2009, soon after my arrival in North Carolina. In it, co-authors Steven Levitt and Dubner uncover “the hidden side of everything,” turning conventional wisdom on its head.

Rejecting conventional wisdom is right up my alley. It is certainly the energy fueling our Profit & Purpose series, examining the intersection of the private sector and nonprofits. We are publishing our next report at the end of this month – Profit & Purpose: The ESG Addendum – and pitching it to Freakonomics Radio is something I hadn’t even thought to do until writing this very sentence.

In a recent podcast, Dubner revisited Moneyball to explore its continuing impact even two decades later. While Lewis would go on to write many great books, including The Blind Side and The Big Short, one could argue none had the cultural or industry impact of Moneyball. The title itself has been often aligned to other domains (like the title of this essay), with the goal of getting a leg up on the competition. It also transformed Major League Baseball, where the principles outlined in the book have gone on to be considered best practice.

The concepts themselves may have been revolutionary to find in a book on the New York Times bestseller list, but it turns out, they were not exactly new. Israeli economists Danny Kahneman and Amos Tversky had previously pioneered research into the field of behavioral economics. As noted by Dubner:

“One big takeaway from their research was that we all use mental shortcuts to make decisions, even important decisions, and those shortcuts can create cognitive biases.”

Mental Shortcuts and Cognitive Biases

My journeys have shown me that most people are essentially good. As a humanist, I believe strongly in people and communities, and that what leads to injustice is most often a combination of factors – economic limitations, limited data, a lack of intellectual curiosity, and yes, cognitive bias.

It turns out, trusting your gut is a really bad way of making decisions. And yet, people do it all the time. When it comes to the world of social impact, there are a bunch of wrong directions and missed opportunities that come from mental shortcuts that do harm. Here are a few of our least favorite:

  • “Low overhead for a nonprofit is good.” – Paging Dan Pallotta! Add his must-watch TED Talk to your list of to-dos if you are unfamiliar. Speaking of anniversaries, this year also marks a decade since Pallotta dropped a mic on “the overhead myth” that suggests a moral victory for organizations that talk about low overhead as a virtue, about driving your contribution primarily at their direct services. That is a great way to make sure your nonprofit never grows its impact! And yet we still find nonprofits every day bragging about their low overhead, feeding into a cognitive bias that does active harm to other nonprofits. What misguidedness!
  • “The largest nonprofits are best equipped to create positive impact.” – Not so fast! While there is no question larger nonprofits have more resources to serve more people, the pandemic taught everyone that ‘might doesn’t make right’ when it comes to effectiveness. In fact, it is more often the smaller, community-based organizations that have trust built with the people in their communities. Many large “agency” organizations proved wholly ineffective at getting services to the people who needed them most throughout COVID-19. The time has come to recognize that a new supply chain of social impact is needed – one that recognizes the needs of both large and small nonprofits alike.
  • “Need to raise money? Host an event!” – Uh, what? Even if the abundance of rubber chicken fundraising lunches in your city or town hasn’t reached a saturation point, certainly the pandemic laid bare the reality that event-centric fundraising is no longer sufficient. Organizations overly dependent on event revenue found themselves unable to host their galas, golf tournaments, 5Ks and breakfasts. Younger generations are far less inclined to participate in the events made so popular by their parents (and grandparents!).
  • “There is little a nonprofit can teach my private sector company.” – Ugh! We still run into this mindset, of thinking of nonprofits as children, benefitting from the largess of the grown-up private sector companies that provide “corporate gifts.” In truth, companies are looking more and more like nonprofits these days, with purpose statements and employee engagement strategies designed to create an increased sense of belonging. Nonprofits have been winning in this space for years. In fact, we tend to think of it as a competitive advantage for nonprofits that succeed at creating true partnerships with companies.

Reframing My Point of View

Our ninth anniversary finds Next Stage at the precipice of some amazing opportunities. Our company has grown as a result of finding ways to work with bigger clients featuring more complex challenges than ever before. We now talk about “working at the intersection of social good,” where nonprofits, companies, government, philanthropy and residents come together to make a more lasting change.

Critical to this shift was a personal reckoning, of no longer seeing myself and the company our team has built from a purely outsider perspective. The strategies we have been pioneering for years are now ways of thinking that intrigue large institutions and systems as well. Everyone has been disrupted in some way over the last few years, and leaders at all levels are realizing that “getting back to normal” may not ever be possible.

Embracing new realities means also wrestling with the truth that what once worked is no longer a go-to. It is an environment in which Next Stage can thrive. It’s in our name, after all. Working towards the collective next stage for our communities has always been our raison d’être.

And that has meant starting a new chapter personally as well.

I’m ready. Because nine years in, Next Stage isn’t just me anymore. It’s a team. And our team is amazing.

Happy New Year.

Vulnerability and the Power of Impact Networks

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“Wow! That was awesome!”

My colleague Helen Hope Kimbrough and I spend a lot of time together working on behalf of our nonprofit clients. She leads our community voice work, surfacing insights and wisdom from community stakeholders, which we in turn summarize and publish for our clients as a deliverable we call a Current Conditions Assessment. With it we create a content platform for our clients to understand our research, much of it captured qualitatively through interviews, focus groups and surveys.

Of late, our findings on behalf of clients have been fairly wide ranging. The challenges facing nonprofits are myriad in this post-pandemic timeline, with an unrelenting workforce shortage crisis, continued downstream disruption from COIVD-19, and a looming economic Recession as just a handful of the cheery topics that serve as the backdrop to planning. Our assessments are meant to be an inspirational jumping off point for planning, but sometimes (often?) our findings are downright challenging – asking our nonprofit partners to contemplate substantive change to the status quo.

Such was a most recent facilitation. Helen and I have been serving as the ‘out-of-town consultants’ to a sizable nonprofit agency in another metro. We have learned a lot about this agency’s area of focus, and in truth, what we’ve learned has scared us quite a bit. The road ahead for our largest and most influential nonprofit organizations is bumpy, to say the least.

This is not work for the faint of heart. It takes really bold, courageous leadership, which we saw on clear display as a part of this recent facilitation. The team we met with was driven to embrace change and give voice to what they had long been thinking. Nothing we were sharing was altogether new, but delivering it in a comprehensive package was truly a call to action, a call to leadership, and the task force rose to the occasion. They embraced new ways of thinking and challenged themselves to lean into challenge. They acknowledged risks but would not allow them to halt forward progress. They worked creatively. They what-if’d. They dreamed.

It was amazing. And so exhilerating.

Near the end, the CEO of the organization said: “the stakeholders you met with have encouraged us to think this way, they’ve challenged us to center the big potential impact in our planning, and it feels liberating to have that reinforced.”

It was an extraordinary comment that provides such insight into barriers faced by social impact leaders.

Taking the Pulse of a Community

We at Next Stage are really students of leadership. We have the rare opportunity to embed ourselves with nonprofit and corporate changemakers who are leading the way through their bold planning and actions.

We also know what a lonely road it can be for so many – one fraught with pitfalls and unforeseen barriers. Just accomplishing today’s tasks would be hard enough, but these leaders are being asked to think increasingly more expansively, calling out systemic inequities and finding ways to overcome them. It’s hard work, and getting some positive reinforcement can make all the difference.

Our process helps our clients benefit from the wisdom of an organization’s stakeholders including staff, board members, partners, volunteers, philanthropists, and most especially, the people the organization aims to serve. They are an organization’s most important stakeholders. Aggregating this feedback helps our clients understand what their constituencies think about them, what they hope they will accomplish, and how they want to be involved.

Lately, we’ve been wondering whether there might be a better way of working. We do all of this work for our clients, conducting countless hours of interviews and focus groups, and document it for what is often an audience of just a handful of people. Is that really equitable? Might there be a better way to work?

What if our nonprofit leaders had access to a network of both their own stakeholders and others who could provide real-time feedback? What would it look like to build and implement a powerful network like that? How would it help people make better decisions, and gain confidence that their ideas have validity?

What We’re Reading: Impact Networks

The Next Stage team has a book club, and right now we are all-in on Impact Networks by David Ehrichman, which

makes a very compelling argument for why we need “diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear.”

Impact networks “bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions.”

Inherent in the building of impact networks is vulnerability – a willingness to ‘be real’ with others, to say what isn’t being said, and to say what absolutely must be said. It is a space that welcomes leaders like our recent client CEO, who gained strength from the wisdom of community voice, who in fact felt liberated by it to get creative and think outside the box.

It is the ideal book to inspire our next steps as a company. Next Stage is on the precipice of great change as we harness the potential of our Cultivate platform to help us implement our new theory of change. Janet Ervin will be sharing more about that on our blog soon, including how we see building and managing communities of practice as a new method of supporting impact-making.

Because it is clear we need new networks now more than ever. The world of social good has arrived at a critical crossroads after several years of disruption. Never have we been more attuned to the ways government, the private sector and nonprofits are linked together in service to addressing the needs of all people in our communities. And whereas silos of services were a dominant feature of the past, that approach is no longer sufficient.

We have arrived at a moment of understanding, that success can only be accomplished collectively. The ‘social determinants of everything’ we coined earlier this year suggests that outcomes are not achieved in the vacuum of a single provider of services, but rather as a result of layered collaboration that leads to effective programming, optimized operations, effective use of resources and increased brand awareness.

Next Stage believes this new ‘era of mutuality’ requires rewiring how people and institutions work together to achieve a shared goal.  It requires a new supply chain of social good – one that brings together everyone involved to share ownership, design and responsibility for outcomes.

It also requires new frameworks for working together that lean in to the principles of trust-building to achieve buy-in and collective effort.

It is work we feel uniquely called to do. We look forward to sharing more in the weeks and months ahead.

The Social Determinants of… Everything

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Determinant (noun): a factor which decisively affects the nature or outcome of something; serving to determine or decide

Why are things the way they are?

As a strategist, it is often my job to identify leading factors influencing outcomes. I do this typically to help a group of people – a nonprofit organization or a company – come up with a set of activities to influence those factors to create a more favorable outcome. So as a rule, I’m usually trying to pick apart the underlying drivers of outcomes.

This can make it difficult to be around me sometimes. I am accused of making leaps of logic when really I’m just playing out scenarios in my head. And while that works pretty well when playing board games, it can get a little annoying half-way through a movie.

Some of this is about intuition and ‘a gut feeling,’ but most often it is a function of data. And when it comes to the underlying drivers affecting disinvested communities, the data is pretty clear – the deck is stacked against people experiencing poverty. Following more than two years of the pandemic, these factors have never been more pronounced or wide-ranging. That is why we’ve taken to calling it ‘the social determinants of everything.’

Risk Factors Influencing Health

If you are familiar with the term ‘social determinants,’ it is likely through its connection to health. The concept of the social determinants of health (SDH) existed more than 100 years before the World Health Organization’s Commission on Social Determinants of Health convened in 2005. The resulting report focused on the social factors that lead to ill health and health inequities globally.

One of the oft-quoted statistics from the report is that activities inside a clinical setting, like at a doctor’s office or hospital, only account for 20% of one’s health outcomes. Fully 80% of what influences a person’s health are factors unrelated to receiving medical care – things like food access, housing, education and environmental factors. As an example, if someone has mold in their home, that person will continue having respiratory issues a physician can only do so much to address.

SDH are a big part of the future of healthcare in America and are essential for driving down the cost of healthcare, particularly for disinvested populations. As Medicaid undergoes transformation in North Carolina to a managed care model, health systems are working to drive more community-based approaches that attempt to work upstream of health complications, tackling preventative care that avoids costly health interventions that lead to poor outcomes. It represents a costing model that aligns with the best interests of patients.

In short, we can’t just focus on healthcare if we want people to be healthier. We have to look at the whole picture, to understand that there are other factors affecting health. It requires thinking outside of silos.

It means talking about systems.

Determinants vs. Drivers

Some have begun using the term ‘social drivers’ instead of ‘social determinants,’ or else use them interchangably. A recent report by Ann Somers Hogg with the Christensen Institute makes a strong and well-reasoned argument for replacing the term ‘determinants’ with ‘drivers.’

Determinants do suggest a pre-determined path based on a set of factors. We stand behind the phrase ‘social determinants’ because systems have been built and perpetuated that produce these outcomes – they are not merely drivers but social constructs. Many of the risk factors that lead to poor health outcomes are the same for educational success, employment and economic mobility. And the reality is that many of these factors are driven by systemic frameworks.

That is not to say that self-efficacy is not a significant influence on outcomes – it is the most important factor determining an individual’s success. But it would be unfair to lift up individual achievement in the face of such overwhelming odds and suggest that the underlying social factors that made it so difficult were just part of the equation. It shouldn’t be this difficult, and acknowledging that decisive factors were in place makes that achievement all the more significant. And too rare.

As we take stock of not only our community but the global consequences of the recent pandemic, we can see that a myriad of pre-conditions led to a weakened system of care and slow responses. We can see how everything is connected.

We’ve written about this before, this notion of overlap and ‘mutuality.’ With COVID-19, we now understand how community health affects commerce, for example. We can see the complexity of the systems in which we operate and how every social issue has a likelihood to impact you personally – your family, your work and your community.

Today, we’re asking you to apply that same understanding of mutuality to those who are least well-positioned to thrive when times are tough. If the factors influencing your own success over the last 2+ years were complicated and layered, can you fathom what it must be like for someone experiencing poverty even in the best of times?

The Future of Mutuality

At Next Stage, we believe we are at an incredibly important juncture in history. Our recent experiences as a society have the potential to create a rare moment of empathy. Not only can we see ourselves in the struggles of others, we also have had a glimpse behind the curtain and know that our systems are fallible.

What will we do with this knowledge? Of late, we have noticed in some a desire to ‘get back to the way things were’ before disruption was a part of the daily grind. This is a missed opportunity to use our newfound empathy and systemic awareness to rebuild stronger and more equitably. But to do that, we’re going to need to address some things:

Increased Collaboration – We all need to be working together, now more than ever. Nonprofits accustomed to operating in a sector like health, education or housing need to see that other program providers are not just creating wrap-arounds on your programming – their work is as important as your own. But nonprofits are just the most visible frameworks for collaboration. The much bigger need is for our municipalities to work in concert with the private sector to get to the root causes of inequity. Nonprofits, government and businesses have never been more aligned than in the climb back from the pandemic – it is time to demonstrate a new model in practice.

Stronger Advocacy Efforts – It has been amazing to see the repositioning of advocacy in society. Everywhere you look, efforts to drive ‘community voice’ and ‘trust-built philanthropy’ have renewed energy and context. Institutions that may have seen ‘flexing their voice’ as a risk are now building advocacy plans, and it heartens us at Next Stage. We believe this moment of empathy and system awareness will fade if it is not kept alive through advocacy efforts. We cannot afford to forget what we have learned together and we need more human-centered ways of unpacking how our systems create the inequity we are committed to overcoming.

Investment in Data & Analytics – The overlapping factors influencing someone’s success are myriad and complicated to map. As a people, we prefer simple equations that make it easy to understand how to move forward. A general lack of real-time data and analytics is partly to blame, with disconnected databases throughout our community unable to build a more complete picture for us all. We are living at a time of incredible computing and data access – it is time we pointed that innovation at helping us understand how these risk factors are linked.

Last year, we rebranded our firm ‘to work at the intersection of social good.’ The concepts of mutuality and social determinants suggested that our narrowed focus on strategy for nonprofits was only one part of the bigger story. That realization, a growing one over our eight years as a firm, led to an important juncture – either we accept it or do something about it. We chose the latter, and it has led to a new journey for us as a firm and for me as a professional. I’ve never felt more determined and purpose-driven in my life.

How have you been affected by all that we’ve learned together? How is it changing how your nonprofit, company or municipality operates? Are you similarly feeling called to ‘a different way of being?’

I sure hope so. The future of many people is depending on it.

What Movement Are You Leading?

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I’m back with another installment in our series unpacking how the shift from Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to Environment Social & Governance (ESG) is transforming… well, everything. I’d encourage you to read our earlier primers on the differences between CSR and ESG and the role risk is playing in the ESG pivot as a preface to this article.

As Janet covered last week, we have spent the last year continuing our study of how social impact is evolving inside corporate America. We think it’s a pretty big deal, both for the nonprofit organizations we originally built our business to serve and to society as a whole. We’ve reframed our company’s entire theory of change as a result of this research and have constructed a business plan into the future to scale our new approach.

What we’ve learned is that the work we have done with nearly 200 nonprofits since 2014 is ultimately not that much different than the paradigm shift we are navigating with private sector companies. Both are being powered by people, and helping lead movements of people is what Next Stage is all about.

The Shift from Sustainability to ESG

While it may seem like ESG came out of nowhere as a disruption to private sector businesses, it has been a movement two decades in the making. ‘Corporate charity’ existed for the better part of the 20th century, but the new millennium brought with it a greater degree of focus on environmental sustainability. Companies began to pay attention to their carbon footprint, particularly those businesses with complicated supply chains that required significant logistics. The debate over climate change may have raged politically, but many companies were quietly beginning process modification and change management. 

These efforts grew into what we now call ‘sustainability,’ and for many companies it became a significant part of their corporate cultures. The first Chief Sustainability Officers were seen in the early 2010s as companies sought to be proactive. As we covered in our last deep dive on this topic, the risk of regulation was a motivating factor for companies that began to see a societal shift on the horizon.

Running concurrent with sustainability inside the corporate construct have been other expressions of social consciousness. As previously noted, corporate social responsibility predated sustainability but rarely was directly connected to the strategic arm of the business. For most companies, this expression has lived disconnected from the rest of the business, not reporting into any of the departments it logically impacts like human resources or marketing.  

Related efforts arose in other areas of the business model. Initiatives to create increased diversity in the workforce began as expressions of human resources, eventually evolving into more mature goal setting around inclusion and equity that led to the creation of DEI as a strategic imperative. Some companies have recently added Chief Diversity Officers as DEI has taken on new energy in the wake of increased calls for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Identity has been a big part of the emergence of employee resource groups (ERGs) that have become expressions of workplace culture.

The challenge for companies right now is that they are applying what previously worked for sustainability in a new era of change that ESG is signaling. A combination of corporate counsel and sustainability leaders are being tasked with a new form of risk with regulatory implications. Except this time, the field of play is focused on new human-centered metrics that are more difficult to manage. If sustainability was primarily centered on operational change management, this new focus on ESG is more expansively reaching into all aspects of the business model. And at stake, more than ever before, is public perception driven by customers, employees and shareholders.

Leading the People Powering a Movement

We know that sounds sort of ominous. We have been wrestling with how to frame the opportunity that is in front of institutions of all types and finding that a little bit of scary-sounding rhetoric is needed to get the attention of decision-makers. Like the nonprofits we’ve worked with for so long, sometimes you have to talk about the downside risk of inaction.

But Next Stage is far more optimistic about what this change means for all of us, for a society that is increasingly becoming more plugged in to how we all have a voice through collective action. What has been termed as ‘generational change,’ of a Millennial and Gen-Z-led effort to bring values front and center, can no longer be compartmentalized. These young people are not aging into acceptance of previous norms. Instead, they are reshaping the world through a renewed focus on ethics and guiding principles. 

For a guy who has dedicated his career to advancing social good, it is hard to see this as anything but a win.

We believe this need not be seen as a disruptive force for the private sector. America is founded not only on democratic ideals but capitalistic ones as well. We believe in a free market, and that market is increasingly declaring itself. How will your company (or nonprofit) respond?

We liken this paradigm shift to others that have come before it, to the industrial revolution, the rise of digital technology, the advent of the Internet and the emergence of social media. Each of these advancements challenged leading institutions to make a choice – to either fiercely protect the status quo that had worked so many years, or to make changes to stay contemporary to a new reality. For every Sears that refused to make those changes fast enough there is an Amazon, a new company that seeks to harness the paradigm shift into a powerful expression. 

This movement has the potential to help solve problems that have long plagued our communities, if we can harness the power of collective will and ownership. 

The New Realities of Collective Ownership

We use the word ‘collective’ intentionally. Social media, the most recent paradigm shift, has changed society in ways both good and bad. One way it has been used effectively is in galvanizing people to action in service to shared values. 

In this way, we believe all of the brands we engage with are collectively owned – we either feel they express us or they don’t – and increasingly that determination is being made not only through regulatory processes but in the court of public opinion. 

It is a space Next Stage knows very well. We have long championed the 501c3 nonprofit as a collectively owned construct, powerful in the ways it leverages mission, vision, values and guiding principles to build buy-in toward tackling society’s toughest challenges. It takes care to knit together the many constituencies that make up the nonprofit business model including board members, staff, volunteer, donors, and perhaps most importantly, the people served by the nonprofit. Ensuring all feel ownership in the model creates the sense of belonging that fuels the nonprofit. Without a shared belief in the nonprofit – in its virtuousness, deep commitment and strategic savviness – it would be entirely ineffective no matter how many resources it has. The nonprofit model is collectively owned.

The new reality for the private sector is that we believe their business model is also collectively owned – not because the IRS designates it as such, but because customers, employees and shareholders have decided that it is.

A New Private Sector Paradigm

Next Stage has arrived at a moment of clarity about what we are here to do. Our new brand manifesto is in the final stages of development and I could not be more excited. It speaks to our work in helping our clients lead movements, of “building a less lonely path for the visionaries and changemakers” who aspire to reshape the world.

There is a critical need for business leaders in that matrix. Social impact will always be a small expression if we think of it as belonging solely to nonprofit organizations. We believe fiercely that nonprofits can be effective and powerful partners to the private sector in unlocking their pent-up potential, but the much bigger movement we want to be a part of is dependent upon the business sector.

We see so much potential in our private sector clients, to not only ride this wave of social change but leverage it, letting it fuel a transformation that translates into bottom-line results. Without profitability, this movement will not be successful. As with every paradigm shift that came before it, capitalism must find a way to create a new status quo that is infused with new standard operating procedures.

We want to do our part. We look forward to sharing more about the future we see in the weeks and months ahead, including how your company or nonprofit can harness this paradigm shift to advance your goals. Because a movement is meaningless without an effective call to action.

We will be sharing more about this at SHARE Charlotte‘s Fifth Annual Nonprofit Summit next Tuesday, focusing specifically on how nonprofits of all sizes can center their corporate partners’ customers, employees and shareholders in their private sector activation plans.

Intrigued and want to explore how to harness this paradigm shift for your company or nonprofit? Reach out and schedule time with our team. We believe every conversation is another step toward the future we want to see.

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“Oh boy, here we go again…”

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In early June, the staff team at Next Stage decided we were ready to connect again in person. We were all in various stages of vaccination and felt we were at a place where it made sense to take our weekly staff meetings off Zoom.

Our destination of choice? Well, of course, Community Matters Café, the place to see and be seen if you are at all connected to social impact in the Charlotte region. On any given day I’m likely to see multiple people I know (cue the Cheers theme song), and so it has also been my go-to spot for coffee over the last two months when catching up with folks in my network face-to-face. It is typically a happy place I’m excited to visit.

Except this past Friday, when I had a pang of dread creep in to my morning routine. Pulling into a parking spot, I looked on the passenger seat next to me and saw something I had hoped to put behind me.

A mask. My cloth, Esty-purchased constant companion through much of the pandemic. I bought a six-pack last summer and had carefully retired them to my sock drawer after getting the second stab.

“Oh boy, here we go again…”

Been There, Done That

The Delta variant of COVID has “gained new energy” in Mecklenburg County in recent weeks, according to Public Health Director Gibbie Harris. Along with it has come “rising case numbers, rising test positivity rate and the increase in hospitalizations.”

For my part, I was once again back to bumping fists with folks throughout the past week, however still walking around mask-less, resolute that we had moved past the worst of it and were “steadily getting back to normal.”

That was, until Friday and the return of my trusty mask.

I hate to be a bummer this Monday morning, but the ritual of masking-up brings to mind a question – what else should we expect to return in the weeks and months to come? I’ll admit we bought an extra six-pack of toilet paper at the store this weekend, noting that sanitizer and disinfecting wipes were in strong supply, at least for now. A little digging this weekend found late-stage summer camps cancelled or going back to digital engagement and CMS debating the merits of mandating masks as kids return to the new school year.

My mind flashed to all of the parents of young children I know – hardworking people who have shouldered so. damn. much. over the course of the last 16 months. I’d noticed in many of them of late a return of the brightness behind the eyes. This news of the delta variant is likely to sting them significantly.

How are you doing, folks? No, really, are you okay?

Who Takes Care of the Caregivers?

Over the last week, mental health has once again entered the public’s consciousness. Many headlines were made when gymnast Simone Biles opted out of Olympic events citing her mental health. Social media has been awash in debate about her decisions, showing a frankly absurd amount of apathy for the extreme pressure placed on individuals in the public eye, much less the G.O.A.T. gymnast competing in an off-year Olympics due to a worldwide pandemic.

Biles opened up about her decision on Instagram earlier in the week: “It’s honestly petrifying trying to do a skill but not having your mind and body in sync,” she wrote. “Literally cannot tell up from down. It’s the craziest feeling ever. Not having an inch of control over your body.”

Who else can relate? I’ll admit to some really low moments over the last year and change, moments when it felt like the world was crashing down on me and I just needed a time-out. I’ve observed these moments in virtually everyone I know – clients, colleagues and family members alike.

In the world of social good, it is a particular challenge. Who takes care of the people tasked with taking care of others?

It brings to mind the conversations I’ve had in the last couple months:

  • The program staff leader who sees the end of the eviction moratorium this week as the beginning of a new, horrible phase of pandemic impact…
  • The advocate nonprofit chief executive of color caught between the demands of the job with the growing certainty that the inequity impacting the community is systemic…
  • The board of directors (who all have important day jobs) banding together to gird a struggling nonprofit through a period of significant change and challenge…
  • The CSR executive working overtime to engage the company’s employee resource groups who are seeking values-aligned solutions to challenges of identity in a new DEI landscape…

We know so many are feeling professional burdens right now, with disrupted supply chains, talent shortages and work-life balance challenges creating daily hurdles. But for the social good community, where hope and inspiration are needed to foster volunteer and donor buy-in, the constant barrage is taking an even bigger toll. It is an existential concern that honestly keeps me up some nights.

A Focus on Emotional Well-Being

It is high time we hit pause and looked inside our institutions to check-in on the mental health of the people our community counts on to take care of others. Why? Because we’re probably not doing enough of it.

We discussed the importance of emotional wellbeing as a part of The Social Good Report 2021: Profit & Purpose, featuring the work of Willis Towers Watson (WTW), a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients around the world turn risk into a path for growth.

According to Karyn Tindall, Client Relationship Director at WTW: “Our research shows that almost 90 percent of employers feel their senior leadership sincerely cares about employee wellbeing, but only 50% of employees agree,” Tindall said. “The pandemic has created a spotlight on this issue, and bridging the gap is critical to achieving greater employee engagement and being a destination employer in the future.”

No matter your sector or field, caring about your employees’ mental health is just smart business. WTW’s Global Benefits Attitudes Research finds that those struggling with wellbeing miss 12 more days per year due to presenteeism (e.g. the lost productivity that occurs when employees are not fully functioning in the workplace) and two times more likely to take time off due to unexpected reasons during the pandemic.

Eddie Gammill, PhD, RN, wellbeing expert and clinical strategist at WTW highlights that the wellbeing challenge is critical to both employers and employees: “Employers have an increased focus in areas like behavioral health while employees also have an increased interest in wellbeing, reporting their top concerns as emotional wellbeing and social wellbeing/connecters.”

The ‘Hit Pause’ Checklist

Worried your team might be teetering on the edge? Here are a few steps you can take this week toward promoting workplace wellness:

  1. Simply Ask – It is hard to know the toll of the pandemic on your team if you never ask, and anonymity can be important to get at honest feedback. Employee listening and sensing surveys are a critical tool in the toolkit for determining how best to increase employee wellbeing.
  2. Formalize Flexibility – Workplaces everywhere had to shift significantly with stay-at-home orders and the challenges of childcare. Many believe the expectations of employees are permanently changed and it might be time for employers to consider hard-wiring flexibility into the handbook. (For inspiration, check out LinkedIn’s recent announcement)
  3. Discuss Time Off – Planned time away can make a big difference for employees juggling work and life challenges, but it can feel like a luxury given the heavy lift occurring currently in workplaces. Proactive discussion of time away helps the employer plan and gives the employee a milestone.
  4. Launch an Anti-Stigma Campaign – The vitriol directed at Simone Biles this past week suggests we have a long way to go in eliminating the misconceptions of mental health in the workplace. Destigmatizing mental health challenges gets a boost when employers embrace open dialogue.

In the meantime, pack a mask, folks. We can defeat this virus but we have to work together, and that includes promoting vaccinations for employees. Otherwise, we should get used to that feeling of “oh boy, here we go again…”

ABOUT NEXT STAGE

The current set of challenges for many business and nonprofit leaders are unprecedented and overwhelming – workforce changes, the impacts of the pandemic and social change.

For companies, Next Stage believes that the social impact efforts that already exist within their walls offer low-cost, high impact solutions to many of these challenges. We help purpose-focused business leaders build, leverage and expand social good efforts to build positive company culture, improve the bottom line and create a next generation workforce – all while making significant community impact.

For nonprofits, changes are coming fast including increased need, changing service models and shifting social priorities that require increased nimbleness and innovation. Next Stage partners with nonprofit leaders to design strategies and processes that help navigate change to create real community impact. We believe in creative problem solving for maximum, system-wide impact and we’ll be there every step of the way.

Interested in how we can help? Reach out to us to learn more: info@nextstage-consulting.com 

Reflections from a Summer Fellow

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By Jacob Hertzinger, Summer Research Intern

When applying to be this year’s summer research fellow I set one goal for the summer: to be around incredibly passionate people in the hopes that I could discover my passion. To be completely honest when I accepted the opportunity as a Davidson Nonprofit fellow I was a little nervous that the summer would be a combination of endless Zoom seminars and busy work. However, I was happy to find that the Next Stage team really does live by their six core values – and that those principles aligned with my own values. Next Stage believes in the work they do, obvious from the incredibly passionate people that I was able to call my coworkers.

Since most reflections are riddled with cliches; I’ll start by offering one of my own. This summer has flown by, which has proved to be the most exciting factor in my summer with Next Stage. I spent the summer researching community-based organizations in Charlotte and looking at the ways these organizations grew out of neighborhoods, often becoming critical players in the health and activity of each community.

My two biggest takeaways from my summer Fellowship are as follows:

I understand the value of nonprofit leaders. 

I came into Next Stage with the bias that altruism should be the only factor that nonprofit leaders should espouse, but this summer changed my perspective. My internal bias had factored in a price reduction for nonprofit executives because I wanted to believe that all charitable donations go directly to services for the community. But after reflection and research, I have realized that nonprofits should take lessons from corporate America. The models developed by companies work extremely well, so why should we expect nonprofits to run smoothly while societally rejecting the most obvious way to run a successful business? Nonprofits need top talent in order to run strong, efficient organizations and to help the greatest amount of people. Next Stage has shown me that nonprofit organizations can’t be run as effectively if their business model is based on a “mom and pop” locality.

Community organizations are at the heart of community history. 

The impact of community-based organizations (CBOs) is obvious in the creation of positive communal benefit, but it seems these places also have another important task within the communities they serve –  the preservation of history. This summer I was tasked with a research project to better understand the history of Charlotte neighborhoods, along with the community organizations that exist in each community. I found that the neighborhoods with numerous, active and inclusive CBOs had a more extensive archive on their neighborhood history. It seemed as if the more active the community was in the creation of CBOs the more they were engaged in the shared history of their communities. All neighborhoods that had extensive history maintained a central community organization that wasn’t limited to just neighborhood associations. Churches, amusement parks, military camps, nonprofits, and even schools were foundational to communities – and responsible for the preservation of history. This history is often under threat in Charlotte because of the incoming wave of gentrification transforming many areas, but the communities with strong CBOs and history tended to be revitalized rather than rebuilt, emphasizing the importance of maintaining community spaces.

I feel much more confident in my research ability after this summer and leave Next Stage with a sense of accomplishment and gratefulness and I can’t wait to see what this research inspires in the future. At Next Stage, I found a group of incredibly passionate people, and I can say I am closer to finding what I am passionate about.