In this section, we will share our overarching 2017 content themes for each quarter that revolve around our core focus area of skills-based volunteering and corporate social responsibility.
If you’ve been following our content this year, you’ve likely heard us mention a concept called “The Knitting Factor,” which brings together three key conditions that enable skills-based engagements between the private and nonprofit sectors to create strengthened, sustainable solutions that don’t come undone when partners part ways. There are three key characteristics that make up The Knitting Factor, but for skills-based volunteering to become truly transformative, organizations need to find the “sticky” relationships that enable companies and nonprofits to drive progress on both mission and business-related goals.
Common Impact defines skill sharing as a two-way talent exchange where both pro bono professionals and their nonprofit partners are learning from each other. In my experience sourcing and supporting skilled service projects for our corporate and nonprofit clients, it is when our partners recognize the knowledge and expertise that they each bring to the table and seek to proactively learn from one another that real long-term change takes place. The change we see is not just for the communities we support, but also for the volunteers and nonprofit leaders participating in these skills-based volunteer projects.
We know communities of practice are an age-old concept, but we are excited to see a growing number of conveners who are bringing cross-sector leaders together to develop their people, improve their performance, and deepen their impact in the community. These groups are made up of practitioners from the public, private and nonprofit sectors, who are actively developing shared resources, best practices, and tools to solve some of society’s toughest challenges.
What has emerged from nearly twenty years of practice is something Common Impact calls the “The Knitting Factor”, coined in our recent Stanford Social Innovation Review article, “The Promise of Skills-Based Volunteering. The Knitting Factor brings together three key conditions that enable skills-based engagements between the private and nonprofit sectors to create strengthened, sustainable solutions that don’t come undone when partners part ways.
Earlier this month, I sat in a room alongside 400 nonprofit sector leaders at the Center on Effective Philanthropy’s annual conference – all of us still trying to find our footing in the wake of regressive and unjust social policy announcements from Washington, D.C., and the resulting fresh challenges facing our organizations and the communities we serve. Grant Oliphant, CEP’s Board Chair, opened the conversation with sobering, resonant words.
January always lends itself to predictions about hot trends in the year to come. Indeed, if you look up “2017 CSR and sustainability trends” in your search engine right now, you’ll see a collection of insightful articles sharing expert (and of course widely divergent) opinions on what’s in store for us over the next twelve months. This January, though, in the face of a starkly different administration in Washington D.C., the social sector is looking at an even more uncertain, unpredictable climate. This has the Common Impact team thinking less about trends, and more about how to practically navigate the twists and turns ahead.
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