While “innovation” often is associated with a spark of an idea that has the power to change the world, real progress—forward motion, sustainable change—requires the effective implementation of those bright ideas.

To bring an idea or program model that has worked in one place somewhere new, sometimes adapting the idea to meet local needs, effective scaling is essential. Why doesn’t this happen more often? Understandably, there’s an excitement that comes with something new. New ideas and innovations are an important part of the social impact equation. But equally as important is the power of amplifying something borrowed.

What if more nonprofit professionals widen the aperture and expand the idea of innovation to include concepts like customizing and adapting proven models too, helping existing great ideas influence more people in more places? With this mindset, we can see how scaling can follow innovation for greater impact.

Ten years after its founding, the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative (FC) powered by Jewish Federations of North America—which raises and distributes more than $3 billion annually and through planned giving and endowment programs to support social welfare, social services, and educational needs—is further embracing scaling as an integral strategy. Early on, scaling was baked into the DNA of the funder collaborative, an experiment uniting national and local funders and practitioners to create, nurture, sustain, and scale contemporary approaches to Jewish teen education and growth. Successful ideas and learnings were highlighted and designed to spread across the network of 10 FC communities across the country. The Jim Joseph Foundation, one of the largest philanthropic supporters of Jewish education and engagement nationally, and the funder collaborative have seen impactful programs launched in one community and adapted by another, or brought to a broader audience through the efforts of the collaborative itself. Scaled efforts could be delivered more efficiently, carried less financial risk, and mitigated risks around achieving outcomes.

There are numerous pathways to scale that could work in any demographic, in nearly any engagement or education setting. Any originator (those who first started a program) can help adaptors (those looking to bring an existing program to their community) implement extraordinary programs that are right for them, ultimately advancing their shared goals.

The ‘copycat advantage’

In partnership with Spring Impact, a global organization that specializes in scaling social impact, the funder collaborative developed a methodology for scaling in the Jewish community. This methodology is relevant for other fields, too, and involves five concrete steps the originator of any engagement program can follow:  

1) Prove: assessing whether a solution is ready to replicate elsewhere;

2) Design and 3) Systemize: laying the groundwork in a new community and tweaking the existing model if needed;

4) Piloting and 5) Scaling: bringing the model to life in a new setting through operations manuals, trainings, or modules.

Years of Spring Impact’s consulting efforts and the funder collaborative’s experience have shown that this approach works.

In the teen engagement landscape alone, models focused on peer-to-peer engagement, service learning, microgrant programs, and other efforts started in one community and are successfully expanded to others when the program originators share lessons learned and design and implementation information with adaptors. Adaptors can access program models at no cost, with less risk involved than if they were the program creators and first-time implementers. Often, the research, proof of concept, and impact evaluation have already been completed by the time an adaptor decides to bring the program to their community. In some cases, adaptors can opt in to a network of people already running a similar program or initiative for support and brainstorming sessions. As a result, they get to focus on delivering a great product and tailoring it for their audience—often their strength—as opposed to having to focus on developing the product.

The emotional side of scale

Both the funder collaborative and the foundation have learned that scaling requires an embrace of a new mindset: radical generosity.

In the funder collaborative, one community’s success means greater potential success across the network because of a commitment by all communities involved to work together. High-fidelity replication—maintaining the most vital aspects of a model in a scaled version of it—is difficult but worthwhile. Originators must think through how they will share information and provide training and support to others. Adaptors must understand their audience, be willing to learn, and implement the essential elements of the original program model. For originators, effective scaling is about more than sharing models: It’s about adopting a new mindset, skills, and capacity to unpack models with deep learning, toolkits, and trainings. Originators go from being a “doer” to a “teacher,” “ambassador,” or “champion.”

Opportunity to increase impact

Successful scaling requires detailed planning—plus investment. Sometimes the right person to bring an innovation to scale isn’t the originator, and the funder collaborative can step in to help adjust the program for a national audience, amplifying its reach.

As we learned from our partner and mentors at Spring Impact, organizations in different sectors and spaces can take on a leadership role in scaling as well, including investing in scaling of specific organizations. The organization’s Journey to Impact report highlights lessons learned from supporting more than 250 organizations in achieving impact at scale, illustrating the power of embracing the marriage of innovation and scaling.

There are benefits to amplifying new ideas, and there are advantages of scaling existing ideas as an alternative pathway to dramatically increase nonprofits’ collective impact. We believe we hold the potential and tools to help some of the most groundbreaking innovations spread. The Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative is a resource for any program seeking to extend its impact.

Sara Allen is executive director of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative powered by Jewish Federations of North America. Rachel Shamash Schneider is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

originally published in Philanthropy News Digest by Candid

With information at your fingertips, and distractions only a click away, it is more important than ever to understand the “best” ways to get and hold people’s attention. At the Jim Joseph Foundation, we receive compelling and diverse grantee-partner updates that grab our attention, pull us into their work and impact, openly share challenges and learnings and leave us excited about their future plans. After recently receiving a grantee-partner update – and reflecting on how helpful it was – we realized that there are many other types of updates, utilizing entirely different approaches, that are equally as effective.

Whether via email or Zoom, in large peer funder groups or smaller ones, delivered weekly or quarterly, there is no single “right” way for these updates to occur. There are nuanced differences in each approach that best serve the grantee-partner’s unique circumstances and goals. In fact, as we compiled the examples below, we realized there were even more effective forms of updates than we had initially thought, which is a testament to the professionalism of the partners with whom we work. We think there is value in both grantees and funders considering these various forms — which can all work well depending on the specific organization, its stage of growth, content shared, list of funders and goals of the update itself. We view grantee-partner updates (and our sharing the thought process behind them here) as part of our approach to relational grantmaking, which is both premised on and leads to open and honest communications.

As noted, there are many organizations in our portfolio who share effective updates with their funders; we asked six grantee-partners who each utilize a different form and style to share insights as to why their specific choices work best for them:

The Written Word

Sometimes email still works best, with benefits from the foundation’s perspective that these are easy to forward and share with colleagues, board members and others. We also have as much time as we need to digest the information, and these updates “live forever” on our computers, if so desired. Below are three grantee-partners sharing insights about their distinct form of email updates.

In addition to a narrative, Sefaria’s quarterly email updates utilize statistics and imagery to tell a story.

I started writing quarterly investor updates in 2017, in response to my growing sense that as Sefaria continued to mature I was losing the bandwidth to adequately keep in touch with Sefaria’s most important supporters, investors, and friends. There was so much going on then and I wanted to make sure that all of our most important stakeholders, and not only those funders who received regular grant reports or project updates, were kept in the loop. The title of these updates – Sefaria’s Quarterly Investor Newsletter – reflect our belief that Sefaria’s supporters are not just donors involved in unidirectional gift-making, but true investors––engaged partners who are eager to understand our progress, our problems, and the opportunities that lie ahead. These letters are an integral way for me to communicate and maintain relationships with this important segment of the Sefaria ecosystem.

 As a product that is best experienced live, every update contains a visual element – an image highlighting a new product or feature, or when the occasion calls for it, a video demo showcasing some experience on the site. Other constants include library stats, a review of recent traffic, and a fundraising update. The fundraising update always includes an overview of available opportunities and will occasionally prompt a response from an investor that opens the door to a new partnership. The library stats and traffic updates are powerful, too; for the most part, these highlight exciting growth and I’m proud to share them, but occasionally there are slower quarters or dips in traffic that keep us honest, alert, and motivated to intervene when the story our numbers are telling is not the same story we want to be sharing to our donors.

 Maybe most importantly, these updates allow me to give our investors and supporters a small taste of the nachas my team and I enjoy as the stewards of this beloved project. – Daniel Septimus, CEO, Sefaria

Repair the World’s weekly email shares updates and impact with its Board and major funders simultaneously. 

I’ve found that the key to having meaningful interactions with board members and funders is to engage them in strategic conversations, to really partner with them on the hardest questions and dilemmas I’m facing as a leader. This approach provides me with valuable thought partnership and also engages our stakeholders in a deeper way, beyond just hearing from me about the impact of Repair. So, to ensure that our valuable time together can be used for more strategic questions, I get the more basic updating done in advance. I send out a weekly email to our key stakeholders—board members, committee members, key funders, and our senior leadership team—all together, providing high-level updates on programming, development, and operations. I find weekly is the right cadence; if we did it less frequently there would be too much information to absorb at once. We also use the weekly updates to celebrate milestones and call out stakeholders or staff members when they go above and beyond in their work. These updates, in their simple and easy-to-digest email form, have become an important part of our culture of transparency. – Cindy Greenberg, President and CEO, Repair the World

Honeymoon Israel’s quarterly updates are nicely designed PDF slides with programmatic information, recent learnings, and imagery.

At Honeymoon Israel we have always seen our funders as truly equal partners in building HMI, caring for our participants and alumni, and building a better Jewish world. That approach requires HMI to be transparent in our relationship with our core funders. To accomplish this goal and support our relationship it is essential to us that we communicate clearly and often where HMI is headed, the challenges we are facing, and the opportunities ahead. Thus, about every 12 weeks, we email our funders a slide deck in PDF format that covers numerous areas of our work, including upcoming and recent trip information and impact (based on survey data), post-trip community engagement offerings around holidays and other events, internal staff news, and more. Each section in our update is accompanied with pictures that help to bring to life who we are as an organization and the people we engage. Particularly during the height of the pandemic when HMI trips were on hold, these updates helped convey the range of ways we stayed connected and helped young adults engage in meaningful Jewish life. – Michael Wise and Avi Rubel, co-CEOs, Honeymoon Israel

The Spoken Word

Other grantee-partners provide updates via conference calls or Zoom. From the foundation’s perspective, these are good opportunities for dynamic presentations, conversations, thought partnership and Q&A in real time. Often, we also have an opportunity to interact with peer funders, some of whom we may not know so well. These updates can be both more frontal or conversational, and include group brainstorming or feedback on the grantee-partner’s opportunities or challenges. Detailed agenda setting that includes topics that will be addressed, along with the amount of time to be spent on each one, plays a significant role in making these conversations efficient and effective. Here are three grantee-partners sharing insights about their distinct form of updates via conference call or Zoom:

The Jews of Color Initiative holds calls with multiple funders every 10-12 weeks as opportunities for both updates and education.

Our funder briefings at the Jews of Color Initiative are a very critical part of our efforts to create more welcoming, inclusive Jewish communities They’ve evolved in ways that reflect the depth of our work and the interest our funders have in it, as we engage some of our communities’ most influential leaders in very challenging conversations emerging from the field. When the JoCI first started, we thought we would update funders through standard mid-term and annual grant reports. However, every week I’d receive at least a few interesting and important questions from funders trying to understand and learn more about experiences of Jews of Color in Jewish communities and how those experiences were reflected in the field. These deep and provocative questions required intensive written responses. To economize our response efforts and to engage our funders in dialogue, we transitioned from individual email responses into regular conversations with funders together. This enabled them to learn from the JoCI and from each other. Today, our funder briefings occur every 10-12 weeks and include updates on JoCI progress and conversations on the field’s most complex and interesting issues related to Jews of Color. Funders ask questions, opine, take risks, and sometimes explore out loud what it might look like to approach our collective work differently—in a less racism informed way. We could never have these experiences over email. For the JoCI and our funders, we need, and together we cultivate, an environment that is rigorous, intimate, brilliant, trusting, kind, sometimes risky and always in service to the work, our colleagues, and the field. – Ilana Kaufman, Executive Director, Jews of Color Initiative

Foundation for Jewish Camp prepares a Zoom presentation followed by Q&A.

From the very outset of the pandemic in March 2020, FJC convened monthly calls hosted by its Board Chair, Julie Platt, and myself to update the heads of key foundations of FJC’s work on behalf of the field.  In these initial funder updates, FJC shared progress reports of its multi-pronged strategy to help camps overcome the $150 million funding gap caused by overnight camp closures in summer 2020.  Each month, as FJC updated the tracking results showing a reduction of the funding gap, more funders were inspired to share their own financial commitments.  Created initially to address the immediate COVID crisis, these calls have continued to receive very positive funder feedback as an effective tool for transmitting news and inspiring the funder community to act. Now held quarterly, these calls attract approximately 30 professionals and are intentionally limited to 30 minutes – enough time to communicate salient points, respond to any questions, and occasionally, invite an outside expert or a funder to share insights, perspectives, and news of innovative funding approaches which could be replicated locally, regionally, or nationally. Whether it’s an outsider or myself delivering the remarks, we often pair them simultaneously with slides to help convey both our impact and needs. One measure of success of this approach:  when a usual participant cannot attend, they ask to receive a recording of the call. – Jeremy Fingerman, CEO, Foundation for Jewish Camp

Upstart holds quarterly Zoom calls with multiple funders, beginning with a presentation and concluding with conversation and feedback.

When UpStart and several partner organizations were considering a merger, we organized and convened a funder advisory group made up of  program officers from current and prospective foundation funders. We wanted a space to build trusting relationships to foster bi-directional learning—enabling us to learn from those with broader contextual insights and to share our insights so that our work would be better understood. Almost five years later, that group, the UpStart Philanthropic Advisory Council, still meets on a regular basis about every quarter. The design of the meetings has stayed true to the original intent, with the participants’ experience in mind. Following an update from our team on a specific, timely topic related to UpStart’s work and the Jewish social entrepreneurship field, we transition to a conversation where we lean on the thought partnership of our funders on the topic at hand. We regularly ask for feedback to ensure the topics of discussion are as relevant and helpful for the participating funders as they are for us. These funders are our partners, not our customers, and the substance and transparency of the conversations reflect that. Learning with them makes our relationship much more effective since we’re in a somewhat constant conversation, not just around grant reports or requests. The field has benefited too because the calls have fostered partnerships across our funders for new initiatives, many of which don’t involve us directly but further the overall impact of the sector. – Aaron Katler, CEO, Upstart

These examples are just a sampling of the compelling updates that we receive. Other effective tools to consider given an organization’s objectives include the use of hyperlinks, video, and in-person meetings if the opportunity arises. We also recognize that group funder updates are only one way that grantee-partners stay in touch and build relationships with their funders. Individual calls and reporting from grantee-partners provide more opportunities to address funder-specific needs and updates. Conversely, in reviewing the various forms of updates, we found that more conventional newsletters (i.e. Constant Contact) do not offer the level of personal touch that we find valuable when engaging with grantee-partners. Newsletters can be quite effective in updating broader constituents about organizational updates and programmatic opportunities but, in our experience, they do not invite a follow-up conversation with the sender that we sometimes look to have. We hope this article sparks ideas for other organizations as they think about the best ways to convey impact, build relationships, and think through challenges and opportunities.

Aaron Saxe is a senior program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation. 

originally published in eJewish Philanthropy

The word “innovation” often conjures images of a lightbulb above a head — an instant spark of an idea that has the power to change the world. Yet real progress — forward motion, sustainable change — also requires the effective implementation of bright ideas.

In our experience, scaling means bringing an idea or program model that has worked in one place somewhere new, sometimes adapting the idea to meet local needs. Why doesn’t this happen more often? Understandably, there’s an excitement that comes with something new, and a tendency to focus on igniting our own lightbulb. We know through our experience as funder representatives and leaders that new ideas and innovations are an important part of the social impact equation. But the part of the equation that we want to elevate here is the power of amplifying something borrowed.

With that in mind, along with supporting new light bulbs, what if we widen the aperture and expand our notion of innovation to include concepts like customizing and adapting proven models too, helping existing light bulbs shine even brighter and in more places? With this mindset, we can see how scaling and innovation go hand-in-hand for greater impact.

Ten years after its founding, the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative (the Funder Collaborative), powered by The Jewish Federations of North America, is further embracing scaling as an integral strategy. Early on, scaling was baked into the DNA of the Funder Collaborative, an innovative philanthropic experiment uniting national and local funders and practitioners to create, nurture, sustain and scale contemporary approaches to Jewish teen education and growth. Successful ideas and learnings were highlighted and designed to spread across the network of ten FC communities across the country. The Jim Joseph Foundation and the Funder Collaborative have seen impactful programs launched in one community and adapted by another — or brought to a broader audience through the efforts of the Funder Collaborative itself.  Scaled efforts were more efficient to deliver, carried less financial risks and mitigated risks around achieving outcomes. With this track record of success spreading key programs and methodologies, the Funder Collaborative is eager to unpack and demystify pathways to scale for others, working in any demographic.

To do this, we are setting out to elevate the powerful and effective work of any originator (those who first started a program) to help adaptors (those looking to bring an existing program to their community) implement extraordinary programs that are right for them, ultimately advancing teen education and engagement across the Jewish community. The Foundation knows that this approach has the potential to profoundly amplify successful program models and impact the engagement landscape nationally, just as the Funder Collaborative already has changed the teen education and engagement landscape.

The Copycat Advantage

In partnership with Spring Impact, a global organization which specializes in scaling social impact, the Funder Collaborative developed a methodology for scaling in the Jewish community. This methodology involves five concrete steps the originator of any engagement program can follow:  

1) Prove: assessing whether a solution is ready to replicate elsewhere

2) Design and 3) Systemize: laying the groundwork in a new community and tweaking the existing model if needed

4) Piloting and 5) Scaling: bringing the model to life in a new setting through operations manuals, trainings, or modules.

Years of Spring Impact’s consulting efforts, and the Funder Collaborative’s experience, has shown this approach works.

In the teen engagement landscape alone, models focused on peer-to-peer engagement, service learning, microgrant programs and more started in one community and successfully expanded to others when the program model originators shared lessons learned and design and implementation information with model adaptors. Adaptors can access program models at no-cost, with less risk involved than if they were the program creators and first-time implementers. Often, the research, proof of concept and impact evaluation have already been completed by the time an adaptor decides to bring the program to their community. In some cases, adaptors can opt-in to a network of people already running a similar program or initiative, for support and brainstorming. As a result, they get to focus on delivering a great product and tailoring it for their audience — often their strength — as opposed to having to focus on developing the product.

A Closer Look

The Peer Leadership Fellows (PLF) Program, which utilizes a relational strategy to identify and connect with unengaged teens, was first created and launched by the Boston Jewish Teen Initiative. To deepen our understanding of why the program achieved its outcomes, the Funder Collaborative and the Jim Joseph Foundation partnered with Informing Change to map its model and uncover core strengths and opportunities to optimize. Using this model map of program delivery and shared learnings, several communities adapted and customized the teen relational program to meet their needs, with two communities opting to train professionals in the relational methodology. Each community shared certain commitments, while tailoring community-specific aspects for teen and professional participants. This evolution and spread of the methodology coalesced with the Funder Collaborative convening a relational Community of Practice (CoP), which brings adaptors together to share successes and challenges, and to become champions and advocates of relational engagement. This community learning approach generated more interest in the methodology and also uncovered a need for additional scaffolding to strengthen delivery — as a result, the Funder Collaborative is developing a common curriculum and shared training playbook. Click here to learn more about joining the relational CoP or relational training.

The Emotional Side of Scale

Both the Funder Collaborative and the Foundation have learned that scaling requires an embrace of a new mindset: radical generosity.

In the Funder Collaborative, one community’s success means greater potential success across the network because of a commitment by all communities involved to work together. High-fidelity replication — maintaining the most vital aspects of a model in a scaled version of it — is difficult but worthwhile. Originators must think through how they will share information and provide training and support to others. Adaptors must understand their audience, be willing to learn and implement the essential elements of the original program model. For originators, effective scaling is about more than sharing models: it’s about adopting a new mindset, skills and capacity to unpack models with deep learning, toolkits and trainings. Originators transcend from ‘doer’ to “teacher,” or “ambassador” or “champion.”  The above case study showcases the Boston Teen Initiative’s role of originator and how their efforts, and those of others, unlocked a new pathway for engagement.

Successful scaling needs detailed planning — plus investment —to make it happen. Sometimes the right person to bring an innovation to scale isn’t the originator, and the Funder Collaborative can step in as it did for the PLF — helping to adjust the program for a national audience and amplifying its reach.

A Closer Look

As an example, the  Virtual College Road Trip, was first inspired by a local community in the throes of the pandemic. With travel limitations in place, teens and their families were eager to ‘jump on the bus’ to explore colleges across the country and  imagine themselves engaging Jewishly on campus. This online platform made this experience possible for thousands of students, regardless of geography, and created intimate experiences with first-person student-created insider videos and behind-the-scenes access to admissions professionals. The diversity of the offerings held wide appeal and the program quickly went viral. Demand — and the growth possibilities — required more capacity than the originating community had to amplify its reach, and so the Funder Collaborative centralized and further developed the road trip; it is now one of its signature programs.

How Originators, Adaptors and Funders Can Get Involved

There is more than one pathway to amplify impact through scaling and many opportunities to join us on this journey. Leveraging our early learnings and expertise scaling teen programs, the FC is positioned to help the exponential growth of Jewish programs targeting any demographic, from early childhood to older adults.

For Creators and Program Originators

• Sign up for a series of three Masterclasses and individual coaching to learn these skillsets for originators reaching any demographic: ECE, youth, college students or young adults – register your interest here.
• Explore the ‘readiness assessment’ to help determine whether your program is poised for adaptation, and conduct a ‘rigor testing’ to help you select the right partners to adapt your program.
• Creatively package your ‘scale ready’ program and make it attractive to potential adaptors.

For Adaptors

• Make It Yours. Find inventive and effective programs that any community or organization can adapt or inspire change.  Sometimes the step-by-step tool kit we provide is all that is needed, or the Funder Collaborative can make connections to program originators for additional training or support.
• Community Landscape Scan Support. We offer tools to conduct your own local landscape scan and interviews and focus groups with community members to help determine gaps in local programs and, thus, innovations that might be right to bring to your community.
• Proven Impact Measurement Tools. We freely offer surveys and measurement tools, co-created with Rosov Consulting, to ensure teen programs are having the desired effects. We offer consulting on both how to field and analyze the tools, as well as a detailed guidebook to help you each step of the way, found here.

For Funders

• Partner with the Funder Collaborative. Look beyond your four walls. Any grantee-partner or community is invited to partner with the Funder Collaborative. Our team is available to present on key learnings and the engagement landscape, as well as consulting.  We are eager to help others design effective engagement strategies and explore customizing existing programs – of any size or budget.
• Embrace the concept of adaptation as innovation. Scaling is more than simply transplanting existing programs; it’s narrowing in on the essential elements of programs to achieve desired outcomes. By encouraging boards and partners to weigh impact over innovation, we can dramatically accelerate the spread of good models, offering more people even more ways to meaningfully connect to Jewish life.

We know the benefits of  looking for new light bulbs, and we understand scaling isn’t a simple task. Yet with more organizations across the country understanding the benefits of scaling as an alternative pathway — and with the Funder Collaborative poised to help — we can dramatically increase our collective impact. Now housed at Jewish Federations of North America, the Funder Collaborative is a resource for any education and engagement program seeking to extend its impact, with a national platform to champion scale and provide the resources, skills, and relationships to make this  possible.

We have the opportunity to see our community’s most groundbreaking innovations spread to more communities. In no way does this approach negate the work of trailblazers investing time and resources in new innovations. Rather, these approaches go hand-in-hand. By shining a light on successful models and helping them take root somewhere new, the Funder Collaborative is using its expertise to help the Jewish community embrace both sides of the scaling equation, leading to even greater impact.

Sara Allen is executive director of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative powered by Jewish Federations of North America. Rachel Shamash Schneider is a program officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation.

originally published in eJewish Philanthropy