Six Priorities for Creating a Culture of Innovation on the Frontlines of Social Change
By Todd Paglia, Executive Director of Stand.earth
For decades, we have watched governments reduce or eliminate areas of oversight and responsibility. As a result, community groups and nonprofits are increasingly relied upon to address everything from homelessness and hunger to stream restoration and corporate accountability. It is clear that social-change organizations will be a necessary source for the most important modern innovations in the years to come.
In today’s world, there is more room for innovation than ever before, and more need for it. And let’s face it — a lot of what is called innovation in the corporate sector is about making money. Consider Google. On closer examination, the veneer of inventiveness begins to fade: nearly 80% of their revenue is generated by ads. Not an innovative model by any standard. Pharmaceutical companies? How many blockbuster drugs were actually funded by taxpayers and created by researchers at the National Institutes of Health? Too many to count. Electric vehicles? Henry Ford built one in 1914, and it had more range than a Nissan Leaf.
Give me an innovation that saves a life, creates housing for a family, protects a forest, or puts a coal-powered factory onto wind and solar. That is where purpose, values and creativity meet. And that is the only kind of innovation that really matters.
When I learned that the organization I lead would be recognized in Fast Company magazine’s 2023 list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies, I spent some time thinking about how our nonprofit creates new breakthroughs. Stand.earth doesn’t have an R&D budget. In fact, our annual revenue is a small fraction of that of most of the nonprofits recognized by Fast Company, and the corporations that made the Top 10 bring in more revenue in a matter of hours than we do all year.
Our approach to innovation boils down to culture. Here are some of the lessons we’ve learned to make innovation an essential part of our organization’s DNA over the last two decades of advocacy:
- Impact Over Image: As the old adage goes, it’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets credit. A parallel is this: you can change the world if you focus more on impact and less on your image. I have seen some of the largest nonprofits in the world end programs or change their approach, even though they were having impact, because the soon-to-be-cut programs were not a fit with their brand image. And that meant they chose to continue programs that had less impact, but were more consistent with how they saw themselves. Consistency is overrated. At Stand, we have prioritized making global change happen. We fight and beat pipelines, protect old-growth forests, work with cities to prohibit new gas stations and eliminate fracked gas for buildings, shift manufacturing plants to renewables, and more. Our consistent theme is impact, regardless of whether we have a tidy brand story that can be summed up in seven words or less.
- Comfort is the Enemy of Progress: There is so much risk aversion in the nonprofit sector, especially by the groups that have hundreds of millions in annual revenue. With budgets like that, one might imagine they would be better positioned to absorb risk. However, these well-resourced nonprofits can also be more vulnerable to the influence of funder concerns, board worries, loyalties to corporate donors and corporate partners, fear of lawsuits, and downright terror about bad press. In other words, they stay in their comfort zones — they don’t take on fights if they might get sued, they don’t take financial risks, they don’t try something new because a board member might be embarrassed if it doesn’t work. If you are always comfortable, you are not doing your job. We’ve faced lawsuits filed against both me personally and the organization as a whole for $300 million (we won), we’ve been labeled an enemy of the state in various countries, and I feel that pin prick of fear deep in the pit of my stomach on a regular basis as we experiment with new ways of making big change happen. That feeling of fear and risk means we are in potential breakthrough territory, and that is where we need to be today more than any other time in our history.
- Diversity Unleashes Innovation: A more diverse team is not only a good unto itself but a more effective way of working; different views and varied life experiences allow your team to more effectively create breakthrough strategies and invite a wider diversity of people to support you. A lack of diversity — or even some diversity combined with white-supremacy culture — is not only just plain bad, it means you will get less from your teams, less creativity, less joy (and yes, the latter matters). Every consultant or expert you’ve ever worked with is right: this is not a destination but a journey. (A note to other white leaders: if your team isn’t telling you when you fall short on equity and intersectional justice, it’s not because you’re perfect; it’s because they don’t trust you to do anything about it.) Reality is subjective and the better view your organization has of it, the fewer blindspots you have, the deeper you see, and the more capable you are to make big change happen. Diversity of all kinds — race, age, economic background, geography, gender, sexuality, ability — is core to innovation.
- Invest in People: Necessity is the mother of invention, which is why so many great ideas and companies were formed in garages and at kitchen tables with little to no budget. That entrepreneurial spirit has been kept alive at Stand for 20 years by maintaining strict spending limits, prioritizing funding additional team members rather than large discretionary budgets, blending hard-won experience with new ideas, and encouraging experiments with the knowledge that sometimes they fail. All of these things foster and force creativity. Once we have proof that a new idea or tactic is working, then we invest bigger and grow the initiative. Social-change work is hard on people and relationships and families and communities. Our investment in our people goes well beyond benefits and professional development stipends. We work half days on Fridays (when we can). After one year with Stand, staff earns an additional week of yearly “inspiration leave” to reground themselves and reconnect with their purpose. We support BIPOC staff with additional funds and time away for self-care (however they define that for themselves). After seven years, we offer sabbaticals to give long-term employees the chance to reflect and actively choose to stay with Stand.earth, or we support their choices to move elsewhere. And these are only a few of the ways we prioritize the wellbeing of our staff.
- A Risk-Tolerant Board of Directors: One of Stand’s greatest strengths is our amazing Board of Directors that pushes us on culture, diversity, equity, and financial health, and never shies away from risk. Based on my informal polls of other social-change CEOs, this is all too unique. The tendency of boards to constrain organizations is one of the greatest weaknesses of the entire social-change sector. Many organizations limit their activities to satisfy the most risk-averse board members. Innovation and breakthrough wins, however, are all about risk. It is one thing to have to pretend that a wealthy software engineer on your board is also an amazing campaign strategist; it is quite another to not pursue risky initiatives because the board fears lawsuits, financial liabilities, reputational worries, etc. The conventional quid pro quo of nonprofits has been that wealthy, risk-averse board members contribute money and bring in revenue through their networks and they constrain what nonprofits do, but it’s worth it. I think the last 30 years prove otherwise. Star-studded, ego-centric boards have failed the social-change sector. Our world is on fire. Building a board that is comfortable with risk, inspires innovation, and doesn’t hold you back is easier now than ever, and it is foundational for increasing impacts.
- A Culture of Mindfulness: Meditation is a practice at Stand. We have coaches available for our team, and we make space for it at every staff call and meeting. Creativity and spaciousness are inextricably linked, and meditation gives us more time and scope to explore ideas and to truly understand each other. And since disagreement is also key to creation — the exchange of differing perspectives — meditation and a mindful culture help us navigate these conversations with authenticity and care. The challenge is to engage in constructive disagreement while maintaining our humanity. Mindfulness is a critical tool for doing so, both internally with the team and externally in negotiations with companies and governments.
We will continue to push the limits of what is possible in the coming years as if our lives depend upon it — because they do. The world is on a precipice, and it will tilt one way or the other based on the innovative work of small and medium-sized nonprofits, frontline organizations and Indigenous leaders.
I have hope for our future because I have seen the impact that real innovation can have to change our world. As they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Anything is possible if we create organizations that allow the human ingenuity that resides in each of us to thrive.
