COMMON GROUND CONSULTING LLC

How to Think Creatively

I love this list. I've excerpted it from a great piece by Tony Schwartz on the Harvard Business Review website. Click here to read the whole piece.

Over the past hundred years, researchers have reached a surprising degree of consensus about the predictable stages of creative thinking. It was Betty Edwards who first pointed out that the stages move back and forth between right and left hemisphere dominance:

1. Saturation: Once the problem or creative challenge has been defined, the next stage of creativity is a left hemisphere activity that paradoxically requires absorbing one's self in what's already known. Any creative breakthrough inevitably rests on the shoulders of all that came before it. For a painter, that might mean studying the masters. For me, it involves reading widely and deeply, and then sorting, evaluating, organizing, outlining, and prioritizing.

2. Incubation: The second stage of creativity begins when we walk away from a problem, typically because our left hemisphere can't seem to solve it. Incubation involves mulling over information, often unconsciously. Intense exercise can be a great way to shift into right hemisphere in order to access new ideas and solutions. After writing for 90 minutes, for example, the best thing I can do to jog my brain, is take a run.

3. Illumination: Ah-ha moments — spontaneous, intuitive, unbidden — characterize the third stage of creativity. Where are you when you get your best ideas? I'm guessing it's not when you're sitting at your desk, or consciously trying to think creatively. Rather it's when you've given your left hemisphere a rest, and you're doing something else, whether it's exercising, taking a shower, driving or even sleeping.

4. Verification: In the final stage of creativity, the left hemisphere reasserts its dominance. This stage is about challenging and testing the creative breakthrough you've had. Scientists do this in a laboratory. Painters do it on a canvas. Writers do it by translating a vision into words.

The first key to intentionally nurturing our creativity is to understand how it works. I've found the stages often unfold in unpredictable sequence, and wrap back on one another. Still, keeping them in mind lets me know where I am in the creative process, and how to get to where I need to go.

Ultimately, the highest creativity depends on making frequent waves — learning to engage the whole brain by moving flexibly and intentionally between the right and left hemisphere, activity and rest, effort and letting go. That's also a pretty good prescription for how to live

 

Grants & Awards

Youth Garden Grants

Deadline: November 28

The National Gardening Association awards Youth Garden Grants to schools and community organizations with child-centered garden programs. 5 winners will receive gift cards valued at $1,000, and 95 winners will receive $500 gift cards, for the purchase of gardening materials and supplies specific to the needs of their program from their local Home Depot store. Schools, youth groups, community centers, camps, clubs, treatment facilities, and inter-generational groups throughout the U.S. are eligible. Applicants must plan to garden with at least 15 children between ages 3-18. http://bit.ly/rYXHpI

Humane Education Grants

Deadline: November 30

The Humane Society of the United States is accepting applications for the new Humane Education Mini-Grant, designed to fund classroom teachers who lead innovative, standards-based programs and curricula in humane education, specifically the teaching of kindness and respect for animals and their natural habitats. Applicants must be K-12 certified teachers working at a public, private, or parochial school. Projects should engage students in hands-on activities that lead to the acquisition of new knowledge, awareness, or self-discovery as they relate to humane education. http://bit.ly/w0ELZY

 

Stephen J. Brady STOP Hunger Scholarships

Deadline: December 5

The Stephen J. Brady STOP Hunger Scholarships recognize and reward students who have made a significant impact in the fight against hunger. The scholarship recipients each receive $5,000 for their education as well as a $5,000 matching grant in their name for the hunger-related charity of their choice. Sholarships are open to students (Kindergarten through graduate school) enrolled in an accredited educational institution in the United States. Applicants must have demonstrated on-going commitment to their community by performing unpaid volunteer services impacting hunger in the United States at least within the last 12 months. http://bit.ly/qImcz3

Katie's Krops Grant

Deadline: December 5

Katie's Krops is excited to announce a new grant opportunity for kids ages 9 to 16 to start a vegetable garden to feed people in need in their communities.  The winner will be awarded a gift card to a garden center in their area (up to $400), support from Katie's Krops, and a digital camera to document the garden and the harvest. Applications for all types of vegetable gardens, such as a container garden if you live in a city or a vegetable garden located in your neighborhood or at your school, will be considered. Applicants must be between the ages of 9 and 16 as of October 1, 2011. http://bit.ly/mUscKv

 

2011 Campus "Champions of Change" Challenge

Deadline: December 9

The White House Office of Public Engagement and mtvU are proud to announce the first ever Campus "Champions of Change" Challenge. The Challenge invites college and university students from across the country to demonstrate how their student led project is improving their campus community and helping America win the future. Submit an online application detailing your student-led program. The White House will select 15 finalists. The public will then have an opportunity to weigh in and vote on the top five projects. The top five finalists will be named Campus Champions of Change, featured on MTVu and MTV.com, and will be invited to the White House for a culminating event. http://1.usa.gov/t8VEex

 

2012 President's Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll

Deadline: December 9

The 2012 Honor Roll will accept applications in two categories for service performed during the 2010-2011 academic year: (1) General Community Service recognizes the quality of, quantity of, and commitment to community service initiatives at a college or university.  (2) Special Focus Area recognizes exemplary initiatives aligned with the President's education and innovation priorities. CNCS will select six institutions - three from each category - as Presidential Award winners. All higher education institutions are welcome to apply. The winners will be announced on March 12, 2012 at the American Council on Education (ACE) Conference in Los Angeles. http://bit.ly/pjrNoL

 

Whole Kids Foundation & FoodCorps School Garden Grants

Deadline: December 31

The Whole Kids Foundation and partner FoodCorps offer $2,000 grants, along with curriculum, resources and mentorship, to 1,000 schools.  FoodCorps' expertise in gardening, and its ongoing support will help schools build and sustain their gardens to ensure long-term success. All schools and garden-related nonprofit organizations are eligible to apply for grants to support the launch or expansion of school gardens that will help children engage with fresh fruits and vegetables. Garden projects may be at any stage of development; planning, construction or operation. http://bit.ly/rrUU7K

2012 AmeriCorps Grants

Deadline: January 18

AmeriCorps awards grants to organizations to implement programs that utilize AmeriCorps members to engage in evidence-based interventions to strengthen communities. In the 2012 competition CNCS expects to invest a significant amount of available funding to programs working in the six Focus Areas of Disaster Services, Economic Opportunity, Education, Environmental Stewardship, Healthy Futures, and Veterans and Military Families. In particular, CNCS seeks to target its AmeriCorps grantmaking in the Education, Disaster Services and Veterans and Military Families Focus Areas. http://bit.ly/pBIpCw

What Matters: Can fresh thinking solve the world’s most intractable problems?

View on the Web: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/spContent/2011_11_15.htm

Social innovators are bringing bold new approaches to the difficult problems that plague the world, from poverty and famine to climate change and disease eradication. To uncover the best ideas, What Mattershas convened change makers from around the world to share their stories and their strategies.

Explore essays and interviews on the What Matters site, including the following:

Doug Ulman of LIVESTRONG describes how a simple band of yellow silicone democratized philanthropy and united a global community behind a common cause.

Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit behind Sesame Street) updates its cast of puppets to meet the changing needs of children around the world. And as CEO Melvin Ming explains, these days the Sesame characters aren’t found only on TV.

Ian Craig, CEO of Kenya’s Northern Rangelands Trust, broke the “conservationists versus local community” impasse by involving the community and creating jobs. 

Without significant funds or staff, neonatologist Armida Fernandez cut infant-mortality rates at a Mumbai hospital serving the city’s poorest almost in half. Her secret? A series of commonsense innovations. 

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, says design thinking, which involves viewing problems from the end user’s perspective, could be an important tool for social innovators. 

McKinsey’s Steve Davis calls on social innovators to search out solutions that can scale, calling it the social sector’s biggest challenge. Colleague Jonathan Bays says acquiring and analyzing big data is a strategy that can help them do so.

Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, describes how recombinant innovation helped create a new strain of rice that can survive weeks underwater—helping to stave off famine in flood-prone regions. 

The next disruptive force in social innovation will involve a new, more rigorous approach that funnels resources to where they can do the most good, according to Jamie Cooper-Hohn, CEO of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. 

Serge Raicher, chairman of the European Venture Philanthropy Association, describes new ways of funding social innovation that combine the discipline of the market with the societal goals of philanthropy. 

Michael Joseph, a fellow at the World Bank and former CEO of Safaricom, describes how a mobile-money service brought financial inclusion to Kenya’s unbanked.

Join the conversation today on What Matters, and watch for additional essays over the coming weeks.

Apply for an Echoing Green Fellowship (Updated)

This year, Common Ground is acting as a search partner for the Echoing Green Foundation. We've had the pleasure of working directly with EG for more than 15 years, as well as with several of their fellows, including George Soros who founded Building Tomorrow. We're working closely with George and his team on a strategic growth plan and just returned from Uganda, where his organization is about to finish building its 10th primary school.

To accelerate social change, Echoing Green invests in and supports outstanding emerging social entrepreneurs to launch new organizations that deliver bold, high-impact solutions. Through a two-year fellowship program, they help their network of visionaries develop new solutions to society’s most difficult problems.

These social entrepreneurs and their organizations work to solve deeply-rooted social, environmental, economic, and political inequities to ensure equal access and to help all individuals reach their potential. To date, Echoing Green has invested nearly $30 million in seed funding to almost 500 social entrepreneurs and their innovative organizations.

Echoing Green unleashes next generation talent to solve the world’s biggest problems. Through their Fellowship program, they identify promising social entrepreneurs with bold ideas and provide them with up to $90,000 in seed funding, strategic support, leadership development, and a powerful community of nearly 500 other Fellows and Alumni.

Echoing Green is particularly excited to announce a new hands-on approach to preparing applicants from groups underrepresented in their recent classes, This is intended to help them to stand out in the application process—local developing country social entrepreneurs, U.S. Latinos, women, and African-Americans.

View the Application Questions:

The 2012 Echoing Green Fellowship application short answer questions are now available online. While the application doesn’t open until December 5, 2011, the questions and help text are available to give applicants a head start.

 

Register for a Webinar:

As part of our effort to increase the pool of talent and bold ideas we see each year, we're introducing four new webinars specifically designed for women, African-Americans, U.S.-based Latinos, and local leaders from developing countries. During these webinars, past Fellows from these communities will give advice on how to put your best foot forward.

11/29, 4:00-5:00 pm EST - Opportunities and Challenges for Local Leaders from Developing Countries in Social Entrepreneurship

11/30, 10:00-11:00 am EST - Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Latino Social Entrepreneurs

12/1, 10:00-11:00 am EST - Opportunities and Challenges for Female Social Entrepreneurs

12/1, 4:00-5:00 pm EST - Opportunities and Challenges for African-American Social Entrepreneurs

 

Click to Watch the General Information Webinar Video (Recorded 10/27/11)

Help Spread the Word

- Forward this post to friends and colleagues working in social change

- Share via Twitter: #EG2012Fellowship questions are out! Get a head start before the application opens on Dec 5. http://ht.ly/7owKg #socent #fellowships

- Share via Facebook: 2012 Echoing Green Fellowship questions are out! Get a head start on your application for social change. http://ht.ly/7owKg

TODAY is Give to the Max Day in DC!

If you're part of a non-profit organization in the greater Washington DC area, please check out this amazing opportunity to be a part of something BIG!

Give to the Max Day is a one-day fundraising event on November 9, 2011 that will unite local Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC communities to support nonprofits serving the area. Our goal is to get 35,000 people to support their favorite regional charity, raising more than $3 million in donations and grants in just 24 hours!

With federal spending cuts and the economy restricting funding for nonprofits, jobs are being lost and societal investment suffers. Together, the traditional Greater Washington nonprofit community will meet with the 2.0 world to provide an economic shot in the arm for the local nonprofit sector, charge civic pride and help local causes rally their constituents and find new ones

Hundreds of area nonprofits will compete for cash awards and matching grants offered throughout the day. Individual fundraisers will compete to win awards for their favorite causes. Every donation you make gives your favorite organization the chance to win even more money.

Nonprofit organizations of all sizes will cultivate new donors, increase giving through fun and engaging campaigns while significantly reducing overall fundraising costs.

Give to the Max Day: Greater Washington is part of Digital Capital Week, a ten day festival held throughout the region focusing on technology, innovation and all things digital.

2011 Giving Season Tips

Great advice from GuideStar USA ...

The last quarter of the year, known as the "giving season," is a crucial time for both charities and donors. Half of the nonprofits that participated in a 2010 fundraising survey reported that they receive the majority of contributions during the last three months of the year, and online giving has peaked at the end of December in recent years.

GuideStar offers the following five tips to help donors get the most out of their end-of-year charitable giving.

1. Clarify values and preferences. What do you value? Do you have an artistic streak? Do you love animals? Have you lost a friend or family member to a terminal illness? Consider the type of charity that you'd have the best connection with. You'll feel even better about your giving when your donations align with your values.
2. Focus on the mission. GuideStar is a great resource to find the charity that meets your values. Look up a specific nonprofit in GuideStar's database of 1.8 million organizations, or use the advanced search to find charities by category, size, and location. Once you found a nonprofit that interests you, dig a bit deeper into the organization's GuideStar profile, visit the nonprofit's Web site, or look into recent press articles or media mentions of the organization to learn more about its mission and programs. GuideStar's TakeAction resource centerprovides expert analyses of more than 25 causes and high-impact organizations working on those issues.
3. Verify a charity's legitimacy. With a glance at a nonprofit report on GuideStar, you can find out if it is a legitimate tax-exempt organization. Nonprofits that do not meet IRS criteria are flagged. If a charity is not on GuideStar, ask to see its letter of determination. If the organization is faith-based, ask to see its official listing in a directory for its denomination.

4. Get the cold, hard facts. A reputable organization will:

   • Define its mission and programs clearly and will also discuss its programs and finances.
   • Have measurable goals.
   • Use concrete criteria to describe its achievements. Visit ChartingImpact.org for a nonprofit's impact report.
   • Be willing to send you literature about its work or direct you to a Web site.
   • Take "no" for an answer. It won't use pressure tactics.
5. Trust your instincts. If you still have doubts about a charity, don't contribute to it. Instead, find another nonprofit that does the same kind of work and with which you feel comfortable, and donate to that organization instead. Remember that even a small donation makes a difference. And, last but not least, charities need support year-round. Why not make a commitment to give $10 a month to the charity of your choice for the next year, rather than one big gift now?

Research is the best way to make sure that your gift is going to the right charity. Resources such as GuideStar (www.guidestar.org), Philanthropedia (www.myphilanthropedia.org/guide_to_better_giving), and Charting Impact (www.chartingimpact.org) are great places to start when you want to give with your head as well as your heart.

 

Nonprofit Leaders Suggest Ways to Increase Charitable Giving

By Holly Hall for The Chronicle of Philanthropy

 

The Giving Pledge, the effort by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett to increase giving by the nation’s wealthiest people, missed a key opportunity, fund raisers say. Instead of simply reaching out to billionaires, they should have promised to match donations of people with a lot less money.

That’s one suggestion offered in a new report by Adrian Sargeant and Jen Shang, two scholars who study and teach fund raising at Indiana University.

The report is based on ideas to increase charitable giving that were offered by influential nonprofit leaders and other executives.

Besides suggesting that billionaires offer matching gifts, the report includes 31 other ideas for improving giving, which has been stuck at 2 percent of average household income after taxes for the past 40 years, according to “Giving USA.”

Other ideas from the report:

* Encourage charities to develop productive ways to handle complaints from donors, which would reduce negative word of mouth, build trust, and provide ideas to improve fund-raising operations. Charities could take a lesson from the business world, the authors write, where “complaining customers are the firm’s biggest asset.”

* Place more fund raisers on nonprofit boards so they can educate fellow trustees about the best ways to raise money.

* Persuade fund raisers to stop talking to donors about annual funds, capital campaigns, endowment drives, and other such insider approaches and instead urge them to focus on what their money will accomplish.

As an example, the reported noted that Harvesters, a Kansas City, Mo., food bank stopped asking its donors for annual gifts or capital donations. It now uses appeals that ask people to help it feed children, families, and the elderly and to promote healthy eating habits. “The new approach is immensely more powerful,” the authors write.

“No one supports a single nonprofit because they happen to have an annual fund or an endowment,” write Mr. Sargeant and Ms. Shang. “It is not the vehicle that matters to donors; it’s the difference they can make in society.”

6 Predictions for Philanthropy by 2014

In a guest post on the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy’s blog, Bill Somerville of the Philanthropic Ventures Foundation predicts six trends for philanthropy that will be noticeable by 2014. He makes these predictions based on pressures that are building in the current system of philanthropy, including; increasingly burdensome paperwork and slow decision-making in the face of urgent need, a shift of generational power, a resurgence of interest in grassroots initiatives, and a need for more entrepreneurial grant-making to tackle complex issues.

These changes include:

1.    The philanthropic dollar will become the entrepreneurial dollar of society.

• Philanthropy will involve more risk taking.
• There will be more tolerance for an occasional failure.

2.    Philanthropy will focus more on outstanding individuals and organizations.

• There will be less reliance on extensive paper and electronic applications as due diligence.
• Philanthropy will refine ways of finding people and nonprofits of potential.

3.    Philanthropy will embrace the concept of trust in all its dimensions.

• Trust between applicant and foundation staff.
• Trust between foundation staff and foundation board.
• Trust between the executive and foundation staff.
• As a result, there will be more discretionary grantmaking.
• The Board will allow the executive to make grants.
• The Executive will allow program staff to make grants.
• Consequently, the grantmaking process will speed up.

4.    More grants to programs will be for discretionary use on the grassroots level.

5.    Interactions between applicants and foundation staff will move in the direction of a collegial relationship.

6.    More young people will be in philanthropic work.

• Many are members of donor families.
• Some are recent graduates who were introduced to philanthropy in college.

What do you think of these predictions? Do you anticipate other changes in the way philanthropy operates?