Designing Tomorrow: Creative Strategies for Social Impact

Run Your Nonprofit Like a Scientist

Every leader in the social impact space has failures. But we rarely talk about them. We brush over them, reframe them, paper over them. Michelle Moog-Koussa thinks that&a

If Only They Got Us, They'd Fund Us

Every nonprofit leader has told themselves the same story: if funders just understood us, they'd fund us. Eric and Jonathan make the uncomfortable case that misunder

Don't Coast on Your Momentum

Most leaders know how to fight through a crisis. Almost nobody's ready for the moment things start working. That's where Jonathan finds himself. Five years int

You Design Your Culture. Here's How

Is culture something you design, or does it emerge from the people you hire? I think you design it, through the decisions you make every day. Jonathan thinks it starts wi

Decisions Are Being Made For Us, Not With Us

Two camps are forming around AI in the social impact space. One says boycott it. The other says you're already behind. Meanwhile, the biggest decisions are being mad

How to Avoid the Executive Bottleneck Trap

I have this problem, and I have it bad. At Cosmic I'm the bottleneck on more things than I should be, holding onto work because explaining it feels slower than just

Get Seen, Get Supported

Nonprofit leaders want more people to see their work, but almost none of them want to be the one posting about it.  Saralynn Finn and I dig into what changes once you ge

Claiming Your Role in the Social Impact Ecosystem

Every social impact leader believes in their mission. Funders assume that too. What they actually want to know is why you, specifically, over the ten other orgs working

What Would Have to Be True?

Sarah Newkirk became executive director of the Land Trust of Santa Cruz County in the middle of a capital campaign, the same week Jonathan Hicken took over at the Seymour

Drafting Our Strategic Dream Teams

There's a push right now to democratize strategic planning. Survey the community, poll the staff, put the big calls to a vote.  I get the instinct, but it goes too

Money in Motion, Not Money Warehoused

There's a number treated like gospel in philanthropy: the 5% annual payout private foundations are required to hit. It was written into law as a floor.  Kristin Tod

Your Most Durable Asset Is Still Your Website

Everyone keeps predicting the death of the website. First it was social, now it is AI. But it is still the one channel you actually own and control, which is exactly what

Can Business Actually Be a Force for Good?

For the last 50 years, we've operated under a single dominant idea: the purpose of business is to maximize shareholder value. But what if this whole era of extractio

The Real Cost of Playing It Safe

Jonathan recently learned that the Seymour Center is about to absorb a permanent new expense in the $150,000 to $200,000 range. On a $2.2 million operating budget, that&a

Feelings Don't Drive Change

Most social impact campaigns are built on two ingredients: information and emotion. The data makes the case. The storytelling makes people care. But caring, on its own, h

Say What You Actually Believe

Most social impact leaders got into this work because they care deeply about the mission, not because they wanted to be public figures with opinions. But that instinct to

Integrity Alone Will Get You Outplayed

There's an unspoken rule in the social impact sector: we tell the truth, we follow the science, we play fair. But those rules are increasingly a losing strategy, bec

Brandmaxxing or Debranding: Pick Your Side

There's a trend called looksmaxxing that says appearance is everything, and optimizing it is just pragmatism. Apply that same logic to nonprofits and you get an inte

Trust No One Is Exactly What Authoritarians Want

Every major technological paradigm shift has broken society before it fixed it. The printing press, radio, television. Each one reshaped how we communicate and what we be

Visibility Beats Impact

There's a quiet belief running through the social impact space that being too visible somehow cheapens the work. That good organizations should let their impact spea