An Interview with Leah Kral
Even wildly successful nonprofits have some follies.
Leah Kral generously shared her insights on unexpected consequences in the world of Doing Good. But first, a bit of background…
Leah’s hot-off-the-presses book, Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results, is a guide on using design thinking to transform ideas into action, build small experiments and learn from them before scaling up, and create an ecosystem for everyday innovation. As Senior Director of Strategy and Innovation for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, VA, she works with university centers around the country on social impact strategies and evaluation.
What is your philanthropy goal and how long have you done this work?
I grew up in an industrial region in the Midwest, and assumed my career would be working for the kind of company I saw around me. But a two-year tour of duty in the Peace Corps in Jamaica opened my eyes to issues around poverty and property rights. When I returned, I was able to combine my interests in education, economics, and policy in a new role at the Mercatus Center helping to define social impact programs and metrics on how markets solve problems and help us lead happier, healthier, and richer lives. While I am not a fundraiser, I’m often connecting program and fundraising staff in defining metrics that measure a nonprofit’s impact. I’ve been helping nonprofit leaders and teams be more innovative for two decades.
Tell us about something funny, crazy or unexpected that happened in your world of doing good.
There are lots of stories in my book, but my experience in Jamaica really helped me to see how something so basic that we can take for granted in the U.S. – like property rights – is completely elusive to others. I saw people scrape together materials to build a home for their families but, since they had no rights to the land, they couldn’t build equity or get loans, and were at complete risk of displacement.
There’s a danger of viewing solutions to big issues from the top down. Focusing on things like poverty and education are important and needed – but, as I saw in Jamaica, philanthropy can have blind spots about distinct, measurable strategies with the potential to create enormous change and empower people from the bottom up – like basic property rights.
As with any relationship, there are things that can go awry in the funder-nonprofit relationship. Below is a table from my book that illustrates pitfalls we can be aware of, both from the nonprofit and donor perspectives.
If you could change one thing in the process of fundraising, what would it be?
Be really explicit and intentional about what you’re trying to do and why. What is the outcome you are trying to achieve? Many individuals and organizations have a lack of clarity around strategy, their end game, and designing actionable, meaningful metrics to inform the strategy. The team on the ground has the best knowledge, so ask them: how do we know that what we are doing is working?
Think of your favorite funder or donor. What makes them great?
This is an easy one, and I’m not the only one singing their praises: St. Benedict’s Prep School in New Jersey. After being around for 100 years or so as a school for middle class suburban kids, they closed for a year in the 1960s. Race riots affected the demographic make-up of the community, and many teachers and students left. The few who stayed spent a year planning for the school’s resurrection. When they reopened they began experimenting and, in time, radically reinvented themselves. They became student-led and student-run. School faculty conducted “homework raids”: surprise home visits where they showed up in very personal ways to support their at-risk students’ learning. They made their model all about meeting the needs of those they serve. I love their story!
What is one thing you’d like all donors to know about a nonprofit’s world?
Collaboration is a powerful approach to social change. Every major social movement – from civil rights to marriage equality to animal testing – succeeded because many diverse stakeholders and organizations came together to apply their distinct expertise to a social problem. Fundraising is not a zero-sum game. They didn’t end up stealing each other’s donors as a more effective movement attracted more donors; they expanded the pie, rather than carving it into smaller pieces for each organization.
Read Leah’s book and check out her recent post on vision alignment between funders and nonprofits. You can learn more about her work at leahkral.com or Savvy Altruism. And if you’d like to connect, email me – I’d love to introduce you.