By Rachel Shaheen | Program Assistant
The Social Innovation Forum has officially spun off from our parent organization, Root Cause, as of July 1, 2015! Since then, the SIF team has been busy with the transition process. Our progress to date includes:
We are also currently working with Echo & Co. to build our new website. Please visit our landing page at socialinnovationforum.org to sign up for notification when our new site launches. In the meantime, SIF information will be available through rootcause.org.
Moreover, our 2016 selection process is underway! We received more than 150 applications for the 2015–2016 Social Innovation Forum in early July and advanced about half of them to the semifinalist stage. With the help of our evaluation committee – an engaged group of businesspeople, foundation representatives, track sponsors, issue experts, and Social Innovation Forum staff – we will halve the pool yet again and invite the remaining organizations to interview as finalists. In the end, we will select one Social Innovator for each of eight nonprofit social issue tracks which will be announced at an annual Winter Reception in December 2015.
The “Social Innovators” chosen at the end of the six-month selection process will receive 24-months of structured consulting and support to hone their social innovation, sharpen their messaging, grow their networks, and deepen and scale their impact. We will select one Social Innovator on each of eight “social issue tracks”. Our 2016 Social Issue Tracks include:
Anything Goes: Innovative, Effective, and Sustainable Approaches
to Our Region’s Toughest Social Issues
Track Partner: Boston Open Impact
Addressing Food Insecurity by Increasing Access
to Healthy and Affordable Food
Track Partner: Cabot Family Charitable Trust
Engaging, Educating, and Empowering Citizens
in the Political Process
Track Partner: Bess Foundation
Mental Health: Increasing Quality Care through Community-Based and Wraparound Services for Vulnerable Populations
Track Partner: The Fish Family Foundation
Overcoming Barriers to Education, Employment,
and Economic Self-Sufficiency for Women and Girls
Track Partner: A Women & Girls Funding Collaborative
Revitalizing the City of Lowell through Community Leadership,
Economic Opportunities, and Cultural Enrichment
Track Partners: Theodore Edson Parker Foundation
& Greater Lowell Community Foundation
Utilizing Open Spaces and Natural Resources for Public Benefit
Track Partner: Highland Street Foundation
Youth Development: Revitalizing Cities beyond Boston
Track Partner: Amelia Peabody Foundation
The Social Innovation Forum’ work is founded on the belief that social innovation is critical to ensure that our public and private resources are leveraged in the most effective ways to address our nation’s social problems. We believe that social innovation is the process of finding, testing, and honing potentially transformative approaches to solve persistent social problems. In the current climate of limited resources and growing social need, it is vitally important to both foster social innovation and invest in what works. Accomplishing this requires more than the scaling of individual organizations. It also demands a cross-sector, impact-oriented mindset that prioritizes what we call spread: the distribution of a social innovation across many organizations and agencies once it has begun to demonstrate results.
Thank you again for your support of our work. We hope to share many more exciting updates throughout the fall!
Links:
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