Prizes and Challanges

What’s So Wrong with Nonprofits Playing by Market Rules?

Posted on by Case Foundation

Here’s the thing about markets – they have this uncanny way of being candid, sending demand signals that companies need to pay attention and adapt to in order to thrive, if not survive.

So why is it that the nonprofit sector is uncomfortable with embracing more market-based approaches to its work? This week’s feeding frenzy of articles criticizing the Council on Foundations for its experiment to host a $40,000 pitch competition to identify new organizations and approaches to drive social change is an example of this discomfort. In fact, the frenzy was so severe, that the Council decided to cancel the pitch competition and instead host a discussion on the merits and drawbacks of new approaches to grantmaking.

One of the pillars of our work at the Case Foundation is “revolutionizing philanthropy.” We believe that the practice of mobilizing private capital for public good is in need of a major reboot. In order to keep up with the pace and scope of major social challenges, the resources and tactics going into addressing these challenges and the organizations managing those resources need to be more efficient and effective. And as a sector, we need more catalytic, collaborative and creative solutions.

That’s why we’ve tested programs like the Make It Your Own Awards, the first campaign to open up a part of the grantmaking process to an online public vote. Or the America’s Giving Challenges (in 2007 and 2009), which mobilized over 150,000 donors to give $3.8M to over 14,000 causes, most of which were small and scrappy. That’s why we created the Be Fearless campaign – because we believe that in order to create more innovation in our approaches to social change, we must all take risks, embrace and learn from failure and make big bets. And that’s why we consistently provide catalytic funding to partners that are experimenting with new approaches and hoping to find breakthrough solutions and collaborations.

We’ve long championed the potential for prize and challenge programs – including initiatives like pitch competitions – to discover breakthrough innovations. We know that sometimes the people with the most innovative solutions to big problems will be found in unlikely places – just take the wedding dress designer who played a critical role in helping to dramatically improve the design of the Ebola Protective Suit worn by health care workers treating the disease, thanks to a challenge hosted by USAID’s Global Development Lab. The U.S. government has broadly embraced the use of prizes and challenges, which kicked off with the Summit on Innovation that we co-hosted with the White House in 2010, leading to the creation of Challenge.gov, which hosts hundreds of prize and challenge competitions across 50 federal agencies. And we were proud to join some of the philanthropic sector’s leading innovators – Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Joyce Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation – in publishing a 2014 report on the ways in which incentive prizes are transforming the innovation landscape.

We love to see new practices for crowdsourcing ideas, pooling resources, disrupting old ways of doing business, testing new approaches and massively publicizing – if not competing – new programs. Why? Because, quite frankly, despite a massive amount of good accomplished with billions of nonprofit dollars, the evidence base for impact remains unsatisfying. We’re not saying that we should swing the pendulum completely toward prizes, challenges and other experimental approaches – but deploying tactics that can help us discover new ideas from unlikely places is desperately needed.

We have a saying at the Case Foundation based on an old African proverb – if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. What if, instead of trashing the Council on Foundations for trying something new, we embraced it as a fearless attempt to disrupt the status quo with the hope of finding a better way? Sure, we might each have our tweaks on how to make it better (e.g., having a panel of judges, not the audience, vote on the winner). But as a tactic, it brings a fresh market-based approach and has the potential to expose innovative people and ideas to a broad community of funders, who just might decide it’s worth pooling their resources for greater and faster impact.

We look forward to the discussion on the merits of new grantmaking approaches at the Council’s conference, but we’ll wistfully be wondering what it would be like with the pitch competition in full swing, tapping into the “wisdom of the crowd” and fully embracing of the idea of democratizing philanthropy, making it easier for anyone to participate in the efforts to solve big, hairy problems.

Want to continue the conversation? Tweet us @CaseFoundation with the hashtag #CFBlog! 

Teaming up to Share Lessons on Designing Contests for Impact

Posted on by Case Foundation

Below, Case Foundation Senior Fellow Sonal Shah and Mayur Patel, Knight Foundation’s Vice President for Strategy and Assessment write about the importance of challenges and prizes as a tool for social change. This post originally appeared on the Knight Foundation blog.

In a world where technology has opened up access to a vast pool of talent and constant change has become the norm, contests offer a path to new ideas, new players and new ways of solving problems. We have seen a revival in contests as a way to discover new solutions and bold ideas across industries and sectors.

Leading companies, including Netflix, Google and Cisco, have tapped into challenges and prizes as a way to stimulate new business and technology innovations. Public agencies have also joined in, using contests as a way to make progress on a range of social issues, from reducing obesity to conserving household energy use. Last month, the U.K. government announced in grand fashion a new £1 million “Longitudinal Prize” committee to design competitions with the aim of tackling societies’ complex problems. The U.S. federal government continues to invest in its challenges and prizes platform, Challenge.gov. The platform provides opportunities for government agencies to tap into the potential of their citizens through prizes such as the NASA Centennial Challenges and public/private challenges such as Mozilla Ignite.

Despite this growing trend, many foundations have yet to use contests as a tool to advance their work and support innovation. Apprehension and uncertainty affect the willingness of many to adopt this tool. Additionally, it is not always clear where to start and how to design effective contests. Good design is key for successful contests, prizes and challenges. Sometimes even the failures can teach a lot about the effectiveness of the challenge or provide a better understanding about behaviors.

That’s why Knight and the Case Foundation, early adopters in this space, have teamed up to share experiences on contests, prizes and challenges and offer some valuable lessons learned along the way. On Aug. 8, we’re hosting a joint webinar, “Designing Contests for Impact.” The webinar, which begins at 1 p.m. EDT, will be geared towards foundations and other organizations interested in launching their own contests. We’ll share tips and practical advice on designing, setting up and running contests.

Knight and Case have been engaged in using contests to advance our missions for more than five years. These have ranged from the Knight News Challenge to Case’s America’s Giving Challenge. We’ve used contests to tap into fresh thinking, providing simple opportunities for new people to engage in problem-solving, and to generate widespread interest and attention on social causes and challenges.

The Knight Foundation has used contests across its program areas, and recently shared their experiences in a new report, “Why Contests Improve Philanthropy: Six Lessons on Designing Prizes for Public Impact”). Knight has granted more than $75 million to individuals, nonprofits and commercial enterprises through prizes and contests. They’ve supported experimental arts projects, resident-led neighborhood improvements, tech startups and data applications.

At the Case Foundation we have made similar progress in developing contests as a tool for our philanthropy.  That work also led to a report for the industry on how contests can impact our work: “How Giving Contests Can Strengthen Nonprofits and Communities.” In addition, the Case Foundation has co-hosted several cross-sector gatherings with the White House, bringing together experts in prizes and challenges from the corporate, public and foundation/nonprofit sectors to share knowledge and explore new opportunities for collaborating.

At both Knight and Case, we believe that prizes and challenges provide an opportunity to democratize ideas and are tied to a growing movement in open innovation. The social web provides unprecedented opportunities for collaboration on a mass scale. We have been experimenting and testing ways to run effective challenges for many years—but we’re not the only ones.  Other foundations and organizations have been doing great work in leveraging prizes, including the X-Prize Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.  We believe that the potential is significant and look forward to the webinar on Aug 8.  We hope you will join the conversation.

The Gamification Revolution Goes Global

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This post was written by Alicia Bonner Ness on behalf of the Case Foundation: 

Alicia Bonner Ness (@AliciaBNess) is the Communications Manager at CDC Development Solutions where she seeks to amplify the stories and impact of skills-based volunteerism and enterprise development around the globe. She is the editor of the online magazine The New Global Citizen.

Last month GSummit stopped in Washington, DC for GSummitX, a Meetup event designed to educate the masses about the benefits of gamification.

“Gamification?” You say. “I think I’ve heard of it but…” Blank stare.

It’s this response that leads Gabe Zichermann, the author of The Gamification Revolution and two other books, to lead workshops on the topic.

Psychological understanding of gaming is changing the way organizations and even governments motivate positive behavior change and compliance. To illustrate the point to his audience, Gabe called out the efforts of the Swedish government to lower driving speeds with Speed Camera Lottery, Domino Pizza’s attempt to grow its market share with Pizza Hero, and Nike’s business model transformation that was powered by the introduction of Nike+.

Gaming behavior follows a simple cycle, driven by dopamine production. When we take on a challenge, and achieve a goal, we experience dopamine release, or pleasure, which further motivates us to continue to the next challenge. When individuals compete, the incentives that most successfully reward behavior can be surprising. In descending order, effective rewards are Status (hello, leader board!), Access, (hello, Mr. President), Power, (go fetch, Mr. President), and Stuff ($$$). Gabe argues that the efficacy of these rewards is linked to human habituation. This cycle can reinforce any behavior cycle, but when harnessed for good, it can propel greater compliance and achievement.

To illustrate the point, GSummitX lead the audience through an interactive “Gamestorming” activity, Play for a Cause, engaging participants in a game that solves a social good problem—CDC Development Solutions was fortunate enough to be the beneficiary.

We asked, “How can we get more Americans engaged in the world?”

Gabe proceeded to facilitate a Gamestorm called 3-12-2. In tables of eight, each participant has three minutes to write down as many aspects of the problem as they can think of. When time is up, each table breaks up into teams of two, and each team uses the problem aspects as inspiration to brainstorm one solution to the problem. For two minutes, the table discusses amongst itself to vote on its two best ideas. Each of the winning teams shares their idea with everyone, and the moderator then empowers everyone to cast two votes for the winning idea.

As we watched the teams brainstorm about the challenge, many considered how to circumvent language barriers, how to overcall negative perceptions of Americans around the world, and how to increase cross-border exchange through sports. The two winning ideas were both fantastic, but for me, the second runner up was the most innovative. The first proposed an athletic exchange program among collegiate athletes. The second proposed a shift in thinking among leading corporations from “MBA preferred,” to “global citizenship preferred,” placing a premium on globalism to compete for high-impact professional positions. (Indeed, many leaders, like Ángel Cabrera, are already encouraging just such a shift in thinking).

Interestingly, none of the participants voiced strategies that would compel Americans to investigate cultural exchange opportunities right in their own back yard—most considered effective ways to help Americans leave the United States. But it’s the work of the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy, a division of CDS, that seeks to encourage exactly this kind of American engagement to increase awareness of ways you can both be a global citizen and sleep in your own bed.

To this end, they are launching a campaign: You had me at Hello—you can follow the campaign at #helloworld.

This publication is also aimed at amplifying cross-cultural stories of collaboration and impact. You can read here about how to tell your story. And of course, you can visit GSummit to find out how you can use gamification for good!

Portland Junior Scientists Voted Finding Fearless Fan Favorite

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Congratulations to Meghana Rao and the Portland Junior Scientists team! More than 10,000 votes were cast during the Finding Fearless Fan Favorite Voting and after carefully reviewing all of the ballots submitted we are pleased to officially report that the public overwhelmingly selected Portland Junior Scientists to win both Fan Favorite awards. Led by Meghana Rao, Portland Junior Scientists was voted the winner of an additional $10,000 bonus grant AND the REI adventure experience at Bryce Canyon National Park!

We launched Finding Fearless in September to recognize, reward, and inspire fearless changemakers. We received nearly 1,200 nominations with stories of fearless efforts happening around the country. Our Fearless Academy of nearly 100 judges reviewed the nominations and we selected the Top 20 winners. These winners all receive grants from the Case Foundation and the Goldhirsh Foundation ranging between $1,500 and $10,000, $25,000 in Microsoft software donations, an REI gift card, and a Microsoft Prize Pack, altogether totaling nearly $670,000. Additionally, all 20 winners had a chance to win more money and prizes in Fan Favorite Voting and impressively mobilized their communities. We were excited to watch the overwhelming interest in these fearless people and projects. And while Meghana managed to come out on top, all 20 projects have gained new supporters and advocates that will champion their work in the months and years ahead.

More about our Fan Favorite Winner

When Meghana Rao was 16, school funding cuts and a deep passion for science motivated Meghana to create Portland Junior Scientists. Portland Junior Scientists is a student-run volunteer organization connecting high school students with underprivileged and at-risk kids to explore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics with hands-on experimentation and discussion. Meghana’s main goal is to inspire students in underfunded schools lacking a deep science and math curriculum to pursue careers in science. We are excited to work with Portland Junior Scientists to continue to advocate for the importance of science education!

Meghana’s “get out the vote” efforts landed Portland Junior Scientists in first place for both the $10,000 bonus grant from the Case Foundation and the REI Adventure Trip. Meghana and three friends will receive a trip of a lifetime through REI Adventures valued at $5,000. They will get to visit Bryce Canyon National Park through an exclusive camping experience that celebrates having fun outdoors REI-style with the best gear, great food, and incredible guides. REI Adventure’s Signature Camping trip to Bryce Canyon is certain to provide an amazing experience and a lifetime of memories.

We are truly inspired by Meghana and all of our Finding Fearless winners! From youth programs to civic engagement and health, Finding Fearless changemakers are championing new ideas across the country. Check out our infographic with more details on our Finding Fearless participants and stay tuned in the next few months as we continue to lift up all of our winners. We will be following their progress, sharing their stories, and reporting back on lessons from the Finding Fearless program itself. In the meantime, meet the rest of the winners, read their stories, get inspired, and keep supporting their work at FindingFearless.org.

The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time: a City Year Corps Member’s Perspective

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This post was written by Kathryn Hanna on behalf of the Case Foundation:

I often find it challenging to explain to friends and family the exact nature of my work, and why it’s important. Sure, I can tell people that “every 26 seconds a student gives up on school in America.” I can throw out statistics like, “more than 50 percent of the nation’s high school dropouts come from just 12 percent of the nation’s schools.” But until you actually set foot in these high-need schools, the sheer magnitude of the obstacles our students are facing is difficult to fathom. Today, corps members serving with City Year, an education-focused nonprofit that seeks to keep students in school and on track to graduate, are facing the reality of the dropout crisis every day as they embark on their year of service as tutors, mentors, and role models in some of the highest-need inner-city schools across the country.

The crisis became real for me about a month into my corps year, in the fall of 2011. I was working with one of our sixth graders, Grace, on a math worksheet during Power Hour, a block of time during afterschool designated for homework help. The worksheet required Grace to multiply and divide fractions, a skill the class had been practicing for a couple of weeks. When I saw that Grace was struggling to multiply the fractions in her head, I attempted to break the problem down for her. And when she continued to struggle, I broke the problem down even further, taking her through step by step until I couldn’t break it down any more. After we had been working on the same problem for nearly fifteen minutes, a sad realization hit me: the reason Grace was struggling so much went beyond the fact that she didn’t understand fractions. The problem was, Grace couldn’t multiply to begin with. In fact, she could barely add. When I realized this, I put away the worksheet, pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, and began to teach Grace how to do multiplication.

That night, I went home feeling angry, frustrated, and defeated. It isn’t fair that students like Grace should face such difficulties in completing a simple worksheet; it isn’t right that her classmates, and others like them, are so far behind that they are still reading at a second grade level by the time they reach middle school; and it isn’t okay that we as a nation are allowing these injustices to continue. However, I also came to a realization. The dropout crisis has been referred to as “the civil rights issue of our time,” and when such large-scale injustices are taking place, it is that initial spark of anger, that feeling that something isn’t right, isn’t fair, isn’t okay, that lights the fire in a society which leads to drastic change.

There is a saying at City Year that goes, “It’s not my fault-but it is.” It’s easy to come into these schools, see the problem, and immediately look for someone to blame, be it teachers, parents, principals, or even the students themselves. But the fact is, it doesn’t matter. As I used to tell my students last year, you can’t change the people around you, and you can’t change the situations you’re faced with; the only thing you can control is how you react. So we can choose to blame others, to let ourselves become overwhelmed and disheartened, to let fear and apathy stand in our way. Or, we can choose to recognize the urgency of the situation, and realize that drastic, immediate action is needed, and it’s up to us to stand up and fight for our students. Unfortunately, cases like Grace’s are not uncommon in the schools we serve, but there is a way out.

As I embark on a second year of service, this time in an elementary school, I will remember Grace. I will remember her not for that day in Power Hour, though, or for the many Power Hours that followed during which we labored through worksheet after worksheet. Rather, I will remember that Grace never gave up, and I never gave up on Grace; and by the end of the year, her math grades reflected that: she began to show improvement. Our challenges are huge, and no, one person alone cannot reverse the damage that’s been done to our education system after years of neglect. But together, we can be fearless, and we can change the world.

Kathryn Hannah is a City Year Washington, DC corps member from Asheville, NC. She currently serves on the C.W. Harris Elementary School Team sponsored by Serve DC. This is the third in a series of blogs we’ll feature from City Year and AmeriCorps alumni about their journeys to Be Fearless through service. Read the first and second posts.

Jean Case on White House Blog: Public Sector Prizes in Innovation Democracy

Posted on by Case Foundation

Today, the Case Foundation was proud to co-present “Collaborative Innovation: Public Sector Prizes” with the Joyce Foundation and the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, bringing together hundreds of leaders from the Administration and federal agencies and some of the most recognizable companies and organizations to discuss how prizes and challenges are sparking innovation and deepening citizen engagement.

We were honored to present the Department of Health and Human Services with the first Award of Excellence in Advancing Public Sector Prizes and Innovation for their commitment to this increasingly used tool to solve some of our country’s most complex problems.

The Case Foundation has long supported prizes (like our America’s Giving Challenge) as a way to ignite community engagement, connect with hard-to-reach populations, spur innovation, and make philanthropy more democratic. The White House has been at the forefront of a similar appreciation of prizes and competitions in the public sector.To find new ideas and solutions for solving a range of challenges, we must be willing to fearlessly experiment and embrace approaches like prizes that produce impact.

For more about the Collaborative Innovation event and the Case Foundation’s support of public sector competitions and prizes, read our CEO Jean Case’s post on the White House blog.

AGC Conversational Case Studies: A special sauce for contest success?

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This post was written by Allison Fine on behalf of the Case Foundation:

For this third and final Conversational Case Study on America’s Giving Challenge from Beth Kanter and I, we wil pose a question rather than answer one: Is there a “special sauce” for successful participation in online fundraising contests?

Any good sauce is always a combination of ingredients, never just one thing. So is successful social fundraising. Based on our assessment and review of winning efforts in other contests, it seems clear that some of the key ingredients include:

Personal Appeals

People naturally respond more frequently to personal appeals from family and friends. Personal solicitations to existing donors and friends through multiple channels were rated as the most effective methods for fundraising by Challenge participants. Thirty-five percent rated messaging to friends through Facebook as most effective; 32 percent rated personal email to friends, family and colleagues as effective or most effective; and 25% rated email to existing organizational donor base as effective or most effective.

Thankfulness

Many of the winners cited the importance of thanking donors profusely throughout the contest. Food for People not only made personal appeals to their donors but also went to great effort thanking their donors knowing that a well-thanked donor is likely to help solicit their own friends for the cause.

Transparency

Creating public spaces to share information about who is doing what is also a very effective strategy. The Overseas China Education Fund maintained and shared a wiki about who was asked to do what.

Spreading Out the Work

One of the most powerful attributes of social media is the ability of large numbers of people to coordinate their actions as part of a larger event. This type of grassroots activism can be enormously effective for contests or any type of cause-based movement.

Some like Atlas Corps recruited 150 “Campaign Captains” before the contest started. These Captains agreed to get between 5-10 of their friends to give to Atlas Corps during the contest. One of the Captains was so excited about the contest that he made a challenge to his friends that if 100 of his friends donated to Atlas Corps he would go on a 30-mile bike ride in his underwear. His friends responded and he lived up to his promise. Take a look at the bottom and see for yourself!

Other organizations broke their efforts down into bite size pieces for their volunteers by creating templates to use to send messages to their friends, post and comment on blogs, and create their own videos. Here is a template page for the Challenge created by GlobeMed for its supporters.

A Picture is Worth a 1,000 Donors

Most of the winners, including our first Conversational Case Study organization Darius Goes West, chronicled their efforts by video. Students involved in GlobeMed made a series of videos and posted them on YouTube.

Face-to-Face Can’t be Forgotten

Brick and mortar methods still reign as a highly important aspect of online giving campaigns. Five Star worked with their local Chamber of Commerce gathering to set up a laptop and how to give in-person donations.

Contests are important to this concoction because they provide a framework for engaging the community, an urgent deadline for action and, in best cases (such as the Giving Challenge), matching funds for the winners. But in the end, we wonder if there is some other unique quality or combination of these ingredients that makes each person or groups efforts “special” and successful, that turns some combination of activities into a community of energetic people actively engaged in supporting a friend or a cause.

Our questions to our readers, doers, champions and participants, are these:

  • In your experience does a concoction, some blend of activities and tasks, exist, that makes some groups or people more successful than others in fundraising contests? And if so, what are they?
  • Under what circumstances does some combination of activities work best?
  • Is there a tool or action you think might work well in the future that you’d like to test next time (e.g. a geo-location service like Foursquare?)
  • Are we trying too hard to be prescriptive in discussing sauces, and should we just let people create their own recipes?

Guest blogger Allison Fine is a writer and activist dedicated to understanding and enhancing efforts to use new, social media tools for social change.

Public-Private strategy session with White House takes citizen participation to the next level

Posted on by Case Foundation

This morning, I have the honor of kicking off the public-private strategy session we’re hosting with the White House on driving innovation and civic dialogue through the use of prizes, challenges and open grantmaking.

I feel a great sense of excitement as we head into this dialogue that focuses largely on new, breakthrough opportunities to more fully engage citizens in our public sector efforts. Here at the Case Foundation, we began to see the potential in these types of approaches to ignite civic participation, especially when combined with new interactive technologies, when we launched the Make It Your Own Awards in 2007. Since then, we have seen that potential grow as both the philanthropic and corporate sectors have continued to experiment through programs that incent the public to participate in decision-making.

Now, we have the opportunity to take lessons we’ve learned – and those of peers – from these early innovations and apply them to a sector where they have the potential to make the most impact on the public – in the federal government. Through the early experimentation, we’ve seen that there is a clear appetite from the public to have a more active role in making decisions that affect their daily lives and their communities, and now it’s time to capitalize on that appetite by creating opportunities and moments that capture the best ideas and move them forward.

Earlier this week, I was asked “why now?” when it comes to the government’s adoption of prizes and challenges. Frankly, I don’t think it was possible until now – the merging of the movement toward improving transparency and reducing bureaucracy at the federal level, with the evolution of Web 2.0 technologies has opened the door for the creation of programs that can successfully engage the public and encourage their direct involvement in driving innovation and improving how government serves them.  At its core, this is an opportunity for government to return to the roots of democracy – a government that is for the people, and more significantly by the people.

And since this day-long session is all about reaching new audiences to identify new solutions and engaging all citizens in decision-making, we’re particularly excited about the fact that we’ll be able to bring the day to the public – no matter where they are. We encourage everyone interested in this topic to join our interactive CaseSoup Q&A sessions featuring leading innovators in this space, taking place online and live from the event. The schedule includes an exciting mix of public and private sector experts and practitioners, including Sonal Shah of the White House Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, Peter Diamandis of the X Prize Foundation, Aneesh Chopra, U.S. CTO, the team from the Pepsi Refresh Project and others. We’ll hope you’ll join us on this exciting day!

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