Giving Compass' Take:

•Sarah Evans, writing for Forbes, discusses lessons after trying to innovate the nonprofit sector by shifting the nonprofit structure and redefining program success. 

• How can donors help support other innovations like this in the nonprofit industry?

•  Read more about nonprofit innovation and success. 

Many nonprofits fail to innovate at the pace of the for-profit sector. While our methods are outdated, our spending restrictions won’t allow us to take leaps.

I’ve worked in the international nonprofit space as the founder of Well Aware for 12 years in a field that combines science, technology and cultural adaptation. We construct rural water supply systems in east Africa with a team of experts while using local technology that’s rapidly expanding in the region. But the rural water supply sector, overall, is claiming pretty low success rates.

A few years ago, we decided to do something more daring to leverage the blossoming communications and banking tech to disseminate our expertise and model more broadly, while also harvesting important data to inform better work.

We explored taking a significant pivot within our nonprofit structure and found no good path without confusing or disgruntling donors. We also knew that our ranking on rating websites could be compromised if we put money toward what most would see as a risky enterprise.

So, we decided to create a new entity -- a for-profit company called Well Beyond -- to facilitate our new path without compromising the reputation and revenue of the original organization and to provide a source of growth for the nonprofit.

The two companies are enhancing each other’s reach, and we are building on the successes of each to forge a new path for our corner of the nonprofit world. Here’s what we’ve learned so far.

  • For the most part, nonprofits are acting on already proven or quickly proven concepts.
  • The nonprofit sector has done a poor job of educating donors about what real program success looks like. True success is not the moment the well is drilled or when the treatment is administered.

Read the full article about nonprofit innovation by Sarah Evans at Forbes.