Giving Compass' Take:

• Writing for GrantCraft, Open Road Alliance explores the ways in which nonprofits must adjust to a rapidly evolving environment in order to have an impact, from funding strategies to the words we use. It created Open Road Ventures to help spur this effort.

• How many organizations are willing (or able) to make changes in order to keep up to speed? The takeaway here is that even small modifications will add up over time.

• Here's how women's funds are guiding the way to more participatory grantmaking.

Five years ago, Open Road Alliance was founded to help nonprofits overcome unexpected obstacles that threatened impact. While “Keeping Impact on Track” is still our core mission, our execution of that mission has evolved. Our work has expandedto include the promotion of risk management in the sector; we’ve learned some hard lessons about the constraints and challenges of “giving money away;” and we’ve explored new approaches to investing for impact, including recoverable grants and loans.

We have grown organically and incrementally as we tested, learned, and affirmed our strategy and interventions to keep impact on track.

Most importantly, we’ve been watching and listening to our own partners and the nonprofits and social enterprises they run. What we’ve seen and heard is this:

"We’re not in Kansas Anymore." Nonprofit models, financing options, how we measure impact, who we partner with — everything about generating social impact is in a rapid state of flux ... As new organizations invent new wheels for social impact, established organizations are rushing to reinvent their own, lest they miss out on new revenue, partnerships, or approaches.

What’s in a Name? Our vocabulary is not keeping pace with the change. Our current labels are insufficient to encapsulate the mission, model, and multiple bottom lines of an increasing number of organizations. On a macro-level, the distinctions between the “philanthropic” and “corporate” sectors are blurring.

Show me the money! Whatever label you use to describe them, social impact organizations need more money, in new ways, from more sources.

Read the full article about learning to adapt in the new nonprofit environment by Open Road Alliance at GrantCraft, via National Center for Family Philanthropy.