Social Startup Success: How the Best Nonprofits Launch, Scale Up, and Make a Difference

by Kathleen Kelly Janus

Overview

With business advice from an expert entrepreneur, learn how to identify and leverage the key factors that will bring sustainability and success to your startup.

Kathleen Kelly Janus, a lecturer at the Stanford University Program on Social Entrepreneurship and the founder of the successful social enterprise Spark, set out to investigate what makes a startup succeed or fail. She surveyed more than 200 high-performing social entrepreneurs and interviewed dozens of founders. Social Startup Success shares her findings for the legions of entrepreneurs working for social good, revealing how the best organizations get over the revenue hump. How do social ventures scale to over $2 million, Janus's clear benchmark for a social enterprise's sustainability?

​Janus, tapping into strong connections to the Silicon Valley world where many of these ventures are started or and/or funded, reveals insights from key figures such as DonorsChoose founder Charles Best, charity:water's Scott Harrison, Reshma Saujani of Girls Who Code and many others. Social Startup Success will be social entrepreneurship's essential playbook; the first definitive guide to solving the problem of scale.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780738219912
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	01/16/2018
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Kathleen Kelly Janus is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author and lecturer at Stanford University, and an expert on philanthropy, millennial engagement and scaling early stage organizations. An attorney, Kathleen is a cofounder of Spark, a nonprofit focused on building a community of young, global citizens promoting gender equality. Since its founding in 2004, Spark has engaged more than 10,000 young professionals nationwide to support grassroots women's organizations. Additionally, she is Chair of the Board of Directors of Accountability Counsel, a startup human rights organization, and informally advises a variety of other nonprofits and social entrepreneurs locally and globally.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Part 1 Testing Ideas

1 The Discovery Phase 3

2 Engaging All Stakeholders 24

3 Reframing Failure as Learning 33

Part 2 Measuring Impact

4 Crafting a Compelling Theory of Change 51

5 Maximizing Use of Data 65

6 Making Your Data Tell a Story 82

Part 3 Funding Experimentation

7 Laying the Foundation to Experiment with Earned Income 97

8 Testing Earned-Income Strategies 107

9 Optimizing Fundraising Efforts 121

Part 4 Leading Collaboratively

10 Cultivating Collective Leadership 145

11 Bringing in Senior Leadership Early 164

12 Building an Active Board 173

Part 5 Telling Compelling Stories

13 Creating a Compelling Narrative 188

Conclusion 201

Acknowledgments 203

Appendix A Cast of Characters 207

Appendix B Methodology 222

Appendix C Additional Resources 231

Notes 236

Index 244

Editorial Reviews

11/06/2017
Asking why some social-justice startups flourish and others fail, Kelly, cofounder of a nonprofit that promotes gender equality, presents the trends unique to successful organizations in this no-nonsense, energetic guide to building a startup that both does well and does good. Kelly conducted a survey of newly founded organizations and tracked which ones reached organizational sustainability, which she defines as annually raising about $2 million. She found five key strategies responsible for the success of effective nonprofits: they all tested ideas thoroughly before seeking funding, measured impact from day one, funded experimentation through diversification, led collaboratively, and told compelling stories. Surprisingly, none of the successful startups indicated that their success was driven by a single brilliant idea or charismatic founder. Packed with clear, concrete advice and illustrated with profiles of effective leaders, Kelly provides comfort and direction for do-gooders leading startups, such as with reminders that they’re not alone in their challenges. Though the audience is necessarily niche, Kelly hits her target perfectly, and this is a must-read for anyone who wants to combine a lucrative career with work for the greater good. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

"The pressing social problems we face today require creative leadership. This book will teach you what you need to know to be a good social entrepreneur."—Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of the New York Times bestseller Banker to the Poor

"Shows how to scale an impact organization and, in so doing, change the world for the better."—Charles Best, Founder and CEO, DonorsChoose

"An invaluable resource for the next generation of changemakers."—Wendy Kopp, Founder, Teach for America, cofounder and CEO, Teach for All

"An inspiring must-read, with an empathetic voice, for all of us aspiring to maximize our social value through our organizations, work, and lives."—Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, Founder/CEO, laaf.org, author of Giving 2.0, Founder/Chairman, Stanford Center on Philanthropy & Civil Society, Founder/Chairman Emeritus, Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund

"Reveals the secret sauce behind the most influential nonprofits of our time, telling their stories in memorable ways that every nonprofit leader can learn from."—Darren Walker, President, Ford Foundation

"Social Startup Success is a marvelous compilation of stories of some of the most inspiring leaders of our time."—Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker

"An insightful and highly useful guide that breaks down how organizations maximize their impact and create lasting change. An important contribution to the field."—David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World:Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

"Social Startup Success covers all of the important building blocks...necessary for early stage organizations to succeed and build a strong foundation for further scale."—Heather McLeod Grant, Cofounder, Open Impact, and author of Forces for Good

"[A] no-nonsense, energetic guide...Kelly hits her target perfectly, and this is a must-read for anyone who wants to combine a lucrative career with work for the greater good."—Publishers Weekly

"Social entrepreneurship's essential playbook."—Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher