Six breakthrough practices for a high-impact future

A new book uncovers the secrets to success for nonprofit organizations. Can libraries apply these principles both individually and collectively to make a difference in the digital age?

By Tom Storey

Leslie Crutchfield

After four years of study and research, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant discovered the practices that largely determine the impact a nonprofit organization can deliver. Surprisingly, the key is not in bold strategic planning or operational efficiency, or even careful allocation of resources. It’s not having a great brand or the perfect mission statement. Impact has much more to do with work done beyond the organization’s own four walls.

“Being an extraordinary nonprofit isn’t about building an organization or scaling it up,” Crutchfield says. “It’s about finding ways to leverage other sectors to create extraordinary impact. Great nonprofits are catalysts; they transform the system around them to achieve greater good.”

In their book, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits—recently named one of the top books of 2007 by The Economist— Crutchfield and Grant unveil six practices that high-impact organizations use to maximize social change. In their research, they found that great nonprofits work with business to change the way entire industries practice. They work with government and advocate for policy change. They build up citizen movements. They constantly adapt to their environment to stay relevant. They share leadership and power within and beyond their organization, empowering others to become forces for good.

Why do high-impact nonprofits harness multiple forces for good, when it would be easier to focus on growing and perfecting their own organizations?

The explanation lies in their unwavering commitment to creating real impact, Crutchfield says. “These organizations aspire to change the world. They want to solve many of the world’s biggest problems—hunger, poverty, failing education. Just as they are driven to achieve broad social change, they have an unstoppable desire to create lasting impact as well.”

Of course, to be successful, nonprofits need to invest in the basics, says Crutchfield, such as developing a strong operating model, building management systems and hiring and retaining great people. “But even if you do all of these things perfectly, you won’t maximize your impact.

“Greatness is about working with and through others, as counterintuitive as that might seem. It’s about leveraging every sector of society to become a force for good.”

Rush Miller

Can the six practices help libraries make a difference in the digital age?

NextSpace asked Dr. Rush G. Miller, Hillman University Librarian, University of Pittsburgh, to provide a library perspective on the six practices, all of which center on change and transformation.

Miller was the architect of sweeping changes at the University of Pittsburgh library system and co-authored a book titled Beyond Survival: Managing Academic Libraries in Transition, which describes the need for change, along with an overview of managing change.

Following are explanations of the six practices, nonprofit organizations that are excelling at implementing them, and Miller’s observations.

Practice #1: Serve and advocate. You have to serve but also advocate.

Great nonprofits not only provide outstanding programs and services, they advocate for policy change because doing so leverages the enormous resources of government. “All the organizations, even if they would not have touched policy with a 10-foot pole in the beginning, eventually got on to advocacy, because the reality is that they could have more impact that way,” says Crutchfield. “When you combine advocacy with programs and services, you gain more traction against the problems you are trying to solve.”

Who excels at #1: Serve and advocate

Self-Help started out providing financial services to help minority and poor families acquire a basic economic asset: a home. The services, however, were not enough for these families to sustain home ownership and build wealth. So, Self-Help got into the lobbying business and its relentless efforts helped pass legislation in more than 20 states to curtail predatory lending, the abusive practice that effectively strips assets away from the poor.

Rush Miller: “Certainly the point that high-impact, nonprofit organizations must provide services as well as engage in effective policy advocacy is in line with the current state of librarianship. Our professional associations, such as ALA and ARL, among many others, have been increasingly engaged in helping to shape a legislative agenda at the local, state and national level to increase support for libraries, to protect fair use, to promote open access to research results, and to protect patrons’ privacy rights. And many of us have become engaged on our campuses and in our communities in ways that certainly runs counter to the popular image of librarians.

“We have learned well this point. Giving wonderful, effective information services to our constituents is a necessary thing, and it is central to our mission.  But good service alone is not sufficient to guarantee support or to create an environment conducive to our overall success.

“I have known librarians in my career who failed to understand this basic point. They managed the library in a manner that focused all of the attention on the services the librarians provided to students. They believed that if they did a good job in the library, the administration and the board and the public in general would value their contributions and provide the resources they needed to prosper over time. Invariably, they failed, not to give good service, but to secure an increasing resource base necessary to maintain quality over time.

“A library leader must be an advocate for the library far beyond the walls of the library or even the campus. And each librarian should understand that the roles they play externally to the library can have an important impact on the overall success of the library. The squeaking wheel does not often get greased in higher education. But, soundless hiding behind the walls (even services) of the library, while it may not draw negative attention, often fails to draw positive support either. The library leaders who are the most successful are those who can reach out to a variety of campus or community stakeholders and be an effective advocate for library issues and perspectives, bringing them to bear on the larger environment.”

Practice #2: Make markets work. Markets aren’t perfect, make them function more effectively.

No longer content to rely on traditional notions of charity or view the private sector as an enemy, great nonprofits find ways to work with markets and help business “do well while doing good,” says Crutchfield. “They influence business practices, build corporate partnerships and develop earned-income ventures—
all ways of leveraging market forces to achieve impact on a grander scale.”

Who excels at #2: Make markets work

In its first few years of existence, Environmental Defense, an organization that works to solve environmental problems, dealt with corporate polluters through lawsuits and aggressive advocacy. even though this approach was effective, it realized it could have far more impact if it partnered with companies to create model environmental programs. Today, environmental defense cooperatively helps the fast food industry reduce packaging waste and the overnight shipping industry reduce emissions from their trucks.

Rush Miller: “There is certainly something for libraries to take away from this point. However, I would emphasize that libraries, like other nonprofits, must operate in a more ‘business-like’ manner to be successful in the future.

“In our libraries here at the University of Pittsburgh, we began to take this point seriously about 13 years ago. We had a large and bureaucratic organization, bound by tradition and highly compartmentalized. Many of our services and processes were excellent, and of high quality as defined traditionally in the profession. For example, we had a reputation for extremely high quality cataloging and took great pride in being the first library outside of Ohio to catalog a record in OCLC. Our records were always accurate and acceptable to our peer institutions, a source of great pride among the technical services departments.

“We had more than 70 librarians and staff in acquisitions and cataloging with a large number of them engaged in special projects to catalog large backlogs of foreign language materials. The library system had a very large percentage of its budget tied up in technical services operations of all sorts. On the other hand, the public services of the library system suffered correspondingly. The focus on technical services produced a card catalog, and later an online catalog, which was a model of accuracy and met the highest standards.

“However, the backlog of books, even English language materials, grew to gigantic proportions over time. And none of the books in this backlog could be accessed by a user. Well, one can only imagine the bizarre practices this engendered. Public Service personnel slipped into technical services to search the backlog for that book that was needed by a student, sneaking it out and allowing it to be used, then skulking back at night to return it to the shelf, knowing all along there was little danger of this activity being discovered in the mountain of books located on backlog shelves.

“To make a long story short (full story in our book, Beyond Survival), we decided to undertake a business reengineering style redesign of our entire technical services operation. The result was a reduction in total staffing from 70 to 29; the elimination of the entire backlog (including the so-called ‘permanent backlog’); savings of $1.1 million, which were applied to new initiatives in the digital area; and a finely tuned operation that has stood the test of time for more than a decade.

“Our technical services operations are very efficient, but we define quality today more in terms of information delivery and less in terms of perfection in cataloging. And this one large scale business-like process has spawned tremendous success in everything from public services to information technologies to digital publishing, all made possible with the seed money freed up from freeing ourselves from tradition and misplaced altruism.”

Practice #3: Inspire evangelists. Build a strong community of supporters.

Great nonprofits see users, volunteers and donors not only for what they can contribute in time, money and guidance but also for what they can do for their cause. Says Crutchfield, “Great nonprofits create meaningful ways to engage individuals in emotional experiences that help them connect to the group’s mission and core values. These experiences convert outsiders to evangelists.”

Who excels at #3: Inspire evangelists

With a budget of $1 billion, several thousand affiliates and hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide, Habitat for Humanity has built more than 200,000 homes in 100 countries. Yet, Habitat doesn’t merely aspire to build houses for the poor, but rather to mobilize communities to solve the problems of poverty housing. It turns volunteers and donors into evangelists for the housing cause. The group’s premier evangelist? Jimmy Carter, who got involved in 1984 when Habitat founder Millard Fuller persuaded the former president to become an ambassador for Habitat. With Carter’s involvement, the group’s revenues went from $3 million to $100 million and grew at an astonishing annual rate of 30 percent over two decades.

Rush Miller: “I do think that we seek to develop donors, as well as users, who will feel enthusiastic about our libraries. At Pitt, we have an external Board of Visitors made up of leaders in the library and business fields, as well as members of our Board of Trustees. I know that our Board of Visitors, especially the Board of Trustee representatives, act as ‘evangelists’ for the library system. The ULS will have time at an upcoming Board of Trustee meeting to communicate our message primarily because of the advocacy from our Board of Visitors chair, who is a prominent Trustee. So I agree that this is something we should be giving more attention to in libraries.”

Practice #4: Nurture nonprofit networks. Advance your cause by building networks of allies.

Although most groups pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other organizations as competition for resources. But high-impact nonprofits help
the competition succeed, building networks of allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their larger field. They freely share wealth, expertise and power with their peers, not because they are saints, but because it’s in their self-interest to do so. “Great nonprofits are more like Wikipedia and MySpace than Microsoft or IBM,” says Crutchfield. “They give away what would be seen by others as proprietary resources.”

Who excels at #4: Nurture nonprofit networks

Anyone who has ever taken children to an interactive science and technology center has indirectly experienced the power of the Exploratorium—and of nonprofit networks. From the day it opened in 1969, the exploratorium, a museum of science, art and human perception designed as a model for new forms of
education, realized that by giving away its model and building a global network of interactive science centers, it would reach more people and have greater impact. Today, the organization reaches 20 million people through exhibits at 124 partner museums.

Rush Miller: “Collaboration has long been a hallmark of academic libraries. We are a nurturing profession and have led our institutions in collaboration and cooperation with libraries at competing institutions. If one thinks about all of the networking that occurs in libraries, it is clear that we have learned this lesson well.  Most of us in involved with a large number of networking relationships. Interlibrary loan was born of this kind of sharing to reduce costs at libraries. Today we collaborate with one another, and with other cultural institutions in our regions, to mount our content on the Web, making our digital collections far richer and more comprehensive. We are engaging in developing policies that would allow many of us to discard older books is they are held in ‘last copy’ repositories to which we have easy access. We are saving money by discarding journals that are not mounted digitally through collaborative arrangements. There are countless ways in which this principle is being applied today, yet for us, it is not a new idea at all, but part of the culture of libraries.”

Practice #5: Master the art of adaptation. Respond to change by innovating and modifying tactics.

High impact organizations are exceptionally adaptive, modifying tactics as needed to increase success. They respond to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. “Along the way, they’ve made mistakes,” says Crutchfield. “But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn and modify their approach based on external cues. adaptability has allowed superior nonprofits to sustain their impact and stay relevant.”

Who excels at #5: Master the art of adaptation

Share our Strength began fighting hunger with direct mail campaigns to an unlikely audience: gourmet chefs and restaurateurs. The letters were successful and generated about $20,000 in donations, but the organization quickly changed its direction when it found a better way to raise money: a national series of events called “Taste of the Nation,” where local chefs and restaurateurs contribute materials and labor. Their time, in-kind donations and status were worth far more than their cash. Today, Taste of the Nation is held in over 60 communities and has raised more than $40 million to fight hunger.

Rush Miller: “A key to future success in libraries, as in other nonprofit organizations, will be our ability to adapt to changing conditions and environments. There are few organizations that are undergoing more change than are libraries. Technology is transforming old processes, user behaviors and expectations, and underlying traditional assumptions upon which our profession has been based. Remaining central to the educational and research functions will be a serious challenge for libraries in the future. Our roles within our larger institutions are in flux and in many ways, our traditional importance is threatened. Change, major change, is no longer a risk, it is a necessity. For many, however, it remains threatening. We must master change, risk taking and redesign of our services and indeed, our very organization, if we are to remain relevant, go beyond surviving to thriving in the digital age.

“In fact, we must cultivate a culture of change. But coupled with the need to change is the need to assess. A culture of assessment is just as necessary as a willingness to question assumption and manage change. We can no longer evolve our strategies and services in a manner that we believe meets the needs of our clientele. We cannot continue to organize our libraries based on traditional ways of doing business. We must in fact reengineer everything about libraries, from processes to services, based on sound customer-driven assessment. As the authors say so well, we must master the art of listening, and learning from what we hear, and then adapting our approach to the ideas we hear from clients, if we are to remain relevant.

“At Pittsburgh, we have redesigned our public services and continue to make major change to services to students and faculty on a continuous basis directly in line with our assessment system. We are striving to create a Culture of Assessment to guide our change process. We have multiple assessment systems in place that guarantee that our users provide meaningful feedback and that we listen to their perspective and give preference to their views. We have opened a coffee shop/food service in the library, changed food and drink policies in our facilities, implemented federated searching, a book and journal delivery service, lengthened our hours, reopened a long closed second entrance/exit, developed a reference service in popular nonlibrary spaces, as well as other new services. We also have revamped our information literacy program to emphasize assessment of information literacy skills and provide faculty with new tools for teaching those skills within their courses. In fact, the library system at Pitt bears little resemblance to the one that existed 10 years ago, and the most important factor in our change processes has been input from our customers.”

Practice #6: Share leadership. Share power to be stronger forces for good.

The leaders of great nonprofits have charisma but not oversized egos. They are exceptionally strategic and gifted entrepreneurs, but also know they must share power to be a stronger force for good. They distribute leadership throughout their organization and their nonprofit network—empowering others to lead. “Leaders of high-impact nonprofits cultivate a strong second-in-command, build enduring executive teams with long tenure, and develop highly engaged boards to have more impact,” says Crutchfield.

Who excels at #6: Share leadership

The most influential public policy think tank in Washington, D.C., The Heritage Foundation went through a stormy beginning until it found an executive skilled at collaborative leadership. Today, Heritage has a budget of $40 million, 200 employees, a network of 2,000 informal grassroots affiliates and policy leaders and 275,000 members who work on behalf of the ideas it champions. Heritage’s success owes a lot to the leadership of Edwin Feulner, its president for 30+ years. By sharing power and distributing decision making among employees and supporters, Feulner and Heritage have been able to cultivate critical relationships, influence federal policy, develop a large individual donor base, and run high-powered marketing campaigns to promote its messages.

Rush Miller: “There is a well-accepted adage in management that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level. Few library leaders are egotists; most of us have been advocates and practitioners of shared governance for most of our careers. In fact, academe is based on shared leadership. It is our culture. So this point resonates well in libraries. And I believe almost all library directors in our country at least believe strongly in building management teams, in developing new leaders from within the organization, and in empowering everyone with the knowledge and freedom to develop as leaders. If they are not convinced of the wisdom of this, they will not last long in the current environment!”

Become a higher impact force for good

To libraries, Crutchfield asks: What are you trying to achieve? What is the real change you want to see in the world—and how does what you are doing today lead to more impact tomorrow?

“Think deeply about what your mission is and how your institution can be part of driving that cause forward—then make it visible,” she says. “That’s one of the most elemental factors that distinguish great organizations from the average. Successful organizations have a very strong sense of purpose and are clearly driven by causes.”

She also suggests ‘staying close to your customer.’

“Define your customer as broadly as you need to and understand what drives them. What are their needs and what can the library provide, or start to provide, that meets those needs?”

In addition, Crutchfield says it is important to be willing to let go of things that might not be as relevant, or that libraries may not be the best to provide. “Cutting off programs or services that were useful in the past, but aren’t relevant to the future, can be painful—even wrenching. But often it is the only way to free up treasured resources—money, time and intellectual mindshare—and focus them on what will work in the future.”

For libraries that desire not only to remain relevant but seek to create ever greater levels of impact in the lives of their users and on society at large, Crutchfield sees a future of opportunities. “Libraries are indeed truly unique assets. Understandably, their place in our rapidly changing world is shifting with the advent of
the Internet.

“Nonetheless they continue to play an important community function—a place for children to learn, students to study and groups to convene—as well as a critical role for cultural connection, common heritage and historical understanding. They will always be important to society.”

FORCES FOR GOOD: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits; Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant; copyright © 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, inc. all Rights Reserved; this material is used by permission of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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