This, our third issue of Frontline in Focus, is a good one. Partner Micah Gilmer talks about how our organization does social innovation differently; we share specific ways that we are helping philanthropy learn; and as usual, we promote the good work of two Frontline affiliates, Nikia Pinkney and Jessica Norwood, and their organizations.
We want to point out that our website, helpingchangehappen.com, just got a makeover. Along with adopting some new elements, the site now provides fresh content on a regular basis, including our newest
publications. Be sure to check it out.
And once again, we invite you to forward this newsletter on to others you think it may benefit. Enjoy!
The Frontline Solutions Team
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The best organizations are defined by taking clear assessments of themselves and their efforts. That is why much of Frontline's work centers on helping organizations learn. Two recent projects required us to study and apply the lessons of philanthropy to the field. The overarching question was, are organizations making a difference?
The first of these projects was a study of a long-standing relationship between a foundation and a rural development bank. The Arkansas-based Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (WRF) commissioned Frontline to write Southern Bancorp: Revitalizing the Rural South, a report on the impact of WRF's investments in the country's largest rural Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI). Frontline's Marcus Littles and Bianca Williams collaborated with Kathryn Hodge Matchett, a native Arkansan, on the report, which is part of the series called Partners in Progress that is documenting and sharing what WRF is learning both from its partnerships and from the grantee partners themselves.
Founded in 1986, Southern Bancorp employs a rural development model that goes beyond the call of a typical bank. To further its commitment to rebuilding and transforming communities in Arkansas and Mississippi, Southern Bancorp has received from WRF $10.5 million in investments over the past 25 years. The report uncovered best practices, challenges, and lessons learned from this unique partnership and its impacts on rural Southern communities. "As a foundation, we are committed to self-assessment, learning, and transparency," said Dr. Sherece Y. West, WRF's President and CEO. "Partners in Progress is one of the ways that we document what we've learned, and share our lessons (even the hard ones) with the broader Arkansas community and the field of philanthropy."
Another recent Frontline project charting philanthropic impact focused on diversity. This is a topic generating a lot of talk and much less action, but the D5 Coalition, a group of more than a dozen philanthropic organizations committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion, seeks a reversal to that trend, and has started by mapping this domain of the field with real data.
 For the recent report State of the Work 2011, D5 asked Frontline to contribute vignettes of seven leading organizations whose efforts advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in philanthropy. Focusing on the areas of leadership, action, funding, and data, the Frontline team had the chance to interview organization representatives and tell their stories. "Too often when people talk about diversity, they drift into the abstract," said Brian Baughan, one of the profile authors. "By directly speaking with leaders who have embraced their focus on diversity, we have collected strong illustrations from which people in the field can learn in real ways."
Read the full version of State of the Work 2011 here.
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by Micah Gilmer
When I took a part-time gig as UNC Chapel Hill's first Social Entrepreneur in Residence in 2009, I had only a vague idea of how the work we were doing at Frontline Solutions (a social enterprise) connected to the emerging body of research and rhetoric surrounding social entrepreneurship. But from the start, I knew that Frontline's approach to social innovation would differ significantly from the mainstream of this new field.
Social entrepreneurship, a term popularized by scholars like Greg Dees, and descriptive of the approach of social-change nonprofits like Echoing Green, often focuses disproportionate attention on "high-scale" solutions that can create huge organizations, huge profits, and—assumedly—huge impact. However, while organizational size and profit are easy to measure, impact is a little harder to quantify. Our belief is that maximum impact doesn't always happen as a result of resourcing the "best and brightest" or the biggest idea. Instead, we focus a significant portion of our efforts on leaders who live in "resource deserts" or who don't possess the credentials to attract certain kinds of investment.
From our first contract with UNC Campus Y to our recent project with North Carolina Central University's Social Entrepreneurship Collaborative, our work on social innovation and entrepreneurship has focused primarily on developing opportunities for the next generation of social change leaders to learn, experience and grow. After my first year working directly with college students at UNC, I had a conversation with Emily Hylton, who has worked with us since 2009. She pointed out how few quality internship opportunities exist for students in the social change sector, particularly those who don't fit neatly into the boxes of direct-service work or "business." Emily worked directly with Marcus, Ryan and me to create the Hilliard P. Jenkins Fellowship for undergraduate students. Four of the fellows from our first class are serving with Teach for America, one is working for the consulting firm EMC, and another is coming to work with us here at Frontline for a year.
Micah Gilmer; Special Assistant to UNC's Chancellor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Judith Cone;
Assistant Secretary for Community Development in North Carolina Henry McKoy; and Executive Director of Bull City Forward Christopher Gergen at State of Social Enterprise
in NC forum.
In addition to their new "day jobs," we are excited and proud that two of our fellows are working on Capital Kitchen, a social enterprise that seeks to bolster the bottom lines of business owners who are underrepresented in the food service industry.
My gig at UNC has continually given me the opportunity to engage with some of the coolest young leaders on the planet. From my course, "Implementing Change," to my work with the fellowships offered through the Carolina Center for Public Service, I have been privileged to brainstorm and support some fantastic projects.
One of the most exciting opportunities for Frontline is a project we are
about to start with the Campus Y at UNC, a student organization with roughly
2,000 members. Frontline is working to help measure the impact of a
community engagement initiative coordinated by a group of Campus Y students.This impact and assessment effort, targeting three neighborhoods in Chapel Hill, will first listen to community members to understand the outcomes they want to see and the things that need to change to get them there. Frontline will then create an evaluation framework that student groups can use to understand how to align their work better with the stated goals of their community partners.
Lastly, we are also embarking on an exciting new project with North Carolina Central University to create more university-wide support for social entrepreneurs. Perhaps most exciting about the project is the Social Entrepreneurship Collaborative's stated goal of reaching grassroots organizations, the constituency Frontline's work has been centered around!
You'll hear more from us as we continue to delve deeper and develop new strategies to leverage the resources rallying around the concept of social innovation for the communities we care deeply about. We are excited to be in conversation with colleagues literally across the country and around the world about new ways to connect under-resourced leaders to ideas and opportunities. Our work around social innovation is what we're doing, and another way we're trying to help change happen.
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Social change is not for the faint of heart or for those looking for immediate results. We find inspiration in the persistence our affiliates show and the breadth of vision they impart to their corners of the world. In this issue we're highlighting two such individuals, Nikia Pinkney and Jessica Norwood, and the change organizations they lead.
 Nikia Pinkney, a consultant who specializes in building nonprofit capacity, pushes for community leaders to take the long view if they really want to "strengthen and stabilize" their organizations. This perspective applies to all the services of her company, the aptly named Mission Longevity, LLC. The New Haven, Conn.-based firm draws from the deep experience and diverse expertise of Pinkney and six other consultants.
Mission Longevity's clients, which include community and faith organizations as well as groups led by and for minorities, receive help and guidance in various aspects of nonprofit management and development, including how to handle advocacy. For Pinkney, this takes many forms, including what she calls "street advocacy." "Every organization doesn't need to have a political arm," she explains. "But when you present a program to the community, it is your responsibility to be aware of all that goes on within that area. We look at demographics, how you go door to door, how to get involved in your school, churches, and all that within a 5-mile radius."
 Like Pinkney, Jessica Norwood promotes out-of-the-box thinking. As founder of the Emerging Changemakers Network, she challenges our assumption of who a social change leader is and how change happens.
Founded in 2007 and reaching across the entire Deep South region, Emerging Changemakers recruits civic-minded individuals between the ages of 25 and 40 to receive training and connect with peers around community solutions. None of its 300 active members fits a particular professional profile; a banker or someone from the private sector brings as much to the table as does an activist or nonprofit professional. "It's about self-identifying as a changemaker, being a leader," says Norwood, an Alabama native. "Just show up and take us up on our offer to be a changemaker."
The organization's genesis dates back to Hurricane Katrina, when like many others Norwood saw that no pipeline existed for social justice leaders. As someone well-versed in the spheres of politics and nonprofits, Norwood saw an opportunity for bringing emerging leaders together to address the vast disparities that immigrants and people of color in the region faced. (It was also around this common agenda that Norwood and Frontline's own Marcus Littles, another Alabama native, first connected.)
The most popular component of Emerging Changemakers is the annual Leadership Summit, which takes place in March. But the organization's work goes beyond training and networking, including an Impact Investing program launching this fall that Norwood is thrilled about. In partnership with the Ford Foundation, the pilot program will provide microfinance lending to residents in the Alabama Black Belt region.
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