Week 5 : The Social Innovation Forum
Similar to last week, it was very hectic at the Social Innovation Forum office. We held two information sessions (Tuesday in our Boston office and Thursday in New Bedford, MA) for nonprofits interested in applying to our Accelerator. On Friday of last week we only had 18 RSVPs for the Tuesday session but were able to bring this number up to 103 come the event. I had the opportunity to meet the executive directors from organizations I had been in touch with and answer their many questions. My hard work in outreach truly paid off in attendance at our sessions. My outreach has not only been for advertising our information sessions – I have certain goals that have been set by the programming team of how many organization intend to apply. Within a week, the number of organizations that intend to apply have gone from 22 to 41, which exceeds my goal by 10! The next two weeks are crunch time as the first round application is due July 13. I’m looking forward to speaking with more organizations and increasing my intent to apply numbers.
Another exciting personal contribution this week has been blogging. This summer, I am continuing SIF’s popular blog “Putting the ‘Social’ in Social Innovation”. Each week, I highlight events occurring in Greater Boston hosted by our previous social innovations or funding partners. The first series launched on Friday and can be found highlighted on SIF’s website. I was able to create a new graphic for the series as well, which gave me the opportunity to apply skills I learned in a previous internship.
Now I am beginning to plan a co-working gathering for our office space. The focus will be “The Art of Relationship Building”. I plan to share tips on building positive relationships and foster intriguing conversations on the importance of a greater community in the nonprofit sector and the importance of our co-working office space. To close, I will conduct a gratitude exercise. The catering and details of the event are coming together quickly, and I’m excited to show my appreciation for my immediate team and the others in our community working space.
I checked out your “Putting the ‘Social’ in Social Innovation” blogs – nice job! You can link to these in reflections/blogs if you like – then you’d have a record of them here with your insights. Sounds like you’ve really been hitting it out of the ballpark in terms of drumming up interest AND moving those interested towards application; way to go. The work you are doing clearly impacts the larger goals of the organization. Any insights you’ve had – based on your leadership studies – that you’ve been able to share with your colleagues at the SIF?