Building Momentum at Tides

Innovation and impact are words that we hear more and more often these days in the nonprofit world.  The truth is, we need more of both in an era of stagnant foundation endowments and besieged individual donors reeling from recession. Yet innovation and impact are imprecise terms that are hard to both qualify and quantify. What distinguishes innovative from interesting?

At Tides, we keep it simple: innovation is about creative collaboration, that is, catalyzing uncommon alliances for extraordinary results....

Tides Applauds Social Citizen Ambassadors

Tides is pleased to join the Case Foundation in congratulating its inaugural cohort of Social Citizen Ambassadors, ten Millennial generation leaders whose passion and engagement in cross-sector work is truly innovating the social change sector.  As the Case Foundation highlights, all of the Ambassadors demonstrate "an appreciation for openness and transparency, a passion for technology, a strong desire to collaborate in new and innovative ways – and all are having a transformative impact in their respective fields."  We...

10% Discount for TEDxPresidio April 2, 2011

Announcing TEDxPresidio

Business 3.0 – Not Business as Usual

Saturday, April 2, 2011 10:00AM 5:00PM Palace of Fine Arts Theater 3301 Lyon Street San Francisco, CA 94123

To receive a 10% on tickets for TEDxPresidio, click here and enter the password: partner2011.

TEDxPresidio brings together some of the brightest thought leaders in business who are shaping the future of their sectors.

Covering evolving 21st Century trends like; CSR, competition in a ...

Why Does Infrastructure Matter?

Collage of tiles from the Peace Wall, courtesy CommunityGrows, a Tides project

I am excited to announce the launch of What's Possible: the Tides Blog – written by and for people interested in creating strong infrastructure for the social change sector. In this sector, what we do (the mission work that gets us up every morning for a vision of a just and equitable world) is interwoven with how we do it (the organizations we create to implement our vision). If we don’t pay attention to the...

Shared Services Guide: Collaborative Solutions

As doing more with less has become the new normal for nonprofits of all shapes and sizes, budget-savvy nonprofits are wisely teaming up to share resources and services through innovative “shared services” programs.

Sharing workspaces, IT resources, administrative functions like accounting and human resources and other services through a shared services arrangement is a relatively easy – yet highly effective – way for nonprofits to increase their operational efficiencies,  lower their operating costs and...

Encouraging Charitable Efficiencies More Charitable Than Discouraging Nonprofits - Take Two

The nonprofit sector is a sector of innovation, creativity, and people working for the common good. More than 14 million Americans - 11 percent of American workers - are employed by or volunteer full-time in the nonprofit sector; more than the financial industry and the auto industry combined.

In a recent article entitled, "Charities Rise, Costing U.S. Billions in Tax Breaks," Stephanie Strom of the New York Times raises concerns about an out of control nonprofit sector that is flooding the IRS with frivolous new...

Encouraging Charitable Efficiencies More Charitable Than Discouraging Nonprofits - Take One

A Sister of Perpetual Indulgence

In a recent article entitled Charities Rise, Costing U.S. Billions in Tax Breaks, Stephanie Strom of the New York Times raises concerns about an out of control nonprofit sector that is flooding the IRS with frivolous new applications to establish new public charities that will deprive the federal budget of billions of dollars.

She demonstrates her point by citing new groups such as Save Your Ass Long Ear...

Sunk Costs and Social Innovation

I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of "sunk costs." In economics and business decision-making, sunk costs are unrecoverable past expenditures that, under normal circumstances, should not be taken into account when determining whether to continue or abandon a project, effort, or initiative because costs that are already "sunk" cannot be recovered.

Inevitably, thinking about sunk costs reminds me of my "Saab stories." I purchased a used Saab for $15,000 a number of years ago and then spent more than $5,000 on...