Investing in Networks

Introducing “Investing Strategically in Social-Impact Networks”

Peter Plastrik

“Networks have tremendous power to drive social change. While networks offer oppor- tunities to advance the goals of foundations, they also demand a different type of relationship between funder and grantee. We are hoping ‘Investing Strategically in Social-Impact Networks: A Guidebook for Foundations’ will provide a blueprint for maximizing results.”

Lois DeBacker, Managing Director

Jessica Boehland,  Senior Program Officer

The Kresge Foundation Environment Program

Purpose of the Guidebook

This guidebook provides a suite of frameworks, tools, examples, and ex- ercises to help funders, whatever their type of foundation, mission, and broad goals, to think and act strategically about investing in generative networks as a part of their overall approach, whether they are focused on a system in a community, a complex issue, a promising field of practice, or another target for social impact.

The guidebook is designed to help users to answer a set of strategic questions about investing in existing or new networks:

  • What value can generative networks—a particular model for collective action—provide in advancing a funder’s strategy for achieving social-impact goals? Networks are not the same as other models of collective action—associations, member-based organizations, or alliances, to name a few. Nor are they a pana- cea, but they do offer particular advantages for tackling com- plex, “wicked” types of social problems.
  • What are the best ways for funders to design investments in gen- erative networks and engage with network builders? Investing in networks isn’t the same as investing in organizations, so shaping the grantor-grantee relationships and expectations takes some new thinking.
  • How can funders assess the effectiveness of networks? Some of the ways to discern a network’s condition and impact are similar to the clues for organizations—but some are not.
  • How can funders help networks to develop financial resilience?Networks, like organizations, can become too dependent on a single funder, but there are ways to build a network’s resilience and diversify its sources of support.

Download PDF of “Investing Strategically in Social-Impact Networks”

Uncategorized

A Network of Networks?

Peter Plastrik

In talking the other day with a mature national-scale network leader about its future evolution, we noted that network members have been establishing offshoots, using a network model.

More than half of the members now belong to a regional (sub-national) network that includes people who are not members of the national network. These were established by members of the national network who wanted to extend the benefits of that model to a broader group of people closer to them geographically. And there are more of these regional networks in the making.

At the same time, nearly 10% of network members have formed a new network, also adding people, in this case from outside the nation, who are not members of the national network. This new network is exclusively focused on a particular content area, just one of the many topics that the national network addresses, and the members are doing a “deep dive” into that content.

Interestingly, the national network members who have helped to create these other networks remain active in the national network and their new networks maintain strong, structured relationships with the national network. So it’s not a case of “flight” from the national network, but a case of increasing complexity in the network model. The national network is becoming a network of networks .
A network of networks framework may make sense under several conditions in the context of an evolving field of practice:
  1. When the field’s evolution is along a “ragged” front of development, so that one size of organizing resources and activity won’t fit all.
  2. When there are a good number of networks in the field operating at multiple scales that need to function in relationship to each other without any level dominating the relationships.
  3. When there is a set of mature and productive networks in the field, occupying particular niches, whose work can be enhanced but shouldn’t be dislodged, and none of the networks should be elevated to a gatekeeper status.
Network Leadership

Network Leadership: A Net-Centric Point of View

Peter Plastrik

It’s commonplace to note that in a generative network no one is in charge. But that doesn’t mean that networks don’t have leaders. They do—but it’s a different sort of leadership than in an organization. In organizations, a leader is a take-charge person, someone who commands and directs others. In networks, however, the members, whether they are individuals or organizations, have the power and provide the network’s purpose and direction.

The focus of a network leader is to build the network’s capabilities and impact, and network builders are jacks-of-all-trades: network founders, designers, weavers, coordinators, planners, funders, and more. This requires skills and knowledge about network building and something else that matters: a way of being that’s a combination of personality, understanding, and skill—a network-centric point of view that network leaders hold personally and apply consistently.

We’ve drawn the following list of network leadership attributes from a publication by the Institute for Conservation Leadership, “The Less Visible Leader.”[1]

Catalyzes a Culture of Spirited Cooperation
  • Listens deeply to fully appreciate and understand the diversity of perspectives and motivations held by all involved.
  • Encourages mutual appreciation for the ideas and contributions of all.
  • Regularly uses “both/and” thinking to identify solutions that meet both shared and individual goals and needs.
  • Fosters opportunities to develop camaraderie and trust.
Shares Power and Generates Momentum
  • Creates space for others to step up and contribute.
  • Embraces ambiguity and encourages experiments and innovations.
  • Helps the group to develop enough infrastructure to effectively make decisions and keep everyone moving forward.
Stays True to the Long-Term Vision While Navigating Frequent Twists and Turns
  • Persistently holds a clear picture of the purpose for working together.
  • Helps those inside and outside the collaboration effort understand the progress that is being made as well as the roots of that success.
  • Continues to adapt in an effort to successfully achieve the long-term vision.

[1] Andy Robinson, “The Less Visible Leader: Emerging Leadership Models for Environmental Networks, Coalitions, and Collaboratives,” Institute for Conservation Leadership, 2012, https://www.icl.org/resources/publications .

Network Development , Network Management

F2F: Designing the Network Meeting

Peter Plastrik

There’s probably no more important event in a network’s life than the convening of network members, whether it happens annually or more or less frequently. Most fundamentally, face-to-face/in-person meetings are a golden opportunity to build and strengthen connections among network members and connectivity dictates the vitality and capabilities of a network. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network’s former managing director, Julia Parzen, understood this and how it was different from a “conference.” When USDN’s leadership was designing the network’s first annual meeting, she recalls, “People started saying, ‘We’re coming to your annual conference,’ and I’d get really annoyed and say, ‘We don’t have an annual conference. We have an annual network meeting and the purpose of it is to help people get to know each other and find people with common interests.’”

The network convening is so important that we dedicated seven pages in Connecting to what we called “customized weaving” and this advice about designing F2F Meetings:

  • Make increasing connectivity an explicit objective of the meeting.
  • Make enough time for members to connect, not just work together.
  • Leave room for network members to invent on the spot what they want to do together.
  • Promote what members are doing and what they know; don’t over-rely on outside experts.
  • Increase members’ awareness of the network.
  • Find out how much connecting has happened.
Investing in Networks , The Network Building Field

Proliferation of Network Building

Peter Plastrik

“There’s something happening here…”

When Madeleine Taylor and I started to study social-impact networks about 10 years ago it wasn’t easy to find very many of them. Over the years, as we wrote about and consulted with start-ups, we (along with coauthor John Cleveland) gradually connected with some 30 or so networks, and used what we learned from them to develop the frameworks and advice in Connecting to Change the World. That seemed like a pretty good sample size, and many other networks, such as those using a “collective impact” approach, were also emerging.

What was a trickle is becoming a proliferation. In just the past year, I’ve had some involvement with 9 more social-impact networks, most of which didn’t exist when we wrote Connecting . They are tackling a diversity of complex problems/opportunities:

  • reducing carbon emissions in cities;
  • making cities safer for pedestrians and drivers;
  • getting water utilities in the U.S. West to adopt sustainability practices;
  • helping commercial property owners in central cities reduce their buildings’ consumption of energy and water;
  • supporting innovation in America’s post-secondary education institutions;
  • reinventing public libraries so they serve as “engines” for community development;
  • spreading the idea of a “two generation” approach to human services for low-income families;
  • and more.

And almost every one of these networks has been able to line up sufficient start-up or continuing funding from foundations and other sources.

It’s still a relatively small sample size, not an exhaustive accounting of network building. And some who have watched funders closely might wonder if this isn’t just the latest fad rippling through philanthropy.

What’s clear from being in touch with the people building and funding these networks is that they are convinced that building networks is a new and potentially useful path to having the kind of impact they can’t get any other way.

Of course a proliferation is not a proof. It’s a step on the way: first a concept, then experimentation, then proliferation. Next comes determining best practice–what really works under what conditions.

Network Leadership

Misconceptions and Essentials in Network Building

Peter Plastrik

An insightful post from the folks at FSG, the organization that developed and promoted the “collective impact” idea, explored two aspects of leading a network: the essential importance of building trust among members and the inherent tension between staff vs. member-driven leadership. Titled “3 Misconceptions Around Collective Impact,” the blog noted:

  • “One major misconception is that collective impact is a straightforward process, or a ‘formula’ for achieving social change”. It is not a step-by-step process; “every collective impact initiative is unique.” Collective impact is . . . “about the relationships and trust among the people and organizations involved . . .  It is ultimately about enabling adaptive, collective problem-solving.” This is precisely the point we make in Connecting to Change the World : a generative social-impact network is a platform of social relationships; reciprocity, trust, and shared identity are the underlying social dynamics of a successful network.
  • “A second misconception is around the role of the backbone for a collective impact initiative. There is sometimes the belief that a backbone organization sets the agenda for the collaborative and holds the ‘power’ for the group’s decisions. In reality, the backbone should be playing a facilitative, servant-leader role—guiding the decisions of the collaborative, based on the expertise and input of a cross-sector steering committee and input from a broad range of partners and community members.” Here, too, we agree. Our chapter on leading a network, called “Three Rules to Live By,” also used the “servant leader” language. But discussions with many network leaders reflect how difficult it can be to play this role.

“When do you lead? When do you follow? How do you know?” asks the founder of a regional network.

“I think great servant leadership  requires the capability to deliver insight and service that is two steps ahead of the network members,” explains the organizer of a community-based network. “Does this also make sense?”

In the three rules for network leadership we tried to both capture and respond to these inherent tensions:

1. Trust the network. You’re role is not to get everyone to do what you think is right. It’s to help them to connect, align, and produce–to do what they think is right.

2. Serve the network, but don’t wait for it. You have two roles: facilitating network processes and bringing new ideas into the network.

3. Embrace vertigo. Network builders search constantly for a network’s balancing points in the midst of dynamic complexity. But endlessly rebalancing means being off balance some of the time. You have to be comfortable with uncertainty. You have to know when to change. You have to cope with criticism that you’re taking too much control or that you’re not taking enough control.

Network Leadership

Network Leadership Succession: 3 Steps You Can Take

Peter Plastrik

Network leaders and funders of networks often worry about the problem of succession. They recognize that sooner or later the energy of some network leaders will flag or they will leave the network for various reasons, or–just as important–it’s essential to get some fresh blood, new thinking, newer members into leadership positions.

In many networks, however, leadership succession is treated as an emergent phenomenon that somehow will happen and happen well. That’s also called rolling the dice–especially since there are ways for a network to be intentional about succession.

1. Define leadership broadly. It’s important to start by being clear about what a “network leader” does. Often “leadership” is taken to mean being a part of network governance, decision making. That’s true, but it’s a limited view. A network leader is someone who does more than participate in network activities; she helps make the activities happen. This could mean playing a role in network decision-making, but it could also mean being willing to chair a network working group, or advising on questions to ask in a survey of network members, or being part of a team that does a presentation to a potential funder. In each of these cases, the member is  providing value for the network as a whole. That’s network leadership.

2. Develop a leadership pipeline . Keep an eye out for network members who are interested in the challenges of leading the network, not just participating as members. Invite them into planning and other processes so they can see what leading the network looks like. Also look for members who are natural weavers and are becoming well-connected hubs in the network. If they move into leadership roles, they bring their weaving skills and connections with them.

3. Create leadership opportunities. Make sure that there are open leadership positions to fill–opportunities for others to step up. Don’t let leadership roles–steering committee membership, working group chairs–be filled by the same people forever; term limits create opportunities for others. You can even think of a a progression of opportunities that give members a little taste of being a leader and then allow them to step up into more important roles.

Uncategorized

Under Production: A Guide for Funders Investing in Social-Impact Networks

Peter Plastrik

With support from the Kresge Foundation, we’ve been writing a “Playbook for Foundations: Guidance on Developing and Investing Strategically in Networks.” Drawing on some of the basic concepts in Connecting , the playbook will provide funders with tools, frameworks, examples, advice, and exercises to think and act strategically about investing in networks as part of their overall approach–whatever their type of foundation, mission, and broad goals, whether they are focused on a system in a community, a complex issue, a promising field of practice, or other target for social impact.

Content of the Playbook has been designed to address topics of particular interest to funders:

  • Why to Consider Investing in Networks
  • Designing Investments in Networks and Engaging with Network Builders
  • Assessing a Network’s Effectiveness
  • Building a Network’s Financial Resilience

Stay tuned!

Investing in Networks , Network Case Study , The Network Building Field

Investing in Networks Grows Funder’s Impact

Madeleine Taylor

In a blog for Stanford Social Innovation Review , Madeleine Taylor uses the case of the RE-AMP network to examine how participation in a network allows foundations to leverage their individual investment by surfacing multiple, ongoing opportunities for collaborative grant making.

W hile still an emergent grantmaking strategy, more foundations are investing in network building as an effective tool for achieving their goals and leveraging their dollars. Even so, network investing is not for the faint of heart. Foundations must consider the scope of resources required to initiate a network approach, and support the infrastructure and collaborative projects needed to produce results. Yet we see cases where foundations with modest corpuses have leveraged their charitable dollars many times over by engaging other funders as network partners, significantly increasing the pool of funding for a change initiative over time.

The team at Network Impact is interested in understanding the resource benefits and other kinds of value created through a network approach to network funding. To that end, the Garfield Foundation —a mid-sized philanthropy—kindly offered to share financial data related to its 10-plus year investment in RE-AMP .

Read the blog.

Network Development , Network Startup

Emerging Social Dynamics in a Network

Peter Plastrik

In the early life of a network—the first year, say—how can you tell how well it’s doing?

Right off the bat there’s observation: what does a network gathering look like, feel like, sound like? I’ve been in network annual meetings where newcomers to the network were astonished about how much energy and exchange network members put out—and the sheer amount of noise in the room. Even more astonishing, the members maintained a high level of energy for day after day. At the end, maybe they were exhausted—but during their time together they were passionately committed to giving and getting as much as they could.

Hidden in all that energy is a clue to what you’re really looking for if you want to gauge the network’s condition. It has to do with what makes a network tick, as we explain in chapter 1 of Connecting : two social dynamics—reciprocity and shared identity—emerge and are amplified by the network’s decentralized structure.

Reciprocity is a behavior, but it is driven by an emotion: a commitment to the success of others on their own terms. In a strong network, members don’t just know each other well, they are committed to each other’s success, and will take action on behalf of others. When you survey network members ask them how committed they feel they are to the success of other members and how committed they think other members are to their success.

Shared identity is also a feeling, a sense of common cause, mutual interest, alignment, and of belonging to something—literally, being a member. When you survey members ask them how much they feel they are a part of something larger than themselves, something communal.

In a network’s start-up phase, it takes time for members to develop a deep commitment to others in the network and a feeling of belonging and alignment in the network. But its emergence is what network builders should be watching for.