Growing to the Next Level of Change

Editor's note: This post was written by Ashoka Changemakers chief executive partner Ben Wald.

I am excited to let you know that Changemakers.com is about to get a new look.

Starting next week, the action opportunities for all who visit Changemakers are expanding from finding new innovations (through collaborative competitions, where Changemakers pioneered the open source method for recognizing and refining the best solutions to the world’s most critical issues) to connecting with a network that directs resources to the most promising solutions so they can grow.

This is a shift to Open Growth—the next stage of global changemaking for the non-profit sector. It is going from gathering the world’s leading social innovators around critical movements to addressing what I see is a limited ability to foster long-term communication and access.

While there is definitely competition in the world of social good—and I’ve found that many organizations are willing to partner if their social missions align—the big issue is not necessarily whether organizations are open to collaboration, it’s finding the right partners for them.

Changemakers faced this challenge when its competitions would come to an end, and the collaborative community that formed online to recognize and refine solutions lost a critical focus. The momentum of the competitions was driven largely by the awards, and we weren’t fully leveraging the opportunities to continue the collaboration beyond the lifecycle of the competition. In essence, the energy would die out, and we’d be left with some of the following questions:

• Did investments pay off?
• Did innovators follow through?

These questions are not issues that are exclusive to our model. Throughout the sector, nonprofits are looking for new ways of operating that aren’t limited to grant cycles.

This sparked our shift from being an open source competition platform to a digital ecosystem underpinned by a new philosophy: Open Growth.

The key components are:

• Convening a dynamic ecosystem of investors, innovators, corporations, foundations, enthusiasts
• Transparency, open source, and accountability to the sector
• Creating a marketplace for matchmaking—pairing needs and offers to help innovators get the resources they need to grow
• Incentivizing this growth by offering prizes—financial and inkind—for organizations that demonstrate impact.

By embracing Open Growth on Changemakers.com with changeshop, our community can create sustained incentives and an infrastructure for continued collaboration before and after competitions. Now, anyone—not just competition winners—can become part of an open network of knowledge sharing and amplified change.

Changeshop gives investors a window into an idea’s development and the ability to guide a project to success. It lets citizen advocates explore and support solutions that match their interests.

Open Growth is founded on the principles of transparency and radical openness, to create an environment that supports the spawning and evolution of innovative ideas, a realization of the vision of Changemakers’ founder, Sushmita Ghosh, and of 30 years of listening to what our fellows and partners want and need from the social innovation sector.

There will be greater accessibility to the resources that social ventures need to scale-up, not just to get by. It’s what’s needed to create a truly competitive citizen sector, one in which social organizations recognize their true value.

So check out the new Open Growth features on Changemakers—coming soon. You don’t have to have a big idea to get started.

How do you get started? Through your current Changemakers profile, you will be able to browse the latest changeshops and offer to help the most innovative ideas get the momentum they need to make a difference. If you have published a competition entry on Changemakers in the past, there is an easy tool for converting it to a changeshop.

We have experimented aggressively, taken risks and are willing to launch early and fail fast. And as our peers in the space we invite you to come along for the ride and help us.

We are listening. Bang on it, break it, tell us what’s missing. I promise you we have not made the mistake of thinking that our job is done now that we are launching. We know that our work has just begun.