Striving for Impact: An Impact-First Partnership Pilot

By: Adrian Bordone, VP Strategic Partnerships at GuideStar and Brian Komar, VP of Global Impact Engagement at Salesforce.org

At Dreamforce 2017, Salesforce.org announced Expedition Impact during the Nonprofit Kickoff – an inclusive initiative that is equal parts technology, community, and collaboration – to help nonprofits understand and demonstrate their impact and mission accomplishment. At the heart of Expedition Impact was the idea of community collaboration – that collectively, the sum of our impact, insights, and intelligence is greater than each of our parts – would help drive an impact-first sector.

As part of our Expedition Impact initiative, we are excited to announce Striving for Impact, a new Impact partnership pilot with GuideStar that furthers these efforts. GuideStar, with whom we already partner on Philanthropy Cloud, is the leading provider of data and intelligence for the nonprofit sector. With over 3 billion pieces of data catalogued and indexed on more than 2 million nonprofit organizations, GuideStar is considered an industry-leading source of nonprofit information for sector leaders and practitioners.

The philanthropic sector has reached a tipping point; the sector’s future state is one that leads with impact. Much is to be gained by this paradigm shift, but this transition is not without significant challenges, including capacity-building, collective impact, and governance, to name a few. The Striving for Impact pilot will work to meet these challenges head-on. Our work will be inclusive, consisting of free webinars featuring sector experts and local, in-person meetings to listen, learn and share intelligence and practice models related to leading with impact. Our efforts will highlight successes, challenges and solutions that lie along the path from anecdote to evidence. To stay grounded, these awareness efforts will stress that nonprofits’ program management data is a central component of leading with impact. We will capture and share lessons learned from the top down and bottom up – cross-sector partners, leaders and practitioners, harnessing the collective intelligence and best practices of a vibrant community to help light the way for small and large organizations.

Our initial outreach will also encourage nonprofits in the Salesforce.org ecosystem and beyond to claim and update their GuideStar Profiles (most notably, Platinum Profiles). These demonstrate an organization’s commitment to results and transparency related to program and performance management data and intelligence. This free and easy process allows an organization – from the least to most sophisticated – to share the impact they are having in the communities they serve with millions of donors and stakeholders through the GuideStar.org platform and Guidestar’s 200+ data partners. Additionally, it will serve as part of a learning lab where similar organizations can begin to benchmark themselves with sector peers and raise the collective bar for what it means to strive toward and achieve impact.

The pilot builds upon the shared visions of GuideStar and Salesforce.org and expands upon existing ways the two organizations are already working together. While webinars will likely be national in scope, local meet-ups and events with sector leaders will kick-off in Washington, DC, New York, and San Francisco in the coming months. These events will be community-lead and community-driven – with Salesforce.org and GuideStar providing a convening and facilitative role.

Please be on the lookout for jointly-sponsored upcoming webinars and events. We also look forward to sharing more of our progress at Dreamforce.

For more on how to be an impact-first nonprofit, download the Salesforce.org 2018 Impact Report.

About the Authors
Adrian Bordone is VP Strategic Partnerships at GuideStar based in the Baltimore, Maryland area. He works with public sector and social service agencies to demonstrate impact and make a measurable difference in the lives and communities we serve. Follow him on Twitter: @adrianbordone

Brian is Vice President, Global Impact Engagement at Salesforce.org, where he lead the nonprofit social enterprise’s impact measurement and collective impact partnerships. His career at Salesforce spans over 7 years, with previous roles in marketing and industry solutions. Based in the Washington, D.C. area, he is a digital transformation, strategy and marketing/engagement expert with experience in leadership roles in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. He has spent 25 years leading nonprofits, businesses and philanthropic institutions through the three cycles of digital transformation – channels, integrated data and business model design. Follow him on Twitter: @bkomar