Bringing Change to the Nonprofit World

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Charles Darwin

Some people love it, some people don’t. But whatever a person may feel about change, it is a constant in our world today. This is true in business, society, and even in nature, as pointed out in the quote from Darwin. In the nonprofit world, change has an even more significant place.

If you think about it, most nonprofits operate to fulfill a profound and compelling change initiative. That change initiative may include ending hunger, relieving hardship after a natural disaster, lowering the school dropout rate for inner-city children, or helping the unemployed get back to work. Whatever the specifics of the initiatives are, almost every nonprofit has at the core of its mission the desire to make a change for good in the world.

Big world changes most often occur in a series of smaller ones, and the ability not only to adapt to change but to create it and orchestrate change is a critical skill in the survival of any organization. That’s why, at the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation, we’ve put together a workshop and webinar on Orchestrating Change as part of our Architecture of Transformation series.

On November 10, 2011, we held our first Orchestrating Change workshop in Santa Monica, cohosted with the Taproot Foundation. The workshop presents a hands-on, practical approach to creating change within an organization by specifically addressing four fundamental needs that any person being asked to change must have met. Those fundamentals are:

• Knowledge (what people need to know in order to change)
• Skills (what people need to do in order to change)
• Condition of Mind (what people need to believe in order to change)
• Architecture (what people need in order to be accountable for change)

By addressing people’s needs first, there are many ways to design a change successful initiative. There is no one change model or approach endorsed in the workshop—other than to put the needs of the people being asked to change foremost in the strategy. By all accounts, the workshop was a great success, and the participants left with a clear idea of where to begin when designing a change initiative for their organization.

Julie Brandt is Executive Director of the Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation.