Hot off the press!

Check out our feature article in the latest issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review- “Social Innovation From the Inside Out”. In it we explore the concept and practice of ‘inscaping’ and highlight three organizations that we’ve learned tons from over the years: Santropol Roulant, Southwest Baltimore Charter School, and PLAN. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

The form trap

Check out this talk that Warren gave at Tedx Cape Town on an idea we feel is worth spreading!

The biggest challenge the world is facing is not how to create change but how to sustain change, and if we want to sustain change we are mostly paying attention to the wrong things, particularly inside our social purpose organizations and social movements…

Anna’s class list

My last post, on John McKnight, has quickly become one of the most read posts we’ve had on Organization Unbound. I’m not sure why. But maybe it has something to do with the how central ‘disdain’ has become to our political and and social change conversations. I suspect that […]

The people in the room

Gregory Branch is a doctor and public health official who also happens to direct an unusual gospel choir in Baltimore. We knew Gregg a number of years ago when we lived in Maryland, and for a little while we even sang in the choir. Gregg is a fiercely kind man with a large spirit and […]

A conversation with Turi

The following is an edited transcript of a conversation that Tana and I had with my sister Turi Nilsson. She is the Director of Instruction and co-founder of Southwest Baltimore Charter School, a place of great inspiration and learning for us. We’ve written about it in previous posts. RENNIE: What would you say are the […]

Boundary crossing

In the late 90s I was involved in getting a grassroots school reform movement off the ground in Baltimore City. One of the first schools that agreed to participate was exceptionally low performing and lacked really basic resources like textbooks, a library, a gymnasium, and a cafeteria. Its team of dedicated teachers and administrators were […]

Inverting your practice

One doorway into expressive change seems to be to turn your practice on yourself. What are your outwardly-aimed tools and approaches – the things you use to help your clients or further your mission? What would happen if you inverted these and used them to help your organization? Tana worked with a counseling organization in […]

Inscaping

Brandon, a teacher’s aide at Southwest Baltimore Charter School once said to me, “The weak link isn’t necessarily the person who doesn’t do the job well. It’s the person who doesn’t do the job from within or truthfully.”

This is why, I think, that the most deeply engaging organizations I’ve encountered seem to be rooted in small, daily acts of personal revelation. […]

The giving field

It seems simple now.

But I had to hear many voices say it in many different ways before it became simple to me. Two of those voices, Patrick and Louis, are from a small organization in Montreal called L’Abri en Ville:

Patrick: “Before I came here, I slept all the time. After I ate, I went to bed. […]