Center for Social Innovation

What drives innovation at nonprofits? Is it the power structure, the rules and regulations, the size? How much money you can throw at a problem? Most past research has asked how these variables affect innovation within the business sector. “What I’m starting to see is that it’s more about who works for the organization,” says Kristina Jaskyte, who studies nonprofits from the School of Social Work at the University of Georgia. “That human factor is almost more important than the resources an organization has.”

Her guinea pigs were affiliates of Communities in Schools, a nationwide network of nonprofit organizations that bring community support to public school students. For two years, she visited locally controlled, independently programmed organizations in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, ... Read more