Committed and innovative people change the world. Our mission is to enable youth and adults to solve challenges with sustainable, innovative solutions.

The world needs genuine innovators—those who dedicate themselves to an ideal, draw from many domains, and reframe challenges as opportunities. Innovators not only move mountains but often change the entire landscape. That landscape defines the potential available to the rest of the community. When focused on important problems innovations can result in enormous social good. We plan to increase the potential for innovative solutions in areas where good ideas are needed most.

Springboard Innovation was formed in 2004 to help fill the gap of learning and support for those who wish to make a difference in a new way. We create opportunities for community members to learn how to launch social ventures, provide ongoing consultancies, help them network with others, help them get seed funding, and work to build a supportive ecosystem in the cities where they live.

Springboard works through four core strategies. These work together to offer both a sequenced continuum of experience and a cycle of programs and resources that allow leaders and supporters to connect at any point, nurturing community-led community change.

We teach community members and youth how to have a meaningful livelihood leading change.
People need to be invited to join those of us who are interested in making a difference. People need to know that they can succeed, that they will acquire the needed skills, knowledge and support to meet the challenge. We do this through our program Local Agenda. It turns ordinary citizens into extraordinary change leaders, who draw from the best of themselves to create enormous potential.

Community members enrolled in Local Agenda envision the change they wish to make. Through Local Agenda, they ultimately design clear, strategic, innovative, and sustainable organizations and programs. Some become launchers of nonprofit or for-profit organizations within a year, others transfer their new skills to their jobs, programs, or increased capacity within existing organizations. We share examples of many of our Local Agenda graduates on the left sidebar. For more about Local Agenda...

We train others in how to implement this model effectively. We also engage with universities, experts, funders, and community consultants to ensure budding social entrepreneurs get what they need.

Springboard's Social Innovation Institute is a chance for other communities to increase community capacity. Through our educational programs, community members increase confidence and skills to prepare them to lead social innovations. This convening is a chance to learn, share, and return to your community with new tools for increasing human capacity.

Our Social Innovation Forum brings leaders and social innovators together to set the agenda and improve practice. These forums are designed to improve the skills of practitioners in existing or emerging change organizations. Focused specifically on action, speakers, panelists, and workshop providers engage the activist community and make connections for community change. We share this model with community members wishing to create Social Innocation Forums in their cities.

ChangeXchange
The ChangeXchange Web site is unique...more than just an innovative investment space, it invites community members to invest in emerging social innovators and asks them to engage via an online Roundtable space that allows them to provide feedback among other kinds of support. It showcases citizen leadership, asking colleagues and neighbors to move good ideas forward. It focuses on the development of a new breed of change organization--one that relies on integrated income streams rather than grants. It's micro-philanthropy meets grassroots organizations.

Innovative Cities A City Model for Social Innovation
Social innovators need community support in many domains and on many levels. We learned that often cities are not ready for social innovation. Professionals and organizations in a community maintain traditional processes based in older models that can limit true innovation. Without a healthy and stable ecosystem that nurtures social innovators--innovation, and the community improvement that comes with it, is lost. After years of study and experience, we identified eight essential elements that provide the needed ecosystem that will nuture and sustain social innovation. Called "Innovative Cities" it provides a way for city leaders to self-assess readiness, as well as find resources, for social innovation. Read more about Innovative Cities...

Read our Manifesto for more about what drives our work.