Outcomes of Springboard's Programs:
Community-led community change

Launchers

Ordinary citizens can become extraordinary change leaders.
It's our mission and the outcomes we focus on.

What outcomes do we seek? How do these outcomes align with our programs?

Our mission: invite and enable community members to envision, design, and launch innovative, sustainable solutions to our most pressing challenges.

We teach community members how to have a new career leading change. Local Agenda invites citizens to consider a life leading a social venture, improving our world. We measure our success in stages, with benchmarks such as how many participants create a vision and personal manifesto? How many buy a domain name in preparation for a Web site? How many register their corporation with the state? Each of these is a benchmark of success and progress towards real change. For more about Local Agenda...

We convene activists and supporters. Once "launchers" have determined to lead a social venture they have envisioned, they need to build a strong network, to increase their expertise, and to build coalitions. We created the Springboard Social Innovation Forum to bring this new breed of community leader together to improve practice, build strong systems of change, and share ideas. Our goals are to bring the community together in new ways, to sharebest practice, and to foster a more sustainable kind of change organization. For more about the Forum...

We help with start-up funds. Next, in order to help these emerging change organizations truly launch, (which is our true mission) we needed to help fill the gap of seed funding. We designed ChangeXchange to connect funders willing to invest in the future with those willing to make it a better place. The tool foster a strong community network. We measure activity on the site, transfer of viewer to investor, the number of relational connections developed as a reult, that lead to progress for the launcher, and of course, dollars invested. Read more about ChangeXchange... and Invest Your Share!

We help build a supportive ecosystem for social innovation. Finally, it is clear that leaders can only do so much on their own. Our current municipal ecosystems are slow to change, but providing a model on which to build can help. We developed an eight-point model of how a city supports social innovation. While a new initiative, it is generating strong interest among many groups nationally. Our intended outcomes are two-fold: Create a self-assessment tool that allows city leaders to identify strengths and weaknesses; and, at the same time, share successes, best practices, and resources for others to adopt. Learn more about Innovative Cities...

Teach, convene, fund, and build. Our mission, our metrics.


 

RESULTS

Paul Osterlund, Founder of Abundance Farming Project

QUICK DATA:

Local Agenda Program
-->76% of Local Agenda graduates are launching or plan to launch a social venture.
--> Age span: 23 - 72
--> 98% state program is of "high value."
--> 98% state program "met or exceeded their goals."
-->For complete list of comments, download .pdf.

LOCAL AGENDA PARTICIPANTS SAY...

“The organizational information was incredibly valuable, both to the nonprofits I am involved with, but as a good business model. Taking the time to figure out what it is that I do love was quite difficult, but very valuable. Going through the process was very useful.”

“Local Agenda gives you the space, the guidance, the support, the connections to take a step you’ve been wanting to take.”

“Each cohort produces a group of people who can see differently, can be more imaginative in problem-solving. And they/we seem to have the gumption to actually do something about the problems we see.”