Out of the Mouths of Babes ...

To answer those questions, I recently attended the Ideation Conference, a gathering of new charities and social entrepreneurs. I came away with five principles that characterize today’s most innovative nonprofits and thoughts on how you can apply them to your organization.

Principle 1:
Focus on a powerful idea
The most successful recent startups are invariably built around a clear-cut problem and a simple idea to solve it. Every day, people drink dirty water and die from it. Give $20 to Charity: Water and it can turn that into clean water for one person. Invisible Children is built on the energy of three young men who couldn’t believe that guerilla general Joseph Kony forced children to fight in his East African war, and resolved to stop it.