The Networked Nonprofit

“We looked out about a year ago at the ecosystem of nonprofits and foundations, and one of the things that we saw was individuals — we call them free agents in the book — who are great with social media working outside of the walls of organizations and making really great things happen,” Fine said. “The larger picture of what we were seeing is the nonprofit sector has exploded in the number of organizations over the past 20 years or so, but if you look at any specific needle measure of social change over that time, the needle hasn’t moved. One of the reasons … the needle hasn’t moved is that there’s been a growth of this focus of stand-alone institutions. [That] makes it impossible to scale social change because complex social problems outpace the capacity of any single organization or individual to solve. That’s what we were trying to change.”