Selected Projects
Applied Influencer Consulting Interventions. Following the model of influence popularized in the book Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, we help partner nonprofit organizations—usually in the domains of poverty alleviation and education—study positive deviance, discover vital behaviors, and build robust influence strategies.
- Compassion International, one of the world’s largest and most rigorously scrutinized child sponsorship organizations, has partnered with the Institute to change the behavior of its sponsors in order to dramatically increase the number of children released from poverty throughout the world.
- Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), one of the nation’s most innovative charter school systems, serving at-risk K-12 populations in the poorest areas in America, partnered with the Institute to reduce turnover of teachers and administrators.
Demonstration Projects. In pursuit of designing more influential, effective social sector programs, the Institute partners with proven nonprofit or NGO partners to develop and test new models to help individuals and families change for good.
- Cause For Hope, a microenterprise NGO operating primarily in Latin America, partnered with the Institute to develop and pilot a new operating model, which 1) shifted the organization’s focus from activity measures to outcomes, 2) dramatically increased the organization’s ability to operate at scale, and 3) decreased the organization’s dependency on philanthropic dollars from North America.
- The Self-Reliance Services program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints collaborated with the Institute and a coalition of nonprofit partners to design and test the Church’s first global microenterprise development program, which will reach over a million people in the next few years.
Presentations
Many collaborations of the Institute involve research and result in conference presentations and workshops. Recent presentations include the following.
- Circles USA National Conference—Vital Behaviors as System Design Criteria.