Tools

Engine of Impact Diagnostic

To achieve significant impact, a nonprofit organization must build, tune, and fuel an “engine of impact”—a system that encompasses seven essential areas of strategic leadership. This diagnostic tool enables nonprofit stakeholders to assess how well their organization performs in each of those areas and how ready that organization is to scale its impact.

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Engine of Impact Board Giving Tool

“A cardinal principle of fund raising is to start with your board,” Bill Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker write in Engine of Impact. With this tool, nonprofit leaders can gather and present vital data on their board’s contribution to funding their organization.

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Discussion Guide to Engine of Impact

Often the best way for people in an organization to turn ideas into action is to engage with those ideas together. Here is a set of questions, organized by book chapter, that people can explore in a group discussion of Engine of Impact.

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Excerpts

Foreword

Jim Collins, best-selling author of Good to Great, discusses “the real key to getting the most” out of Engine of Impact.

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Preface

Bill Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker describe the impetus and the inspiration behind their effort, in Engine of Impact, to forge “a common language, a new way of thinking, and a clear approach” for the social sector.

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Introduction

Bill Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker lay the historical groundwork for Engine of Impact—and issue a call to action for transforming the nonprofit sector.

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Media Coverage / Articles

An interview with Knowledge@Wharton

Bill Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker spoke with host Dan Loney for the Knowledge@Wharton radio show, which streams on SiriusXM Channel 111. During the interview, Meehan and Starkey Jonker discussed the challenges associated with measuring impact, the power of donors to change the social sector, and role played by “insight and courage” in nonprofit leadership, among other topics.

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Insights on Impact—a Stanford Business Interview

In an article titled “Four Ways Nonprofits Can Increase Their Impact,” Theodore Kinni offers several nuggets of insight from an interview that he conducted with Bill Meehan and Kim Starkey Jonker. The piece appears in the Autumn 2017 issue of Stanford Business, a magazine for alumni of Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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Engine of Impact in McKinsey & Company’s Alumni Report

In an interview posted at the firm’s Alumni Center website, the authors discuss Engine of Impact, their decision to collaborate on a study of nonprofit leadership, the ways in which their careers at McKinsey informed their perspective on the nonprofit sector, and other aspects of their experiences at the firm.

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Educator Resources

At the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), Bill Meehan and Kim Jonker teach courses related to strategic leadership and management in the social sector. Below are links to copies of two syllabuses that Meehan and Jonker have used in these courses. The authors have adapted these syllabuses to include references to relevant sections of Engine of Impact.

Meehan and Jonker have developed in-depth case studies on a wide range of social sector organizations. Below are links to information about case studies on organizations that appear in Engine of Impact. In writing the book, Meehan and Jonker drew extensively on this body of material. These case studies are available for download by current GSB students, as well as faculty and staff members of the school. Educators may purchase copies of these cases through Harvard Business Publishing or the Case Centre.

Also below are links to information about other case studies on organizations that appear in Engine of Impact. These cases, all published by Harvard Business School, are by a wide variety of authors. Educators can inquire about accessing these cases through Harvard Business Publishing.

Readiness to Scale Matrix

The Readiness to Scale Matrix is a visualization of the different categories a nonprofit might find itself in, based on its stages of development of the essentials of strategic leadership.

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Eight Questions for a Social Venture

Drawing upon concepts of Engine of Impact, Bill Meehan and Kim Jonker share the 8 questions critical to consider when starting a social venture.

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