Daily Archives: April 5, 2017

The tone-deaf Kendall Jenner protest ad isnt the first Pepsi marketing misfire. Previous ads have made light of abuse, body image, and even featured a cartoon killing itself.

So many people said yes to it.

Thats the truly fascinating thing to remember when it comes to the Kendall Jenner-starring Pepsi ad that appropriates imagery from the Black Lives Matter movement and the Trump backlash mobilization of millennials tosell soda.

Its honestly thrilling, to the point that it needs to be studied, that so many peoplePepsi executives, the ads creative team, right down to Jenner herselfpaused not once to say, Hmm in the creation of this commercial, which, based on how quickly it went viral may be the truest test-case yet of the all publicity is good publicity maxim.

The add was so despised that Pepsi pulled it Wednesday afternoon and actually apologizedtoKendall Jenner for it.

Sure, we can see why Pepsi would attempt to do something meaningful with its new commercial. Advertising has historically exceled when it manages to capture a cultural momentbe it heartwarming or edgyand fold that spirit into its branding.

Its been decades since Buy the World a Coke, and, as this years Super Bowl proved, the most effective and provocative commercials tapped into the political zeitgeist to make edgy, powerful statements. (Though perhaps none as edgy as a supermodel ending police brutality and societal tension as we know it by simply handing an officer a can of soda.)

In fact, we can almost see the pitch meeting as it unfolded. Todays Pepsi girl isnt just a consumer. Shes an activist! Shes passionate about the world! She cares that the police in riot gear get their sugar fix!

Its a version of the hilarious Saturday Night Live spoof this season that mocked the message-y commercials we mentioned earlier with a pitch meeting that finds executives going gaga over the idea of using the plight of immigrants, Muslims, and the trans community to sell Cheetos.

The Kendall Jenner protest commercial isnt the first time Pepsis had the world shaking its head in astonishment over an insensitive, tone-deaf ad. To be fair, when a company is around for more than 100 years, its going to send out a few misfires in its attempt to stay relevant.

With the tizzy over the current ad still bubbling fizzier than a freshly popped cola, it might seem like piling on to revisit some of the brands past failures. Consider it just part of our fascination. Here are 7 other times that so many people, somehow, said yes.

Pepsi Max Suicide Campaign

Pepsi Max, recently renamed Pepsi Zero Sugar in the U.S., is a one-calorie alternative to Diet Pepsi. That distinction prompted the tagline: Pepsi Max. One very lonely calorie. And what does one very lonely calorie do, according a series of print ads that ran in German magazines? It tries to kill itself.

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The 2008 ads created various scenes of suicide for the lonely calorie: hanging, gunshot, poison, explosion, and slitting its wrists. One kitchen-sink version saw the poor guy shooting itself in the forehead while a noose was tied around its neck and a dripping bottle of poison in its free, non-gun-wielding hand.

Pepsi Max Love Hurts Campaign

Pepsi Max has really had a go of it. In 2011, the drink ran a Super Bowl commercial featuring a black couple with a nagging wife who keeps stopping her husband from eating junk food. On a park bench he sneakily opens a Pepsi Max, and is shocked when she sits down and starts drinking one, too. Its because theyre lo-cal! Get it?

Everything seems great until a white female jogger runs by their bench and the husband checks her out. Outraged, his wife hurls her Pepsi Max can at him, but he ducks, the can hits the jogger, and shes knocked out completely. On its own, its a confusing coda to a commercial that had already made its point. But as viewers were quick to point out, it also perpetuates negative racial and gender stereotypes.

The optics of having the wife inhabit Angry Black Woman characteristics and exhibit jealousy over the white woman was apparently lost on the director of the commercial. Director Brad Bosley responded to the controversy claiming that he thought the married couple fit his vision of a generic pairing, and it just so happened those were the best actors [he] had and [he] put them in there without thinking about race at all.

Diet Pepsi Skinny Can

Back in 2011, Diet Pepsi introduced a skinny version of its can just in time for Fashion Week. The brand described the new can as taller and sassier than the traditional can, adding that our slim, attractive new can is the perfect complement to todays most stylish looks.

Yes, you were just fat-shamed by a soda can.

Unsurprisinglyexcept, again, maybe to all those executives who said yes to thiscritics immediately jumped on the implied reinforcement of dangerous stereotypes about women, body image, and beauty. The National Eating Disorders Association even weighed in, calling it thoughtless and irresponsible.

Mountain Dews Snitch Ad

Obtuseness abounds throughout PepsiCo, with its brand Mountain Dew the subject ire for its own 2013 ad.

In the commercial, a battered woman, bruised and in casts, is told to pick her abuser out of a police lineup. All the men in the lineup are black, save for one goat. The goat tells the woman, Ya better not snitch on a player and keep ya mouth shut. In the end, she screams and runs away.

The extra-caffeinated outrage caused Mountain Dew to remove the ad almost immediately.

Madonnas Like a Prayer Ad

The commercial itself was, in Madonnas own words, very, very sweet and sentimental. The much-hyped spotcommercials for the commercial aired leading up to its debutthe singer watches old black-and-white clips of herself as a child. Then while adult Madonna starts singing her hit Like a Prayer in different localesa city street, a diner, the halls of a school, a churchthe footage is interspersed with clips of the young girl.

The commercial premiered on March 2. The Like a Prayer music video premiered on March 3.

But when consumers began confusing the commercial, which was innocuous bordering on adorable, with the controversial music video for the song, which included imagery of burning crosses, stigmata, and a pop star kissing a priest, petitions were drawn up for Pepsi to stop airing the commercial. Which it did, after having paid the singer more than $5 million to appear in the spot in the first place.

Amp Up Before You Score App

To promote a new energy drink called Amp, PepsiCo released an iPhone app called Amp Up Before You Score. The app basically delivered users tips and tricks for picking up 24 different types of womenthe treehugger, cougar, sorority girl, and, um, marriedso that they can score (the euphemism, of course, should be evident).

Yes, Pepsi attempted to pitch itself as a wingman for your iPhone.

Further freezing the debacle in time, Pepsi released this very 2009 apology for the appon Twitter: Our app tried 2 show the humorous lengths guys go 2 pick up women. We apologize if its in bad taste & appreciate your feedback.

Michael Jackson Gets Burned

In 1984, Michael Jackson suffered second-degree burns to his scalp when his hair and jacket caught on fire after dancing too close to pyrotechnics during a Pepsi commercial shoot.

Nothing about this is tone-deaf. Were just offended that Pepsi set the King of Pop on fire.

Read the original here:

Before Faking a Protest With Kendall Jenner, Pepsi Ads Mocked Suicide, Domestic Violence & Eating Disorders - Daily Beast

The turbulence that has marked the past four years may have finally been quelled. A swift and stealthy plot recently expelled the patriot bloc blamed for the unrest and paved the way for a stronger party.

We are getting our feet under ourselves now and can be a positive force, said Kevin Ensley, a member of the mainstream Republicans and a Haywood County commissioner. The negative stuff, we need to leave it at the door. We need to be positive and work toward our common goals.

The patriot bloc had seized the reins of the party two years ago following a prolonged fight for control. Its members gradually entrenched themselves as precinct chairs, gaining a large majority on the 30-member executive committee, the partys decision-making body.

But in an unprecedented political maneuver, the mainstream branch of the party rallied its troops to take back control. Mainstream Republicans ousted the patriot faction en masse several weeks ago by recruiting their own slate to run for precinct chairs.

When the dust settled, only two members of the patriot faction managed to hang onto their precinct chairs. The rest were defeated, dramatically reshaping the makeup of the partys executive committee.

We have a new wave of precinct chairs so our executive committee is a little bit more stable now, said Hannah Strum. We have new people, we have new energy and new ideas.

Things arent so rosy for the patriot faction, however.

What really stings is that the very people who worked side-by-side with us, all of a sudden just flip-flopped, said Jeremy Davis, a leader of the patriot faction and party finance chair until the overthrow.

Joy Diettle, a relative newcomer to the local party, doesnt understand why the mainstream branch has such contempt and hostility toward the patriot faction.

I didnt anticipate it being so corrupt at the local county level where it is neighbor against neighbor and friend against friend, Diettle said.

Despite their unwavering tenacity for conservative principles, members of the patriot bloc were seen by many as troublemakers. They were too radical for the mainstream Republicans in Haywood County and were accused of preventing growth of the party.

Only time will tell what impact their ousting will have. Will mainstream Republicans be turned off by the disruptive faction of patriots now come back to the table? Or has the party lost its grassroots core of loyal, steadfast conservatives?

The folks they just electioneered out of the Haywood County Republican Party were the folks that raised the money the people who got things done, who showed up to man tables, and the people who invested in fundraisers, said Paul Yeager, an ousted member of the patriot faction.

They arent going away, however. Theyve now started their own group called the Haywood Republican Alliance to channel their energy.

I have been a Republican for 40 years and nobody can stop me, said Eddie Cabe, a leader of the patriot faction. They want to silence the Christian conservative grassroots movement because we are not for the establishment.

Like Davis, Cabe feels betrayed.

It really hurt my feelings they dont want good conservative, Christian, veteran, patriots in their midst, Cabe said.

Cabe lives and breathes conservative principles, almost to a fault. There are no shades of gray in Cabes book, and those who dont share his core values arent true Republicans in his eyes and he will condemn them publicly for disloyalty.

If you dont agree with them on every issue, then you arent a Republican to them, said Ensley, whos been in the patriots crosshairs for years.

Cabe is a prolific master of Facebook and harnessing social media to spread patriot ideology. Not all his posts are political in nature, however. Cabe is known to share prepper tips, like a video on pressure-cooking a raccoon, how to build a trip-wire alarm around your homes perimeter or harness rainwater. He sprinkles his posts with inspiring quotes from famous conservatives, degrading jabs at Democrats, and passages from the Constitution.

But Facebook has also proved a perfect medium for chastising mainstream Republicans like Ensley who have sold out the party in Cabes eyes. Cabe readily labels them commies and socialists and calls them crooked and underhanded.

Some in Cabes own camp even cringe when he goes on the rampage.

Even some of the folks on my side of this mess, if they decide they dont like somebody they will attack them at every turn. They will pile on based on their personal prejudices about that person rather than the actual issue, Yeager said.

Nonetheless, the party establishment should be inclusive rather than shutting people down.

Eddie is a bit of a firebrand and a bomb thrower, but he has a voice and has the right to use it, Yeager said.

Indeed, attempts by the party establishment to silence the patriot faction only made them get louder, creating a vicious cycle.

You need to accept them and embrace them, said Philip Wight, a Maggie Valley Republican who sympathizes with the patriot faction.

Haywood County GOP Chairman Ken Henson said the internal turmoil is partly due to growing pains.

Theres no more division in ours than there is in any other party, Henson said. But weve built it up so big, and any time you do that the noise is going to get bigger.

Henson helped orchestrate the overthrow of the patriot faction, and claims it was necessary to move the party forward.

We recruited our people and they recruited their people. We just got more people than they did. Get over it and move on, Henson said.

Whether the ousting will serve the partys greater good, one effect is undeniable: it left a trail of hurt feelings and betrayal that could remain a black eye on the Haywood GOPs new leadership for some time to come.

Do you disenfranchise people and ruin friendships and send people away with a bad taste in their mouth? asked Wight.

To those who orchestrated the overthrow, the ends justified the means. The partys future was at stake. But it was unethical, and thus wrong, according to K.G. Watson, a Haywood County conservative who claims allegiance to neither side per se.

People who do things that are underhanded always have some meritorious reason in their mind why they did it, said Watson. There is a short-term gain maybe, but for years this will come back to haunt them. They will have trouble recruiting good, honest people.

To Lynda Bennett, its just the opposite. A persistent dark cloud was keeping people away from the party, and thats gone now.

People dont volunteer to do things that are hard or unpleasant. Volunteer-based organizations need to be upbeat and focused on the issues and ideas that people want to participate in, said Bennett, who was recently elected party secretary. They dont have time to be involved in something that is not uplifting or positive.

The patriot faction was stifling the party at a time it should have been gaining strength. A record 225 people attended the county precinct meeting this year.

We were never able to bring all these people in before, Bennett said.

Thats because the vibe was too negative, added Pat Bennett, Lyndas husband.

We wanted to have a positive party, not a negative party, said Pat Bennett, who claimed a precinct chairmanship in the upset elections. Anybody can be against something and anybody can complain, but we want to be positive and move forward.

The number of registered Republicans has grown substantially over the past decade. Historically, Haywood was a Democratic stronghold. Republicans were the minority and their only recourse was throwing stones.

But now, Republicans in Haywood are winning elections thanks to a shift in voter demographics.

If we are going to be elected then we have to lead, Ensley said. We cant be a reactionary no vote all the time. We have to be a solution-based party. We cant just be the party thats in the way and being obstructionists.

Of the record breaking crowd at this years annual precinct gathering topping more than 200 half had never been to a party function or meeting in their life.

To Cabe, that was deceitful. Newcomers were recruited to flood the precinct elections for the express purpose of ousting the patriots.

No one at my table had I ever seen at a party meeting before, Cabe said.

To the mainstream Republicans, the story is a far different one. Its a story of victory, of a rising Republican tide and momentum. The larger take-away: the party is harnessing untapped energy and growing its base in Haywood.

I am looking forward confidentially to the party growing, said Pat Carr, a leader of the mainstream branch and newly elected party treasurer. We have been a minority party here forever and I am really glad to see so much interest. There is enthusiasm from new folks. I am really pleased to see more people participating.

The groundswell is due in part to last Novembers victories at the polls, with Haywood voters electing Republicans in local, state and national races.

I think the presidential election allowed us to become energized, Lynda Bennett said.

One of the newcomers to the party was Ron Muse, a Waynesville businessman whod been a Democrat, at least on paper, until two years ago. Like many Southern Democrats of his generation, he could no longer identify with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and he finally realigned his party registration to match his beliefs.

I just changed horses, Muse said.

But Muse was too turned off by the infighting to get involved in the local party until now.

There were a bunch of quarrels. It was just a hostile environment. Three or four people had a certain thing they wanted to push and had their little clans, Muse said.

Muse heard there was a movement afoot to chart a new course, and agreed to run for a precinct chair. But Muse said he didnt set out to push anyone out of the party.

The people I have talked to arent mad at those people. We want them to be part of us, not just a clique, Muse said. Everybody that reads this article is welcome to come to the next meeting.

The infusion of new blood in the party also includes Timothy Reynolds of Clyde, who moved to Haywood County three years ago from Kansas City. After Trumps victory, Reynolds wanted to get involved in the local party and be part of the change that was coming in America. He stopped into the party headquarters one day this winter and heard about the upcoming precinct gathering, and decided to go.

Reynolds precinct of North Clyde wasnt one of the contested ones. Only a few people from his precinct came, and no one else was vying for the chair, so he stepped up.

Hes not privy to the ins and outs of the internal strife, and was only vaguely aware of it when he showed up for the precinct gathering.

The drama needs to end and hopefully they got it resolved. I dont want to see anybody feel like they got pushed out, Reynolds said. I dont think you can walk away just because you have conflict. You can always resolve conflict.

Its too soon to say whether the sides are ready to put the past behind them.

That will be proven on down the road, but I hope so, Muse said.

But those whove been in the trenches dont see it that way.

I think at this point we have gone way past being able to work things out, Yeager said.

Division is hardly new for the Haywood GOP. Overthrows arent new either, but power shifts in the past werent as sudden or swift. It took the patriots over two years to get control of the party by gradually wearing down the mainstream with vile, personal attacks until they gave up, leaving the patriots at the helm by default.

But many of the party faithful run off by the tactics of the patriot faction have now come back to the table, including Hannah and Brian Strum. After incessant browbeating and name calling, they finally walked away two years ago.

We didnt stop being involved politically. We still went to political functions, but we didnt participate in the Haywood Republican Party, said Hannah Strum. We just took a break from the Haywood County party.

But that changed when the party chair, Ken Henson, reached back out to them a few months ago.

He reached out to both of us and said Would you consider being involved again? and we said We sure would and he said Come on, Brian recounted.

Hannah was re-elected as chair of her Clyde precinct.

We feel very excited, Hannah said. We see a lot of positive things coming to the Republican Party now and we are looking forward to that and getting re-involved.

The plan to re-engage some of those who left the local party in disgust would only work, however, if there were a critical mass of mainstream Republicans on board.

We were certainly willing to do our part. We were very hopeful it would work, Hannah said. We all made the decision to come together and be on the same team and work together to overcome these obstacles weve had the past four years and move forward in a positive direction as a whole.

Brian Strum said they were willing to put their hurt feelings aside for the greater good of the local party.

We love the party enough and we were dedicated enough to our philosophical zeitgeist so to speak, that it led us back to being involved, he said.

A few mainstream Republicans had hung in there all along, including former chair of the Haywood GOP Pat Carr.

If you are going to be in politics you have to have a pretty thick skin because there will always be somebody who wants to throw rocks at you, Carr said.

Carr spent years in the crosshairs of the patriot faction and was even the target of an impeachment attempt.

She stepped down as chair two years ago, but is now back in a leadership position as the newly elected party secretary.

Carr thought a minute when asked whether she would have taken on a leadership role again if the patriot faction was still in control of the executive committee.

Would I have been willing to? No, because in my view most of those folks tend to be divisive rather than contributory, Carr said. If I anticipated they would have held a majority on the executive committee, I would not have been interested. They were obstructive instead of contributing. I am sure they see it quite differently, but the thing is we turned our folks out.

Kevin Ensley, a Haywood County commissioner considered public enemy number one by the patriot faction, always saw the patriot faction as a vocal minority that could easily be overthrown if mainstream Republicans came together.

Ive always said what we need to do is get people to the precinct meetings and get the people voted out who are causing problems, Ensley said. So when the moment arrived, he was on board.

They wanted to turn it around and get it to where we can do some positive things. To not help with that would be a hypocrite, Ensley said.

Link:

Haywood GOP leaders overthrown - Smoky Mountain News

Its one of the perennial questions facing the nonprofit world: Why, despite the sectors collective resources and best efforts, do so many social problems remain so persistent?

This stubborn gap between intentions and outcomes is drawing increased attention from across the philanthropic community. Many within the sector are coming to a shared conclusion: For too long, nonprofit boards and donors have emphasized the creation and growth of long-life organizations with ever-growing staffs and budgets. Perhaps what we need instead, according to the emerging line of thinking, is an emphasis on what is called systems changeon identifying the organizations and individuals already working on a problem, and helping them join forces to achieve their common goals.

Several of the most significant philanthropic achievements of this centurysuch as the extraordinary reduction of annual malaria deathshave used systems change strategies. Yet despite these and other well-documented successes, the nonprofit sector still has a long way to go. While we have created many great social enterprises that generate innovative approaches to everything from frontline health care to early childhood interventions, we have not spent enough time and resources on doing what it takes to turn innovative ideas into lasting, system-level change. Examples of this mismatch problem can be seen all over the world. Good ideas and innovations in schools, such as Teach for America and KIPP, havent translated into large-scale, systemic solutions. Even during the Ebola outbreak, a systems approach to understanding the problem and its potential solutions might have led to more effective and sustainable strategies for improving community health in the hardest-hit nations.

The message is clear: Our focus should be more on solving problems through creative collaboration, and less on the establishment and perpetuation of new institutions. In addition, we need to develop and employ system entrepreneurs who are skilled in coordinating systematic approaches to addressing the complex, large-scale problems of our time.

In 2011 Stanford Social Innovation Review published an article by two FSG managing directors, John Kania and Mark Kramer. The piece was titled Collective Impact, a phrase that is still often used as a shorthand for systems-based approaches to philanthropy.

The article began with a no-nonsense provocation, invoking one of the subject areas that had consumed so much of American philanthropys money and energy over the years: education.

The scale and complexity of the U.S. publiceducationsystem has thwarted attempted reforms for decades, wrote Kania and Kramer. The heroic efforts of countless teachers, administrators, andnonprofits, together with billions of dollars in charitable contributions, may have led to important improvements in individual schools and classrooms, yet system-wide progress has seemed virtually unobtainable.

But there was at least one remarkable exception to this dismal record of philanthropic underachievement: a Cincinnati initiative called Strive. Kania and Kramer observed that despite economic downturns and budget cuts, this school-reform campaign had generated improvements in high-school graduation rates, fourth-grade reading and math scores, and the number of preschoolers prepared for kindergarten.

Why has Strive made progress when so many other efforts have failed? Kania and Kramer asked. It is because a core group of community leaders decided to abandon their individual agendas in favor of a collective approach to improving student achievement.

The article had an immediate and lasting impact, spawning a legion of follow-up pieces. Strive was hardly the only early example of a system entrepreneur seeking to address social needs by drawing upon the strengths and assets of diverse actors in a system. In fact, there are more and more people these days whom I would describe as system entrepreneurs. They help like-minded organizations and individuals focus on a problem of shared concernand act as honest brokers among the members of the coalition to help marshal each ones unique capabilities and resources. They are catalysts for action.

Ray Chamberss extraordinarily successful anti-malaria campaign, which brought together a motley alliance (ranging from the Peace Corps to ExxonMobil) to radically advance progress against the disease after decades of stasis, was another example of effective systems change. So was EducationSuperHighway (ESH), a venture that has helped bring broadband Internet access to schools across the United States.

In short, systems change campaigns have begun emerging in a way we had never seen previously. Which begs the question: Why now? One answer is that such strategies are, as system entrepreneur Jean Horstman of Interise put it, part of the zeitgeist. At a moment when our most pressing social and environmental challenges are so complexand the resources available to any single institution to deal with those problems seem so limitedit makes sense to use the systems that are already available.

And lets not kid ourselves: Money is not the only resource in limited supply. In fact, cash is positively abundant compared to other, more abstract necessities like hope, imagination, and social cohesion. Systems change is gaining traction because the old ways of doing things seem so spent.

At a systems change conference that I co-hosted at Harvard Universitys John F. Kennedy School of Government last June, political commentator and former presidential advisor David Gergen said such approaches represent a constructive response to policy paralysis and political gridlock: Its been hard to move the needle, and its hard to know where one goes from here.

The potential path forward is nicely illustrated by JohnCawley of the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation. We realized after spending millions over the yearsthat we were not having the systems impact we needed and wanted due to the complexity and size of the issues, Cawley said. So we redefined our role; we are curators or stewards of the ecosystem around an issue. [W]e can be the connective tissue between parts of the ecosystem.

Which in turn begs another question: How can such curators and stewards succeed in their task? How can they best serve as connective tissue for partners who may not even think of themselves as having anything in common? Who can help coordinate these strategies?

What, in other words, are the fundamental elements of successful Systems change?

As Vanessa Kirsch, Jim Bildner, and I wrote in a July Harvard Business Review article, five priorities distinguish successful systems change collaborations:

1. Think in systems. Having a great idea for solving a social problem is just the beginning. You also need to identify the collaborators who can help you translate your innovation into real solutions for the real world.

One international issue that seemed especially ripe for the systems change approach was the modern slavery crisis. An estimated 45 million people worldwide live in slavery or slavery-like conditions today. The annual profits derived from forced labor are estimated at $150 billion. Slavery is a complicated problem. The global trade in forced labor reaches into every populated continent, and its opponents are an unwieldy amalgam of government agencies, multinational bodies, businesses, religious groups, and NGOs.

Geneva Global, a Paoli, Penn.-based consultancy that has emerged as a leading incubator of systems change campaigns, had developed some experience and credibility in the sector. It was already managing an India-Nepal anti-slavery program funded by the Legatum Foundation.

Geneva Global and Legatum had come to realize that in order to tackle the slavery problem at the necessary scale, a systems-based approach was needed. In 2013, Geneva Global CEO Doug Balfour initiated discussions with Legatum and one of the other major funders of the movement, Humanity United. They then contacted a third major donor, the Walk FreeFoundation.

The three funders came to some shared conclusions. The sector was too fragmented. Its successes were too scattered and too limited to achieve global gains. It wasnt learning from its own triumphs and failures in any systematic way. And it wasnt attracting enough new private money. More specifically, the anti-slavery campaign was not yet taking advantage of emerging pooled-funding strategies that were opening up huge new possibilities in other social-service realms, such as disease prevention and vaccine development.

To fill this gap, the funders agreed on a joint strategy for a new pooled-fund organizationan entity that became known as the Freedom Fund. From the start, this was to be much more than just a fund. In addition to pooling donors, it would take an active role in the strategy, research, and policy issues pertinent to the global anti-slavery movement.

For Freedom Fund CEO Nick Grono, that means developing more effective strategieseverything from litigation to the use of anti-corruption statutes. Its about being smart and strategic, and thinking what more could be done in this space, he says.

Six of the largest anti-slavery funders are now involved in the Freedom Fund, and the organization has begun to play a significant donor-convening role worldwide. It now directly funds 112 NGOs, 100 of which are grassroots groups in India, Nepal, and other countries where forced labor remains widespread.

This means the Freedom Fund and its benefactors are effectively ceding credit and control, and persuading local partners to give up a bit of theirs in returnall in the name of achieving the kind of progress that will actually last. That is the essence of systems change. Getting people to collaborate and work together is probably the hardest thing to do in the international development space, says Geneva Globals Balfour. Persuading people to essentially give up their own autonomy in the promise of seeking greater impact is a delicate and diplomatic process.

Jenna Mulhall-Brereton, a Geneva Global managing director who has assisted other systems change efforts at the firm, points out that such allowances are essential to effective collaboration. When youre looking at systems-level change, the chances are youre going to need to work with partners, she says. We want to give people a realistic sense of what that means, taking ego out of it and making it all about achieving the goal.

The number of systems incubators who help start large-scale interventions, like Geneva Global, is growing. They help find systems entrepreneurs; set up backbone support for coalitions; and assist fundraising. New Profit, Tides Foundation, and The Pew Charitable Trusts have all set up such systems change incubators.

2. Engage in research and analysis to hone your strategy. Figure out whats really neededand what works.

Systems change leaders need to research and analyze the strategies that others have tried in the past. This guards against reinventing the wheel and other redundancies of effort. Such research will ideally draw upon a wide range of outside sources. It should seek to harness the best thinking from incubators, nonprofits, universities, and think tanks.

One systems change endeavor that has used thoughtful research and analysis to hone its approach is the Compassionate Schools Project, a partnership of the University of Virginia (UVA), the Jefferson County, Ky. public schools, Louisville Metro Government, and an impressively diverse array of philanthropic donors. In this case, UVA and the Brown family of Louisville, Ky., were the systems entrepreneurs guiding the project.

The Compassionate Schools Project aims to have a major impact on childrens education nationwide, due to its extraordinary scale: 50 schools and 20,000 children over the projects six years, beginning with the schools of metropolitan Louisville.

The project is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken of a health-and-wellness curriculum in an elementary or secondary school setting. Through mindfulness techniques, physical exercise, nutritional awareness, and training in emotional skills, it seeks to instill such essential qualities as focus, empathy, and resilience.

Organizers faced some hard initial questions about which methods to feature in the curriculum. There was no shortage of optionsor opinions. So they dove into intensive research to assess the various potential approaches. Yoga training was found to be an especially good curricular addition for physically active kids. Nutrition training was important to ensure both academic readiness and healthy physical growth. Then, of course, there was the large and growing body of research on the benefits of meditation and mindfulness training for mental performance, physical well-being, and emotional balance.

The partners dug deeper into the potential offerings. They found that most mindfulness-centered programs didnt offer yoga programs; yoga programs tended to lack a social and emotional learning component; and the social and emotional curriculum under consideration was missing both yoga and mindfulness training.

Through this research, the project partners came to a firm conclusion: A hybrid strategy combining all of these elements would produce better outcomes than an initiative focusing solely on, say, meditation or nutrition. To simply take one nonprofits programs and embed those into the Louisville school system would probably fail to meet the needs of the student body as a whole.

These are all ideas that we know can help, but theyve never been put into a package that could be implemented in schools as a regular part of education, says Patrick Tolan, the projects principal investigator. These are things that are really valuable because they educate the whole child, with attention to both long-term and short-term implications.

In this synergistic spirit, UVA helped Louisville assess a wide range of innovative approaches to create a customized blend that would be both effective and feasible for the district.

With the public elementary schools of the 28th largest district in the United States as its proving ground, organizers hope the projects lessons will be noticed and applied across the nation. If that proves to be the case, the rigorous research and analysis carried out for the Louisville effort will bear fruit for many other school systemsand countless studentsnationwide.

3. Understand that effective communication is the lifeblood of any systems change campaign. Maintain transparent and compelling communications both internally with collaborative partners, and externally with public audiences.

The systems change model demands a high level of interaction and transparency between previously unaffiliated individuals and groups. If these links break down, or are never quite formed in the first place, it is unlikely that an effort will succeed.

Jane Wei-Skillern, adjunct associate professor at the University of California, Berkeleys Hass School of Business, a leading scholar of collaborative philanthropy, says of systems change partners, If they dont have authentic relationships, even if they have everything else from a structural approach, it wont work.

One example of a systems change effort that has placed a high priority on the value of communication is the Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy initiative. Established as the Global Ocean Legacy campaign in 2006, this effort has already helped secure commitments to lasting environmental protections for 2.4 million square miles of ocean, mainly in the Pacific Ocean.

Highly attuned to the need for collaboration with coastal populations that have long relied upon the sea for their livelihood, Ocean Legacy employs communications efforts that are tailored to the unique culture of each site. The campaigns advocacy efforts first focus on building relationships with communities, and then on reinforcing those relationships through a broader communications strategy. Through the campaign, organizers identified innovations that far-flung communities could learn from and share. Informing participants about innovations they can use is a vital role for any systems change organization.

In each country, Ocean Legacy promotes collaboration among varied community groups, including fishermen, scientists, indigenous peoples, industry, and conservationists. In the Pacific Ocean, the initiative has established Island Voicesa diverse group of residents from across different islands. These individuals play a critical role in advocating for marine reserve proposals in their communities.

In addition to these highly personalized efforts, Global Ocean has also used social media to build local support for conservation. For example, in Palau, Facebook is an important community resource, and a coalition of supporters built a page to promote the proposal for a reserve. Ocean Legacy helped fund a 40-minute documentary film narrated by the US marine biologist Sylvia Earle, and commissioned artists in New Zealand to develop ocean-inspired works that eventually resulted in an exhibition that traveled the globe and raised awareness of the importance of marine reserves.

The field of communications and awareness-building is an especially dynamic one in the age of social media, global Internet penetration, and the 24/7 news cycle. Yet the participants in any systems change effort must remember that the most important communications of all are those that occur within a campaign, among the participants themselves.

The Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy initiative has shown a unique ability to communicate with both local partners and global audiencesa capability that will serve the campaign well as it seeks to expand the protected zones of the worlds oceans.

4. Embrace your inner policy wonkand your inner politico. If you seek to change a complex system, you will often need to change the laws, administrative rules, and official practices governing that system.

This means being serious about policyand being willing to engage in the often-difficult work of seeking political and regulatory change. Im the chairman of New Profit, a Boston-based philanthropic venture group, and Ive seen the importanceand the challengeof policy change firsthand.

Like countless other nonprofit organizations, ours is tackling the immense problem of US educational dysfunction and inequality. We set up the Reimagine Learning Fund to ensure that all studentsincluding those who may be marginalized or disengaged because of learning disorders or socio-economic disadvantagescan succeed both in school and beyond.

The Reimagine Learning Fund embraced systems change strategies from the start, eventually conducting a network of more than 350 educators, funders, social entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and policy experts from more than 150 separate organizations. We see our role as a healthy balance between facilitating and actually leading the effort, says Kim Syman, a New Profit managing partner who has helped lead the organizations education-reform work.

That effort has included a significant policy component, assisted by a New Profit coalitionAmerica Forwardthat is devoted to lobbying and advocacy. The initial purpose of this alliance was to support the reauthorization of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act, and to ensure that the act gets translated into effective regulations.

For example, the coalition sought to establish a Comprehensive Literacy Center to assist children with dyslexia or related conditions. This measure was sponsored by Senator Bill Cassidy (R-La.), one of the legislators whom Reimagine Learning and America Forward met with on a day of Capitol Hill visits in 2015.

Reimagine Learning and America Forward have waged a comprehensive, nonpartisan campaign to identify partners in both major parties who can help the alliance reach the elected officials, appointees, and candidates who will determine the future of education reform.

That work is by no means limited to Washington, D.C. Given the continued primacy of state governments in US education policy, Reimagine Learning and America Forward have been active at this level, working to influence state-level policy to support district-level change.

The more we worked with school and district leaders, the more we saw the challenges they faced, says Syman. As a result, we are now thinking more about how to support practical solutions, not limited to those coming out of research or academia.

5. Measure and evaluate. Then measure and evaluate again. The most successful systems change campaigns create consistent and ongoing data assessments, and rely upon those findings to guide strategy and ensure accountability.

Rigorous data collection and consistent measurement are essential components of systems change philanthropy. EducationSuperHighway (ESH) remains the gold standard in this category.

ESHs objective is to Upgrade the Internet access in every public school classroom in America so that every student has the opportunity to take advantage of the promise of digital learning. ESH founder Evan Marwell and his colleagues understood that in order to prove the continued need for better digital connections in schools, they had to come up with data illustrating the scope of the problem.

To achieve this, they set up a diagnostic website, SchoolSpeedTest, in September 2012. With the help of about 100 partner organizations, 26 state governments, and 35,000 schools across the country, Marwell and his team gathered the information they needed to understand the true scope of the Internet-access challenge. Suddenly we had a data set, says Marwell. No more anecdotes. What that data set revealed was unsettling. About 63 percent of school districtsrepresenting 40 million studentslacked the broadband required for digital learning.

As states and districts began paying more attention to the connectivity problem, ESHs measurements would play a crucial role in assessing progress. An authoritative ongoing report, State of the States, is available on ESHs website. Such publicly-available measurements, in turn, create added incentive for states to keep up. This seems to have created a virtuous cycle, spurring significant advances in connectivity.

Beginning in 2013the first full year of ESHs existencethe share of US school districts achieving the target level of Internet connectivity (100 kilobits per second) more than doubled in just two years, rising from 30 percent to 77 percent.

What seems clear is that the systems change approach to philanthropy will continue to gain traction worldwide. At a time when public budgets are under increased economic and political stress, there is a certain appeal in making the most of existing resources and expertise.

The five elements laid out above will provide a sturdy grounding for any collaborative campaign, but system entrepreneurs need to understand that any such endeavor will have its inherent quirks and complexities. After all, systems change is all about tackling our most complicated problems, drawing upon the power of diverse networks and potentially fractious coalitions.

Geneva Globals Doug Balfour believes that while the strategies and tactics used in building past systems change campaigns may hold lessons, each will have its own distinct identity. Each systems venture is completely different, he says. They are always custom. There are some principles that are the same, but the ways in which you have to put it all together are always unique.

To address the worlds biggest problems, its essential that we build upon the great work already being done by traditional social entrepreneurs. Its time to support the growing ranks of systems entrepreneurs by investing in systems incubatorsand by helping systems change campaigns get the support they need to engage in effective research; communicate with internal and external partners; pursue successful policy change; and measure relevant data to see what works.

The basic steps of systems change are proven and clear. Its up to the philanthropic sector to make this powerful vehicle of progress more available to more of todays social innovators.

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Solving the World's Biggest Problems: Better Philanthropy Through Systems Change - Stanford Social Innovation Review (subscription)