How To Build The Social Innovation Sector, Leveraging Our Collective Voice

Next week is the 2024 Catalysing Change Week (CCW). A time when people come together as catalysts for change, sharing collaboration and working collectively to transform systems.

This event embodies the true power of the catalyst network as we reflect on the progress we’ve made in the past and explore opportunities in the present. With over 100 sessions planned out, I am proud to let you know that there is a session for you and every social innovator regardless of your focus.

Register for the session tailor-made for you HERE

Catalysing Change Week (CCW) brings together a diverse community of thought leaders and is filled with interactive sessions and activities designed to stimulate systems change and foster collaboration among participants. It is a true showcase of how people can unite to bring about the change they wish to see.

Catalysing Change Week 2024!

This year’s CCW has a special focus on “Building the Social Innovation Sector”, which I believe is a critical step in advancing our journey of change. In this blog, I want to share my thoughts on why building a sector can be a catalyst for propelling the movement and the social innovation field at large, into the next phase of development.

What is Social Innovation

Photo Credit: Impact Garden

As we stand today, social innovation as I have often described in my previous blogs is like a beautiful building with lovely interior decorated rooms but has no plumbing, electricity, or heater, i.e. lacks the basic infrastructure to make it fully operational.

We have wonderful projects and also some skills projects, but we need to ensure that our sector has the essential elements in place. Using my definition as a context, essential elements such as plumbing, electricity, heating, and air conditioning.

If we can establish a fully functional sector with these fundamental elements, we can grow and create the impact we aspire to achieve. By growing together and creating a meaningful impact, we can work towards accomplishing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 or, if necessary, by 2040. We don’t have to wait until the turn of the century to make a difference.

The Plan

Catalysing Change Week and Catalyst2030 have proven that when we work together and collaborate, we can leverage our collective power to drive powerful change, which is why I encourage social innovators from around the world to Register for the Catalysing Change Week 2024, HERE.

Register for Catalysing Change Week (CCW) 2024

However, what is stopping us is the lack of unified terminology, a shared task, and a unified way of how we, as a collective of social innovators, envision where we want to be not just as a sector but where we want to be as a world at large.

Two weeks ago, while I was at a Skoll World Forum, a group of us discussed the need for a common language for the sector. During the forum, the Oxford UK- Catalyst 2030 and the Skoll Foundation at the Skoll World Forum announced the launch of the Funder Self-Assessment Diagnostic at the Skoll World Forum on April 12, 2024. This diagnostic – designed with both funder and social innovator feedback – is meant to spark questions that catalyze funder learning journeys, and offer practical strategies to help philanthropy shift its funding practices for maximising impact. It emerged from a realisation that while we all share similar values, and desire similar social impact outcomes, there is a gap between intention and action in philanthropy. This diagnostic is one attempt to bridge the gap and offers many ideas on ‘how’ we might close it.

More than 150 funders have used the diagnostic so far and found it useful in their thinking about philanthropic culture and strategy within their organisations.

We realised that whether we call it a sector, an ecosystem, or something else entirely, we need a common terminology that can help us shape and define our work and get us to sit at the table where decisions are made.

So, if you share this passion for defining our collective voice, I invite you to email me here. Together, we can co-create what could become the backbone, or like I would say, the plumbing, or as others say, the grammar — of our sector.

Till my next blog which will be after the Catalysing Change Week… You have to be a part of it. Click HERE now to find the sessions for you and register to attend.

Thank you for being a part of this journey and for your unwavering support in leveraging our collective power to create positive change.