As the US picks up interest in social innovation YF associate Kippy Joseph is initiating a programme of work in the US.

Several YF projects already have a strong US dimension, including the School of Everything and support my parents, and earlier this year Geoff Mulgan gave a keynote address to the US Council of Foundations annual conference in Washington.

Watch this space for more news over the months ahead.'

Want to be more innovative in your philanthropy?
A new report from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Clohesy Consulting, and the Monitor Institute helps foundations understand how innovation happens, and how funders can take steps to be more intentional about innovating in their work.

The social sector is full of innovation. But too often, foundations and nonprofits treat it like a mystery, waiting and hoping for the lighting strike of great new ideas.

A growing body of literature and practice now suggests that innovation doesn't have to be such an uncontrollable force--it can be a rational management process with its own distinctive set of processes, procedures, and tools. Intentional Innovation: How Getting More Systematic about Innovation Could Improve Philanthropy and Increase Social Impact is the product of a year-long investigation undertaken by the Monitor Institute and Clohesy Consulting for the Kellogg Foundation that explores innnovation--not for its own sake--but to understand how being more deliberate about innovation could help foundations find new and better ways to make a difference in the world.

The report provides a framework for thinking about innovation that lays out a basic model for what it means to "do" innovation systematically, as well as a schema for understanding the different opportunity spaces where philanthropic institutions can innovate. It also includes a collection of examples of the innovations and experiments in philanthropic practice that are going on across the country and around the world.

The paper is intended not as a comprehensive answer to all of the field's questions about innovation, but as a starting place for discussions about how philanthropy can become more intentionally innovative, and as a result, have a greater impact on the issues we care about most.

You can download the Intentional Innovation report and/or executive summary here