The Open Organization community is pleased to announce the release of a new issue in the Open Perspectives series: *Opening Up Social Impact-Focused Organizations.
In Opening Up Social Impact-Focused Organizations, authors Laura Hilliger and Heather Leson pool their years of experience in non-profit, humanitarian, and social impact-focused organizations, offering guidance for leaders working to transform their organizations with open principles in mind. With advice that’s both refreshingly realistic and eminently practical, Laura and Heather explain how working openly can help advocates for social change build coalitions, create projects that respect communities’ values, and architect durable movements with far-reaching impacts.
From the guide:
This is our perspective on how open advocates can work within the social impact-focused space. More than a manifesto, we mean for it to be a practical guide, offering strategies and mindsets to help people and organizations flourish by learning to modify people’s practices in light of cultural (and subcultural) nuances. We’ll examine some of the tools we have to support and facilitate this work. But we’ll also argue for a shared set of values and principles to unite our collective efforts— to light a way forward, championing openness for greater organizational impact.
This Open Perspective is available immediately at the Open Organization project’s repository on GitHub, or via these direct links:
PDF:
https://github.com/open-organization/open-perspectives/raw/main/opening-up-social-impact-focused-organizations/opening-up-social-impact-focused-organizations.pdf
ePub:
https://github.com/open-organization/open-perspectives/raw/main/opening-up-social-impact-focused-organizations/opening-up-social-impact-focused-organizations.epub
About the authors
Laura Hilliger is a writer, educator and technologist. She’s a conceptual architect, designer, developer, product owner, technical liaison, and project manager—in short, she’s an expert in open source and movement making. Laura won the 2020 Digital Leader of the Year Award from Women in IT for her work advocating for openness in global non-governmental organizations. She is a co-founder of We Are Open Co-op, a cooperative working with social impact-focused organizations. After spending more than five years at Mozilla, she became an Open Organization Ambassador and has spent much of the last six years working with Greenpeace International. Laura has a couple of university degrees and loads of Open Badges.
Driven by a vision of a world where everyone lends a hand, Heather Leson works at the intersection of social impact, strategy, technology, and open principles, delivering innovative products and experiences with global networks. Using hybrid skills of participatory design expertise, global network engagement, partnership building, and open collaboration methods, she has led organizational and community transformation for both Ushahidi and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. She co-led construction of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) Digital Transformation strategy and is the co-editor of the IFRC Data Playbook. As an Open Organization Ambassador, Heather has worked for many open organizations, including serving as the Board Member of both the OpenStreetMap Foundation and Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team.