Center for Social Impact Strategy

Center for Social Impact Strategy

Higher Education

Philadelphia, PA 5,124 followers

A research and action center based at the University of Pennsylvania helping people change the world

About us

Housed at Penn, the Center for Social Impact Strategy offers online and in-person learning for changemakers who are looking to develop, build, and scale their impact ideas. Whether you're looking for an online executive education option that results in a graduate-level certificate or to grow your network of like-minded social innovators, the Center for Social Impact Strategy has many options to take you to the next step in your social impact journey. Follow along as we share information about our programs, resources, and stories from 1,000+ alumni that have gone through our programs!

Website
https://csis.upenn.edu/
Industry
Higher Education
Company size
2-10 employees
Headquarters
Philadelphia, PA
Type
Educational
Founded
2013
Specialties
executive education, social innovation, social impact, strategy, and corporate social responsibility

Locations

Employees at Center for Social Impact Strategy

Updates

  • 🌏 Are you ready to take the next step in making a meaningful impact in your community? Applications to join our 2024-2025 Executive Programs are open! Learn more about our offerings here: https://bit.ly/CSIS25. The Executive Program in Social Innovation Design (XSD) is a 7-month online program with an in-person Summit in October. In partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design and School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania, XSD offers unique tools and training in design thinking, social innovation strategy, and an independent studio project. Apply by July 29 and begin September 9th. The Executive Program in Social Impact Strategy (SIS) is an 8-month online certification from the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania for leaders and innovators working to make an impact. The Executive Programs in Social Impact Strategy are offered in Blended or Online formats. With multiple options, social impact leaders can choose the option that best fits their needs while getting the same quality curriculum, program structure, and cohort-based learning experience. 💻 Register for an online information session to see if the Executive Program fits your social impact goals. Sign up for our first info session on July 30th session here: https://bit.ly/SISInfo1 at 4 pm EST. If you have additional questions, email us at admissions@csis.upenn.edu 📨 or set up a call with one from our admissions team https://bit.ly/CallCSIS 📱

    Fall 2024 - 2025 CSIS Program Outlook - The Center for Social Impact Strategy

    https://csis.upenn.edu

  • 📢 Announcing our September Speaker Series featuring Michael Kellerman! Join us virtually on September 30 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Register for the talk here: bit.ly/sprk24. This session will move beyond trends and data to use Philadelphia examples to explore systemic issues such as ineffective corporate controls, the limits of philanthropy, and inadequate Board governance. Understanding the societal and sectoral dynamics reinforcing these cycles of crisis can anchor a shift toward positive change for a sector entrusted with some of the most pressing community missions and responsible for one in ten American paychecks. Nonprofit organizations nationwide face rampant crisis and dysfunction, which is evident in recent examples from the Philadelphia region. While stories such as the implosion of the Philly Pops, the sudden closure of the University of the Arts, the failure of Benefits Data Trust, and the bailout of Resources for Human Development represent those crises high-profile enough to gain coverage, across the sector organizations large and small are navigating existential threats. Reports such as The Financial Health of Philadelphia-area Nonprofits by Oliver Wyman, Sea Change Capital, and Guidestar (published in 2017) detail how unprepared organizations are for the ups and downs of economic cycles, and a refresh of the study currently underway will cover how organizations are emerging from the temporary proliferation of emergency Covid-19 funding mechanisms. About the Speaker 💭 Michael is the Interim Transformation Director at Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia. He specializes in executive change management and crisis leadership for charitable organizations facing critical periods in their organizational life cycles. Based in Philadelphia, for the last decade, Michael has led nonprofit organizations facing crisis and dysfunction as an interim executive and change management specialist. Michael is currently Interim Transformation Director at Philanthropy Network Greater Philadelphia and was recently Interim Executive Director for WOAR Philadelphia Center Against Sexual Violence, Interim CEO for Intercultural Family Services in West Philadelphia, and Interim Executive Director at Fairwinds – Nantucket’s Counseling Center. Michael’s shift to this specialty took place when serving as President and CEO of theVillage, a 150-year-old child welfare and behavioral health organization facing multiple threats that merged with Silver Springs – Martin Luther School during his tenure in 2019 to form Gemma Services, now a thriving $50 million agency serving southeast Pennsylvania. Michael continues to consult with the current leaders of these organizations.

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  • New Student Spotlight 📚 Andre Hebert is a student in our Executive program in Social Impact Strategy. Currently, he is the Managing Director of Partnerships at Chicago Scholars. With over a decade of experience in Higher Education, Andre is passionate about college access and systems change work. Read his spotlight to learn more about his impact area and experience in the program.

    Student Spotlight with Andre Hebert

    Student Spotlight with Andre Hebert

    Center for Social Impact Strategy on LinkedIn

  • Congrats to Beau Lambert, a CSIS Alum from our Executive Program in Social Impact Strategy, Cohort 2023 🌎! We are proud of you!

    Bust out the trumpets and the skateboards! It's taken three years with an especially huge effort in the past year BUT it's happening. First Push Syndicate has received funding to kickstart our Get On Board program in all 50 states! We will be finalizing the application process in time for the start of the school year along with all the details. Beyond stoked to be dropping 1000 skateboards in communities around the country. If you or your company want to get involved, hit me up. Many thanks to Center for Social Impact Strategy for the tools and inspiration to push forward.

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  • 💻 Join us virtually on August 12 from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for our speaker series featuring Trish Adobea Tchume, Senior Director of Leadership Research & Practice at Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Inc. Register for the virtual workshop here: bit.ly/sprk24. Trish will share tools and frameworks that help her remain principled and aligned as she navigates volatile settings and challenges. She will also facilitate interactive activities, allowing attendees to leave after identifying some of their guiding leadership principles. “Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.” - Grace Lee Boggs “Hope is a discipline.” - Mariame Kaba “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” - Angela Davis While many of us might use these familiar quotes as personal inspiration on our office walls or email signatures, if we know a bit about the incredible leaders who spoke them, they also serve to summarize their entire philosophy of leadership. About the Speaker 💭 Trish Adobea Tchume is a social and racial justice advocate, facilitator, and trainer. Formally, she serves as senior director of leadership research and practice for the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, where she organizes the foundation’s learning and evaluation practices and connects grantees with emerging leadership approaches that prefigure a world where all of us thrive. Trish Adobea Tchume has spent 25 years training leaders and leading groups and organizations. As her roles and the sociopolitical context in which she holds them have become increasingly complex and high stakes, it has become even more critical to have a practice of continuously naming, grounding, and regrounding in a core philosophy about how she believes change happens and how she wants to show up in her leadership. Trish is a certified coach through Coaching for Healing Justice & Liberation, a first-generation Ghanaian-American, a Brooklynite (by way of Philadelphia), a proud auntie, and a beach stan. She devotes her volunteer time to projects that allow her to practice a thriving future, like the Central Brooklyn Food Coop, the boards of Change Elemental, and the New York Foundation.

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  • Join the Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) and the Penn Center for Inclusive Innovation & Technology for our 2024 Speaker Series Fall lineup! These interactive workshops feature topics and leaders at the intersection of social impact strategy, social innovation design, and technology for the work of world-changing and cultivating a thriving society. Previous speakers' topics included understanding & healing burnout in the social impact sector, inclusive collaboration, and AI for Social Good. Interested in attending? Register using this link: https://bit.ly/sprk24 We look forward to seeing you virtually! Summer/ Fall lineup📆 💭August 12~ Trish Adobea Tchume- Social Impact Leadership ❤️September 23~Aida Davis will discuss her work and her new book Kindred Creation 📝September 30~ Michael Kellerman -Dispatches From Leading Nonprofits Through Crisis: Approaches To Diagnosing Core Organizational Dysfunctions 📚October 28 ~Shamichael Hallman - The New Civic Commons: How Public Libraries Can Build Social Cohesion and Promote Civic Renewal, a talk about Shamichaels's Work and book, Meet Me at the Library: A Place to Foster Social Connection and Promote Democracy 📉November 25~ Susan Ni Chriodain will discuss her new book titled Impactfully Leading Beyond the Numbers

    Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) 2024 Speaker Series. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

    Welcome! You are invited to join a meeting: Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) 2024 Speaker Series. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the meeting.

    upenn.zoom.us

  • View organization page for Center for Social Impact Strategy, graphic

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    Why do we love the Executive Program in Social Innovation Design (XSD)? Because we believe that we can make things better with purpose. The XSD program attracts social innovators from a wide range of fields: healthcare, education, environmental organizations, governments, and universities, who get the opportunity to learn with and from each other, sharing ideas that lead to better designs. Our students are optimistic about the future and are actively working with communities, tapping into their strengths, and creating sustainable interventions that lead to tangible improvements. Through XSD, students are gaining access to new tools and skills that help them pivot into roles where they’re creating new organizations, new experiences, and new opportunities with and for communities that they care about.    To create the world that we ultimately want to live in, and leave it to future generations, we need to be clear about the limitations of existing systems and structures, optimistic about our ability to change them, and armed with the tools to collaboratively improve them.   “XSD was the transformative experience I didn't know I needed. This program equipped me with interdisciplinary tools and concepts (and a wonderful cohort) to creatively align my interests in sustainability, justice, and peace through social innovation design.” - Krista Smith XSD '24 Apply today and join our next XSD cohort starting in September. Links in the comments ⬇ ⬇ ⬇

  • At the end of June, the CSIS staff brought together 20 social impact leaders to the Global Social Impact House in Costa Rica. We spent seven days providing the fellows with tools and frameworks, rest and community support, and training to help them advance their ventures. We carefully selected 20 individuals from a pool of over 100 applicants worldwide to ensure that our cohort consisted of purpose-driven leaders committed to growth and learning. And they exceeded expectations! While CSIS staff provided learning, fellows offered great insight, years of experience, and a wealth of knowledge. They quickly formed meaningful connections with each other based on shared values and passion to succeed as change-makers. Our faculty director, Peter Frumkin & managing director, Ariel Schwartz, also provided one-on-one coaching sessions to help fellows with their ventures. We are grateful for the outstanding staff at Macaw Lodge, an eco-friendly facility located 2 hours outside San Jose. They provided delicious, healthy meals, with most ingredients grown and harvested on the premises. And, of course, Montana Tamny's leadership in managing a successful Global Social Impact House! Thanks to Carl Sveen, Mandisa Thomas, Ariel Schwartz, and Peter Frumkin for facilitating engaging workshops. Until next year! 📹 P.S. Check out the excellent video recap from one of our talented fellows, Sebastián Martín. School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania

    View profile for Sebastián Martín, graphic

    Social Entrepreneur, Educator, Movement Maker

    Two weeks ago I was in the mountainous rainforest of Turrubares, Costa Rica - unplugged almost totally from the daily rollercoaster of startups, the intoxicating buzz of NYC, and the pressure and performance of digital connectivity. I discovered and connected so deeply, in ways that I am still processing. I can try to articulate reflections, but most of all I have returned to the hustle and bustle of my life anchored by a sense of childlike wonder, tapped into an immense well of gratitude and positivity, and with the energy and inspiration required to radically reimagine, and fight like hell for, a better future. I am in the business of creating transformative learning experiences. As an educator and curricular/instructional designer and experimenter - I am more often in the position of trying to facilitate magic moments for others rather than receiving them myself. During my time in the Global Social Impact House, the act of letting go, deferring judgment and any pretense of expertise, and allowing myself to be present and actively sponging from my community and environment.... was so liberating, and necessary, and humbling. Taking on a learner's and growth mindset, recognizing and deferring to the lived experience and intellect of my peers, and observing how others taught social innovation, was everything. I realized how much is communicated in the unspoken, the real rippling impact of empathy and interpersonal connection, and the sacred power of nature and rest to help us realize our inner peace and true outer potential. I want nothing more than for this experience and privilege to be shared with my team and the community I serve. How might we recreate and scale communal and transformational learning experiences like this for all? I have returned with a renewed faith in the goodness, and commonality, and power, of people, because of the incredible humans that I got to live and learn with. As an orchestrator of cohort based programs, I believe that if you put the right curriculum, with the right instructor, in front of a group of people... magic happens. Like a scrappy theatre production - if all of the basic ingredients are there, it always comes together somehow, someway. But this was different... the quality of connection, and conversation, and genuine collaboration in the interest of systemic change, was exceptional. And it was also by design. I am so grateful to have had a seat at the table, for a moment, with these very special people. Thank you & onward dreamers. #foundfamily #puravida #gsih Center for Social Impact Strategy University of Pennsylvania Montana Tamny Carl Sveen Ariel Schwartz Peter Frumkin Cole Dougherty Olumuyiwa Igbalajobi (Ph.D) Kimberly Worsham, MPA, MIWM Isabelle T. Mitchell Sava Daniel Enking River Ingham, MSC Shamichael Hallman Aziza Taylor, M.S. Ming Hong Choi Beth McHugh Bree Jones Bárbara Ferreira Ezza Naveed Jennifer Fei Jen Starsinic Lisi Brizuela Mandisa Thomas Natalia Bonnet Victor Zhu

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    The Center for Social Impact Strategy (CSIS) is #hiring a Program Manager! CSIS is a research and action organization based at the School of Social Policy & Practice at the University of Pennsylvania. We support research initiatives, online education, residential programs, and campus events for individuals interested in social impact. Under the direction of the Managing Director and Faculty Director, the CSIS Program Manager will lead aspects of the Center’s online, on-campus, and residential programs. The CSIS team looks forward to working with you! Apply or share this post with your network. 💻 Application Link: https://bit.ly/45Qn3nG

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    Last week we hosted our three-day Penn Social Impact Accelerator (PSIA) on campus. Our fellows consisted of CSIS & StartingBloc Alum as well as other social impact leaders. 📝 During PSIA the sessions were centered around themes such as personal transition, strategy & social innovation design. Rhoda Tamakloe, MS Ed., one of the participants & a StartingBloc board member, stated: "For me, PSIA provided a needed connection point to a community committed to creating a brighter, more equitable and sustainable future. The trauma-informed design, AI, and futurism world building sessions stood out to me as key learning opportunities to reengage with my work as a change maker with a sharpened empathetic and protopian mindset." We want to thank our guest speakers our who delivered engaging lectures and shared valuable insights: Kaveh Sadeghian, Ruchi Kashyap, Ifeoma Ike, Esq., Raja Schaar, IDSA & Kelly Heuer. A big thank you to the amazing StartingBloc team: Rhoda Tamakloe, MS Ed. Nils Klinkenberg, Pamela M. Pelizzari & Callie Chamberlain 🌎 And of course, us! the dedicated CSIS Team: Montana Tamny , Ariel Schwartz , Mandisa Thomas & Carl Sveen

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