GRANT Committee Meeting Agenda – August 22, 2022 – 3:30-4:30 PM VirtualZoomMeetingLink Meeting Call-In Number: 929 205 6099 US, Meeting ID: 876 2073 3477 Passcode: 765283 Directors are reminded that all Able Trust Board and Committee meeting are open and publicly noticed. Under Florida Sunshine Law, any meeting of 2 or more Able Trust Directors must be publicly noticed. Directors are prohibited from discussing Able Trust business outside of official meetings of the organization. Directors are reminded of conflict of interest provisions. In declaring a conflict, please refrain from voting or discussion and declare the following information: 1) Your name and position on the Board, 2) The nature of the conflict, and 3) Who will gain or lose as a result of the conflict. Document I. Call to Order and Roll Call Mavara CommitteeAgrawal,Chair II. Grant Committee Consent Agenda Action a. Meeting Agenda b. April Committee Minutes Mavara CommitteeAgrawal,Chair III. Grant Committee Regular Business a. FY23 Pettengill Funding List - Action b. FY23 Impact Project Plan – Consultant Presentation Mavara JoeyCommitteeAgrawal,ChairD’Souza,VP IV. Unfinished Business New MattersBusinessfromthe Board Matter from the President/CEO Matters from our Partners Public Comment Next Grant Committee Meeting: October 18, 2022 3:30 – 4:30 PM Adjourn Mavara CommitteeAgrawal,Chair Please Note: Agenda subject to revisions and additions per the discretion of the Chair of the Board of Directors. Notification will be sent of any such revisions or changes. Members of the Public: Please notify Arnaldo Ramos at Arnaldo@abletrust.org if you wish to make public comment on particular agenda items no later than 1-hour prior to beginning of the meeting.
INTRODUCTION
Lean Innovation Overview The Able Trust Grants Committee INDEX INTRODUCTION 1 ABOUT SPRING IMPACT 1 PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES 2 LEAN INNOVATION METHODOLOGY 3 PROJECT TIMELINE 3 TEAM BIOS 3
The Able Trust has committed to a strategic goal to close the labor force participation gap for Floridians with disabilities by 10 percentage points in the next 10 years. To bolster and accelerate its reach, The Able Trust will use the Lean Innovation model as a way to hypothesize, test, and iterate solutions to the challenges and barriers within Florida’s vocational rehabilitation and disability employment systems.
The following document outlines how Spring Impact will support The Able Trust team to learn and integrate this approach, ultimately building a discipline of testing and learning to reveal viable, scalable solutions in service of The Able Trust mission.
ABOUT SPRING IMPACT Spring Impact is a nonprofit consulting firm focused on social impact at scale. Spring Impact has helped over 250 organizations across all sectors identify, design, and implement the right strategies and models to help them solve societal problems on a much larger scale. We partnered with Ann Mei Chang, leading expert on social innovation and author of Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good, to develop our Lean Innovation practice.
engagement include:
● Lean Innovation Training – Spring Impact supports foundations with portfolio-wide Lean Innovation virtual training. For example, Spring Impact partnered with Schmidt Futures and Blue Meridian to offer training about Lean Innovation methodology to their grantees.
● Provide a thorough training of the Lean Innovation methodology, rooted in the scientific method of testing and learning
PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES
● Support The Able Trust team to test, iterate, and validate solutions using the Lean Innovation Model to exponentially increase employment outcomes
● Core group of The Able Trust Team members with deep expertise in Lean Innovation methodology
● Deep Lean Innovation Support – Spring Impact supports organizations to develop innovative models and scale their impact. For example, Spring Impact coached the Dream Corps TECH team to develop a national program that cultivates future leaders and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds, creating a pipeline of diverse talent to shift the culture of the US tech sector.
● Innovation Functions and Training the Trainer - Spring Impact supports organizations and foundations to build internal Innovation Functions or external Innovation Funds. For example, Spring Impact partnered with the largest US-based reproductive justice organization to collaboratively design their Innovation Function’s operating structure, stage gates, and criteria to source and incubate internal innovative solutions.
● Assist The Able Trust to establish the skillset and culture for rigorous experimentation ongoing, so the team can continue to apply Lean Innovation methods beyond the engagement Outcomesdurationofthe
● Defined critical metrics that underpin the sustainability, viability, and desirability for The Able Trust’s most promising inclusive employment innovations and solutions
● Qualitative and quantitative data for at least three experiments with target constituents and partners, which will test the potential solution’s viability and iterate to improve scalability based on real-world data and constituent feedback
Spring Impact works with our partners to iteratively develop models and solutions for impact at scale. Recent project examples include:
Objectives of the engagement include:
Figure 2: Build, Test, Respond Feedback Loop Build: Create the smallest viable prototype that allows the potential solution to be tested through constituent and stakeholder behavior, rather than asking for opinions. Test: Engage a small number of constituents or stakeholders and measure qualitative and quantitative data.
LEAN INNOVATION METHODOLOGY
Respond: Choose to iterate, pivot, or scale up based on the results of your experiment.
Developing a solution that hits the sweet spot of value, impact, and scale all at the same is difficult. Rather than crafting a beautifully detailed design and expecting it to work as planned, the Lean Innovation Methodology focuses on identifying the biggest risks or assumptions, then methodically designs and runs experiments to test them as quickly and cheaply as possible. Good experiments are minimum, viable, and specific.
Lean Innovation is a methodology centered on constituents, committed to rapidly learning and testing ‘in the field,’ and scaling impact to meet the size of the social challenge. Three key principles are the backbone of Lean Innovation Methodology:
Figure 1: Sweet spot for scale Value: Will people (both constituents, stakeholders, and payers) want the solution and stick with the solution? Impact: Does the solution advance equity and make people’s lives better in the long-term? Scale: Can the solution reach a meaningfully sufficient percentage of the target population? Is there a sustainable financial model?
Solutions that scale successfully hit the sweet spot between value, impact, and financial sustainability. In general, the social sector spends the majority of its effort ensuring impact, without giving needed attention to value and scale. Without designing for value and scale, many impactful interventions fail to scale to a meaningful size.
2. Start Small – Quickly build minimum and viable products that test a solution’s scalability in the real-world within days. Define success in advance (i.e., critical metrics) and capture qualitative and quantitative results.
3. Relentlessly Seek Value, Impact, and Scale – Continuously iterate until real-world experiments identify how to achieve critical metrics for value, impact, and scale.
1. Think big – Define an audacious goal relative to the size of the societal problem we seek to address. Note: The Able Trust completed this step as part of their Strategic Plan.
PROJECT TIMELINE TEAM BIOS Amy Ragsdale is the Head of Spring Impact’s Lean Innovation Practice. She helps social impact organizations innovate for transformational change by continuously testing the value they provide constituents, resulting impact, and requisite funding models. Recent projects include partnering with Mastercard Foundation to design a Lean Innovation Scale Fund, Google’s Schmidt Futures Foundation to train their portfolio in lean experimentation, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America to incubate and scale up interventions for sexual and reproductive wellbeing. Meredith Lobel is a Senior Advisor to Spring Impact, drawing on 20 years of experience in business design, management, and strategy to design systems that unleash innovation and foster equity.
The built-test-respond feedback process quickly reveals which pathways hold less promise and, without wasting resources, helps organizations rapidly and objectively reorient towards more promising ones.
Once teams have a steady supply of behavioral data, they can confidently assess and prioritize different solutions and pathways to scale. Each experiment informs a decision to iterate (make improvements to the solution based on learnings), pivot (try a new option if key assumptions about the solution are invalidated), or scale up (focus on rolling out the solution to reach as many Floridians as possible).
She has a proven track record helping non-profit organizations, Foundations, start-ups, and Fortune 500s realize their visions and catalyze their growth. She also previously served as the Director of Innovation at High Start Group, a strategy consulting firm that specializes in leveraging human-centered experience design to help organizations perfect the ‘fit’ between their products
or services and the market need. Meredith began her career with six years as a general manager focused on social entrepreneurship at the leading international non-profit organization, Ashoka. In addition to managing a global team in 15 countries, she built the first global platform for open-sourced social innovation.