What we think

Perspectives

What we think

Thought leadership from Monitor Institute by Deloitte

Through thought leadership Monitor Institute by Deloitte tracks the evolving terrain of social impact to identify, frame, and disseminate ideas and practices that are designed to advance progress on the most pressing issues of our time, and are often developed in collaboration with others who are working with us “in the trenches” of social change.

Philanthropy

For more than two decades, the Monitor Institute by Deloitte has served as futurists for the field of philanthropy. We’ve literally written the book on “what’s next for philanthropy,” and our publications—What’s Next for Philanthropy in the 2020s (2021), What’s Next for Philanthropy (2010), and Looking Out for the Future (2004) have become field-wide resources for helping foundations and individual donors make sense of the changes in the world around them and what those shifts may mean for both what they do and how they do it.

Additional Monitor Institute thinking on the future of philanthropy includes the Stanford Social Innovation Review What’s Next for Philanthropy in-depth series (which shares the voices of leading practitioners in the field about what lies ahead); the Chronicle of Philanthropy article Big Shifts for Philanthropy: What’s Coming in the Decade Ahead; the Business of Giving podcast’s Emerging Trends in Philanthropy and Charitable Giving; and Alliance magazine’s Cultivating Change in Philanthropy issue.

Corporate Social Impact

The Monitor Institute by Deloitte, as part of the Deloitte Purpose and DEI Office, is helping reimagine what social impact can look like within a corporation. And as Deloitte redefines its own purpose-related activities, we are actively sharing what we learn with the broader field. Our pair of 2023 articles in Fortune explore the many pressures that are driving the phenomenon we call “corporate social impact sprawl” and highlight how companies (including Deloitte) can embrace the sprawl and treat disparate purpose related activities as an asset, not as a problem. And our 2024 report, What’s Next for Corporate Philanthropy examines how corporate funders often find themselves caught between the paradigms of “business” and “philanthropy,” and explores some of the emerging edges that may presage a new identity for the field.

The Institute’s work on corporate social impact also includes earlier articles such as Breaking Out of the CSR Box: How to Build Social Impact Into Your Whole Business from TriplePundit, which explores how the historical corporate social responsibility function has become too small a box for all of a company’s social purpose activities, and Are old orthodoxies about CSR blocking new opportunities? at GreenBiz, which looks at how old assumptions may be hindering new thinking about corporate social responsibility.

Impact Measurement

Many organizations struggle to develop evidence-based practices and true learning cultures. Monitor Institute by Deloitte’s nationwide initiative on Reimagining Measurement in philanthropy aimed to identify persistent challenges to effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL); to highlight existing bright spots in the field; and to inspire experimentation with a range of “next practices” in the use of data and information in the social sector. It produced a full report and toolkit, and related pieces in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Deloitte Insights and the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

Monitor Institute is also investigating MEL in the corporate social impact space as well, highlighted in a Deloitte Review article on Measuring the Business Value of Corporate Social Impact.

Adaptive Strategy

In an increasingly turbulent world, it’s no longer enough to just make a plan and stick to it; organizations instead need to learn to set a direction and make adaptations as they go. The concept of “adaptive strategy” has been core to the Monitor Institute by Deloitte’s globally-recognized social impact consulting practice for more than two decades. 

While it is now more than a decade old, our seminal blog post, The Strategic Plan Is Dead. Long Live Strategy, stands as one of the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s most-read online articles. And our 2018 update to that piece—How Adaptive Strategy is Adapting—explores how lessons from innovation, data science, and implementation management are further helping social sector leaders effectively turn strategy from a “noun” into a “verb.”

Racial Equity

Issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are often inextricably linked to the challenges we work on with our clients, and the Monitor Institute is committed to actively integrating DEI considerations into our work. Some of our recent thinking on the subject includes BIPOC Organizations and the Hamster Wheel of Philanthropy, in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (which looks at how funders committed to racial equity and social justice are exploring what it means to truly transfer assets to BIPOC communities), and What Businesses Can Learn from the Social Sector about Racial Equity published on the Capital H: Human Capital Blog.

Social Innovation

For many funders and nonprofits seeking to solve pressing social challenges, there is a need to innovate: to seek out and test new ideas that have the potential to create breakthrough change. Our Stanford Social Innovation Review cover story, The Reemerging Art of Funding Innovation, explores the ways that funders are deliberately working to seek out and support game-changing innovation. And our award-winning series of Case Studies in Funding Innovation in Deloitte Insights provides additional detail and color to highlight the different ways that funders are approaching their efforts to support innovation.

Other social innovation related articles from the Monitor Institute include widely read SSIR pieces on How to Find Breakthrough Ideas (about different approaches for sourcing innovation), Challenging the Orthodoxies of Philanthropy (about how to challenge traditional assumptions for how you do your philanthropy), and 8 Common Innovation Traps (about common pitfalls in undertaking innovation work), as well as our Intentional Innovation report for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, one of the first overviews of innovation practices in philanthropy.

Futurism & Scenarios

Given our origins with the Global Business Network, one of the world’s pioneering futures thinking consultancies, the Monitor Institute by Deloitte has a long tradition of translating scenario planning and other leading edge futuring methodologies to the social impact space. Our guide to futures thinking, What If?, shared the art of scenario planning with the nonprofit sector back in 2004.


More recent work has aimed to apply strategic foresight tools and scenario planning methods to help leaders get on their front foot in preparing for the future in highly uncertain times. Our 2023 report Act Now: Future Scenarios and the Case for Equitable Climate Change (along with its accessible graphic-novel style web summary), uses scenario planning to explore disparate possible futures for climate and equity in the coming decade. And our COVID-19 scenarios, An Event or an Era? Resources for Social Sector Decision-Making in the Context of COVID-19 (together with concurrent articles in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and 2020 and 2021 pieces in the Chronicle of Philanthropy), was released early in the pandemic in collaboration with many of the nation’s leading philanthropic associations to help funders and nonprofits figure out how to move forward in the midst of unprecedented uncertainty.

Community Philanthropy

Alongside the Monitor Institute by Deloitte’s work on the broader field of philanthropy, we have also produced key reports on the state and future of community foundations more specifically. Our reports What’s Next for Community Philanthropy (2014) and On the Brink of New Promise: The Future of U.S. Community Foundations (2004) remain foundational reading for community philanthropy leaders and practitioners.


Additional Monitor Institute publications related to community philanthropy include: To Stay Relevant, Community Funds Must Adapt to a Radically Changed World from the Chronicle of Philanthropy; Think Global: Emerging Lessons from Global Community Philanthropy from Alliance magazine; and What’s Next for Community Philanthropy: Notes on the Canadian Landscape.

Aligned Action

Society faces a wide range of “wicked problems”—complex challenges that have multiple root causes, are emergent and shifting, defy single point solutions, and require a portfolio of interventions to affect change. To match the scale of these problems, social impact leaders are looking to combine forces and more effectively collaborate—not with a one-size-fits-all prescription for coordinating action, but with a deep understanding of the nuances of working together to create change. Our acclaimed research series on collaboration includes a set of reports funded by the Rockefeller Foundation: Engage: How Funders Can Support and Leverage Networks for Social Change; Gather: The Art and Science of Effective Convening; and Participate: The Power of Involving Business in Social Impact Networks. 


Monitor Institute’s earlier work on collaboration also includes Working Wikily (our landmark Stanford Social Innovation Review cover story on networks in philanthropy), Catalyzing Networks for Social Change  (a funder’s guide to supporting networks), and Shifting a System (a Deloitte Insights case study on our work helping to align the actions of the Reimagine Learning network).

Impact Investing

The Monitor Institute is widely recognized for its pivotal role in the early development of impact investing—which focuses on investments that generate social and environmental value as well as financial return. We worked with the Rockefeller Foundation to help incubate the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), and our report, Investing for Social and Environmental Impact, helped to mainstream the term “impact investing” and served as the early blueprint for the development of the now more than $1 trillion industry.

Education and Workforce

For decades, significant education policy focused on increasing college enrollment and removing barriers to education access. While these efforts successfully increased post-secondary enrollment rates, far less attention has been placed on longer-term educational and economic outcomes, such as college completion, skills development, and workforce participation. Addressing these challenges is no small feat, but there are emerging opportunities for impact.


In collaboration with our colleagues across Deloitte (including the Center for Higher Education Excellence), the Monitor Institute has authored a series of papers focused on student success, including Five Strategies for Student Success, Student Success by Design, Finding a New North Start at UNCF, Success by Design: Improving Outcomes in Higher Education, and Student Success Benchmarking in Higher Education. We have also developed several important pieces on key issues in workforce development, including Supporting Worker Success in the Age of Automation and Catapult Forward: Accelerating a Next Generation Workforce Ecosystem in Greater Boston.

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