Network Know-How Guides
Social entrepreneurs worldwide are organizing strategic networks—rather than relying on conventional, centralized organizations—to have a positive impact on a pressing social challenge. These strategic networks offer key advantages, including the ability to accelerate change by aligning and activating large numbers of people.
Network Impact has created a series of Network Know-How Guides for early-stage network builders who want to learn how to develop healthy, impactful and sustainable networks. The collection of easy-to-use resources highlights key network design and management principles for social impact network builders. Each Guide includes real-world examples of network principles in practice and clarifying questions to help users improve and refine their network strategies. Guides in the Series include:
Network Starter Guide - introduces social impact networks and includes a self-assessment to help users determine which Network Know-How Guides are most relevant to them. The Starter Guide also has an overview of the key themes each Guide covers and a glossary of important terms.
Guides by Topic:
Clarifying Purpose and Value - Networks most commonly develop when a person (or a few people) see a need in the their community or the world that a collaborative made up of many people or organizations is needed to address. To achieve its goals, the network needs to refine its vision to reflect all network members’ priorities.
Fostering Engagement and Leadership - Engaging members—and keeping them engaged—is vital to building a strong network. As the network reaches a critical mass of members, natural leaders emerge, and the network’s internal structure becomes more complex. At this point, setting up a plan for network decision-making—or network governance—becomes necessary.
Monitoring Your Network’s Health - Monitoring the conditions that enable a network to thrive helps its members make informed decisions about what the network needs to succeed.
Mapping Your Network - Connectivity is the lifeblood of a network. Strong relationships between members mean they can easily exchange knowledge, information and ideas. Creating a network map will give members a bird’s-eye view of who connects with whom and how those connections form. By mapping a network, you can analyze patterns of connectivity, information flows and knowledge gaps—all of which can inform strategies to build and strengthen connections
Sustaining Your Network - Networks have unique sustainability challenges. Each must find strategies for securing material resources without compromising members’ shared purpose and generating value for members.
The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies supported the development of the Guides. Network Impact worked on the curriculum for the Network Incubator, a former Schusterman initiative. The curriculum proved useful to the emerging network builders who participated, so the Guides were revised to turn them into a series of publicly available resources to help even more network leaders further their work. This process involved speaking with the network leaders supported by the foundation to find out what was most helpful and what could be augmented to create a toolkit of Network Know-How Guides for network builders around the world.
