PROGRAMS AND INITIATIVES

Members of the board from Friends of Portland's Community Gardens meet to design new sustaining strategies at a workshop given by Springboard Innovation hosted by ShoreBank.

You're invited to design the future.

We each have an extraordinary opportunity to solve local and global challenges–to create a new kind of organization. Even our government has asked us each to lead. We can volunteer, mentor, invest in others...even become a new kind of leader. Social entrepreneurs make social profit, generating new kinds of ideas to improve the world, and digging in deep. Join us in creating a different kind of future. In fact, it can't be done without you.

Springboard Innovation was created to enable community members to get involved in driving change in very real ways. To initiate and sustain community-led community change, our core initiatives work together to nurture and sustain change. Education programming engages individuals and helps them envision leading change all the way through to launch.

Our educational programs are customized for specific learners and contexts. We have focused on informal learning environments to increase access to learning and leadership–all of our programs are low cost and operate on a sliding scale. Local solutions can be fostered when people learn how to make a difference in their own communities.
We work with learners of all ages: youth, college-age, adults, and "baby boomers." We believe people of all ages have the capacity to lead, with a little help.

Educational Programs

1. Local Agenda is our community-based program designed for adults of all ages. It nurtures good ideas into better ones, and prepares people with a willingness to envision and launch innovations.
2. Encore Agenda is focused on the unique experience and talent "baby boomers" have to offer our communities and world.
3. Youth Agenda is our program designed specifically for students in high school. Offered in partnership with schools and youth programs, it helps young people turn into real drivers of change.
4. We teach university-level courses in social entrepreneurship and social change for those interested in new strategies for leading in the future.
5. Box Launch Workshop Series: We partner with different organizations and businesses to develop our collective capacity to nurture strong community leadership and social innovation.

The Springboard Social Innovation Forum
Every community needs opportunities to gather, share ideas, discuss plans, and improve practice. The Social Innovation Forum focuses on action, inspires community members to become active, and strengthens strategies for change.

Social Innovation Training Institute
Springboard now holds an annual training to enable other communities to develop their capacity to lead change. The training is for community organizations or individuals who are interested in offering new educational programs that lead to increased community engagement.

ChangeXchange is designed to foster citizen leadership, fill the huge gap for critical seed funding, and allow community members to invest in local change. The ChangeXchange Web site works with our Local Agenda programs to enable ideas to move into the public's view for investing and growing. Also, it is an integral part of Innovative Cities. As cities embrace social innovation, they hold social innovation forums and teach Local Agenda. This creates a culture of innovation, and ChangeXchange can help fund it and get it off the ground. Visit the ChangeXchange Web site and invest your share!


Developing an Ecosystem for Social Innovation
Innovative Cities: A Citywide Model of Social Innovation
Learn more about how cities can help move social and environmental change forward. We need to develop the ecosystem of social innovation to stabilize and maintain it.