The Greater New Orleans Foundation Capacity Building Grants and Awards
The Greater New Orleans Foundation (GNOF) Organizational Effectiveness Initiative sponsors Pitch It! The Innovation Challenge with funding from the Kresge Foundation and Chevron. Through this awards program, GNOF gives a financial prize to the top three organizations (or cohorts of organizations) that apply and demonstrate the development of an innovative product, new organizational process, inventive service or novel approach that supports a new way of doing business and meets a community need, according to GNOF’s website. The rationale for Pitch It! posted online: One of the functions of the Greater New Orleans Foundation is to increase organizational effectiveness (OE) in the nonprofit sector. Organizations that are working to meet human needs require support to adapt to the ever-changing economic, cultural, and environmental landscape. We are inviting nonprofit leaders—and others—to imagine a breakthrough in some aspect of complex organizational, management, leadership, financial, governance, technological, or programmatic problem facing your organization and the nonprofit field. The stated outcome: to spur nonprofit organizations to deploy their smarts and innovation to the common and complex problems facing them (management, leadership, governance, adaptive or program) and develop bold innovations which lead to more sustainable and effective organizations. Additionally, the innovations can serve as models or catalysts for other nonprofit organizations to create a profound change in the way nonprofits approach their work by sharing ideas that can take root, spread and impact others dealing with similar issues.