Drucker Institute

ANNOUNCING: TOP 10 FINALISTS FOR THE 2016 DRUCKER PRIZE

• By druckeradmin

Today, we announced the 10 finalists for the 2016 Drucker Prize. The winning nonprofit organization, which will be announced on September 30, will receive $100,000.

We also released to the entire social sector all of the content from The Drucker Prize learning platform: readings featuring the timeless wisdom of Peter Drucker; videos showcasing insights from some of today’s top thinkers on management and leadership; and other resources. All of this material is now available here for free to any interested organization.

The finalists for this year’s Drucker Prize are:

  • American Prairie Reserve for its Wild Sky Wildlife-Friendly ranching program, which created market incentives for ranchers to conserve prairie habitat.
  • BoardSource for an organization-wide innovation that expands the market reach of board development tools for the social sector.
  • Bowery Residents’ Committee for its Mixed Model Pilot Program, an analytical management approach focused on addressing the systemic challenges to New York’s disenfranchised homeless population.
  • Centro Community Partners for its mobile app technology, which provides low-income women in underserved communities with entrepreneurship education, financial literacy, mentorship and access to capital.
  • Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center for the ImproveCareNow (ICN) Network, which enables patients suffering from Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, their families, clinicians and researchers to collaborate more effectively by accelerating improvements in care and knowledge sharing.
  • Crisis Text Line for providing, via text messaging, free mental health support 24/7 for anyone in crisis.
  • Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team, which mobilizes volunteers to create, online, maps that help responders reach people in need during disasters and other humanitarian crises.
  • Rare Genomics Institute, which helps patients with rare and undiagnosed diseases obtain a genetic blueprint through advanced genomic sequencing and interpretation, providing hope for a treatment or cure.
  • SightLife for its Global Sight Restoration Program, which addresses corneal blindness in India by tackling systemic barriers to sight restoration.

The 10 finalists were selected from among 50 semifinalists announced on July 25. Leaders from these 50 organizations each went through a series of mini-courses on The Drucker Prize learning platform, where they explored different aspects of innovation and organizational effectiveness. They were then asked not only whether their organization currently utilizes the principles that were presented but, in addition, how they could put into practice any new ideas that they learned.

“We know from Peter Drucker that all social sector organizations share the ‘bottom line’ of changed lives,” said Zach First, the Institute’s executive director. “Each of our 10 Drucker Prize finalists has a bottom line demonstrating robust results. What’s more, these are all nonprofits that have shown a real hunger to learn and try out new concepts to make their organizations even more innovative and high-performing. It is a privilege and an honor to put forward these 10 organizations for consideration by the final judges.”

In addition to First, the final judges for the 2016 Drucker Prize are: Stephan Chambers, Director of the Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship at the London School of Economics; Sumita Dutta, managing director at Golden Seeds; Thomas Horan, Henry Y. Hwang Dean of the Drucker School of Management; Geneva Johnson, former president and CEO of Family Service America and Families International; Virginia Kelly Judd, Executive Director of Humana Foundation; Kevin McCoy, President of National Office Furniture; C. William Pollard, chairman emeritus of ServiceMaster Co. and an emeritus member of the Drucker Institute’s Board of Advisors; Theresa Reno-Weber, Chief of Performance and Technology at Louisville Metro Government and a member of the Drucker Institute’s Board of Advisors; David Styers, Manager of Program and Business Development at the Presidio Institute; and Jocelyn Wyatt, Co-Lead and Executive Director at IDEO.org

Administered annually since 1991, The Drucker Prize, formerly known as the Peter F. Drucker Award for Nonprofit Innovation, is given to a social-sector organization that demonstrates Drucker’s definition of innovation—“change that creates a new dimension of performance.” The judges look for programs that are highly effective and have made a difference in the lives of the people they serve, as well as for those organizations that demonstrate a capacity to further leverage the discipline of innovation.