The discussion kept returning to several seemingly immovable social problems such as hunger and poverty. One compelling theme permeating the remarks of all 8 panelists is embodied in the following comment by Brian Gallagher, President and CEO of the United Way Worldwide: “as long as we are setting institutional goals rather than community or national goals, we will fail.”

In a time when social causes are increasingly being pursued by informal networks and other non-traditional entities, those who lead nonprofit organizations should not assume progress means doing what they have been doing, only better. Rather, they should be looking hard at who else is working in their space and how their efforts are connected – or not.

This type of institution-agnostic approach tends to be far more intuitive to younger generations who have grown up in much more collaborative environments than their more senior colleagues. Are we adequately tapping into this mindset in looking to the future?

One panelist lamented the dearth of venues for collective planning and execution around solving social problems; instead collaboration and coordination tends to happen on much more of a fragmented and opportunistic basis. I hope that conversations and workshops at this conference bear some fruitful ideas and generate momentum towards this movement-building approach to addressing our most pervasive social problems.

The NonprofitNext initiative has enabled us to meet many pioneers, people who are reinventing the nonprofit sector as we watch. They are young and older, working within the sector and outside of its official borders. They are in large cities and small towns across the country. They think differently about leadership and organizational life, technology, civic engagement, and the very concept of nonprofit. In our new report you can read some of their stories. But this is not a “final report” from a static project. It is rather a call to engagement in inventing the future, together.

The release of the report is being launched at Independent Sector’s annual conference this week in Detroit. Jim Canales, President of the James Irvine Foundation, will announce it in his plenary session. Heather Gowdy and Alex Hildebrand, two of my colleagues who are leading the way on this effort, will be on site, blogging about the conference, IS’s FutureLab project, and other interesting events.