Independent Sector’s 2009 annual conference – “Challenging Times, New Opportunities” – kicked off today in Detroit, Michigan with a thought-provoking panel discussion examining the key trends and opportunities that will define the social sector for the next ten years. The panel was moderated – quite skillfully, given the scope of the topic and the diversity of voices on the panel – by James Canales, CEO of the James Irvine Foundation, with whom La Piana just published a report on the very same topic.

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.