While not a scientific test, this quiz measures 15 variables to predict your success in being a “social innovator” and ability to bring in the big bucks. Answer true or false for each of the following questions.
- Do you have a degree from an Ivy League university, MIT, Duke, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, or any school in California?
- Do you consider yourself more forward thinking than the average nonprofit person?
- Are you close personal friends with at least three foundation executives?
- Over the past 18 months, have you conferenced at the Aspen Institute, Wingspread, or Pocantico?
- Do you have an enthusiastic but determined look on your face at least 75 percent of the time?
- Can you casually drop the following strategic words and phrases into an ordinary conversation with special import?
- Metrics
- Evidence based
- Highly effective
- Impact
- Value added
- New normal
- New reality
- Solutions business
- Catalytic philanthropy
- Going to scale
- Did you do at least a minor favor for the Obama campaign?
- Do you spend 20 percent of your budget on self-promotion, public outreach, and travel to essential national confabs?
- Do you refer to yourself as the “founder” of something?
- Are you a private reader of contemporary business magazines and heroic CEO bios?
- Do you consider high levels of unemployment, obesity, and homelessness as amazingly great laboratories for innovation?
- Do you feel a need to be discreet about your personal ambitions?
- Do you consider the work of other organizations to be ultimately well-meaning but pedestrian and not worth learning about?
- Is your compensation at least 150 percent that of the next highest-paid person at your organization?
- Do you believe that being insufferably annoying and pretentious is defensible if your cause is just?
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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved by the Nonprofit Information Networking Association, Boston, MA. Volume 16, Issue 3. Subscribe | buy issue | reprints.