Nonprofit Innovation and Growth with Sarah Lee

Sarah Lee is Chief Operating Officer at New Story, an innovative, growth-focused organization that behaves more like a Silicon Valley start-up than a traditional nonprofit. 

New Story is on a mission to solve the global homelessness crisis by creating solutions that are cheaper to develop, higher quality than traditional housing options, and able to get into market faster than typical solutions. 

In our conversation we talked about innovation and growth in the nonprofit sector, and how New Story is charging forward to change the way organizations address complex global challenges more effectively. 

Highlights from our conversation are: 

1.  Believing that nonprofit organizations should be held to higher (not lower) standards of effectiveness.
2. How a 100% donation model and key investment partners help them achieve greater impact.
3. The role that talent plays in their ability to deliver effective solutions and to grow and scale their impact.
4. The need to balance advances in technology and innovation with mission delivery, and how organizations should think about that balance. 
5. The value of long-term thinking and how that changes the strategic approach for an organization. 
6. The importance of hiring people who embrace a “founder” mindset, and how that changes the way an organization operates.