A Nonprofit’s New Innovation Lab Helps Problem Solvers Experiment

Technology companies invest heavily in research and development, but charities usually struggle to find the resources to innovate. Tipping Point Community, which raises money to fight poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, is trying to help boost R&D in the nonprofit world, and is winning support from tech businesses along the way.

The nonprofit has started T Lab, a six-month fellowship program. It taps social scientists, teachers, designers, and entrepreneurs to develop new ideas to provide child care and early education in low-income neighborhoods and to help ex-offenders reenter society.

The program draws on the principles of tech development: Participants focus on getting input from potential clients and testing ideas quickly.

For instance, a team working on early education tested its idea, Little Scholars, a mobile preschool designed to bring classes to underserved neighborhoods. Participants outfitted a bus with preschool materials, hired a teacher, and offered nursery school for four days at a park and two days in the parking lot of an Aspire charter school.

Feedback from parents was positive, and Tipping Point has awarded a $250,000 grant to Aspire to continue to develop the idea.

Most nonprofits are so used to having every dollar accounted for, either by government or foundations, that they haven’t had the flexibility to run a $5,000 or $10,000 experiment, says Renuka Kher, chief operating officer at Tipping Point and head of the R&D effort.

Says Ms. Kher, “We have a tremendous opportunity to create things in a low-cost, quick way if we just give ourselves permission.”