Hi Phillip. Having worked extensively with non-profits and ngo's in both Canada and the U.S., I find your recent post extremely insightful. I wanted to toss in a thought about the role of evaluation in all of this. As you're well aware, most funders require that our organizations KNOW what the outcomes will be before we even start the work. There is no space in this model for real learning. The organizational mental and operational shift from "entitlement to enterprise" requires a shift in how we think about and evaluate our work. "Developmental Evaluation" is an interesting approach to explore. "Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed" by Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton does an amazing job explaining how developmental evaluation can facilitate the type of shift in thinking you describe.

The great news is that many of the funders you list above are not only funding innovation, but they are moving toward ways of evaluating that facilitate real learning and positive change.