Thinksgiving™ connects St. Louis nonprofits with innovation and strategy teams from our region’s smartest companies, consultancies & agencies for a week of collaborative problem-solving focused on our future.
Thinksgiving 2020 is in the books! Check out the challenges our nonprofits and innovation partners teamed up to solve, read the testimonials from the participants, meet our volunteers, and watch the Solutions Showcase. If you’d like to join us next year, look for more details coming soon!
We’re a nonprofit supporting parents raising transgender children, with chapters in ten states and a high demand for growth. Our volunteer leadership is passionate but spread too thin. How might we ... scale our organization to attract the right talent and leverage community partners to become the nationally recognized resource for these families?
Before COVID, we delivered art-centered programs to young people, veterans, and people with disabilities in our studio. How might we … help our amazing artists tell their stories and share (and sell) their art in creative, virtual-friendly ways?
While our team members and volunteers believe deeply in our mission to help women, our message is often told in inconsistent ways. How might we … align our messaging and effectively communicate our story to stakeholders?
Though we’re a new nonprofit, we’re experiencing huge nationwide demand for our services. How might we ... quickly scale our current team, operations, and systems to keep up with demand and grow our impact?
We’re entering our seventh decade as a nonprofit and many of our long-time volunteers are almost as “experienced” as we are. How might we ... attract younger and more diverse volunteers to work with and learn from our current amazing team?
As a nonprofit dance company, we’ve always taught our students in person. Lately we’ve mixed Zoom with outdoor engagements, but winter is coming. How might we … find ways to help donors, clients, and students feel comfortable returning to our spaces for classes and events or deliver them virtually in more creative and effective ways?
Our long-standing nonprofit is filled with amazing staff and leadership volunteers who care deeply about our mission, yet struggle to connect virtually with an external audience. How might we … better equip them to embrace innovative ways to advocate for our clients?
We utilize multiple technology systems, and none share information well with the others. How might we … explore ways to integrate data from several sources into one, helping us make better decisions faster?
Our organization works from multiple locations and provides services at all hours of the day and night. How might we … better foster a positive culture among our distributed, super-busy team members that celebrates their accomplishments and recognizes contributions from all?
We’re building an innovation ecosystem and know that collaboration is key. How might we … leverage readily available virtual tools to connect our community and turn stakeholders into collaborators?
We provide services and training to our region’s educators, but know they need so much more. How might we … build relationships with other innovative partners to uncover and address the problems our community’s educators are facing during this pandemic and beyond?
We’re providing much-needed services to the region’s underfed and food insecure, but are struggling to connect with prospective donors when we can’t show them our work in person. How might we … leverage virtual methods and tools to build deeper relationships with them so they’ll continue to engage with us and become champions for our organization?
Though we connect authors with our region’s neediest children to inspire them to write, we’re struggling to tell our own story. How might we ... better use technology to amplify our impact and increase interest in our community?
Our technology requires us to enter the same information into multiple systems, resulting in duplicated data and hundreds of hours of wasted time. How might we … rethink our systems and practices to free up more time for our team members to engage with those we serve?
In 36 years as a nonprofit, our focus has shifted and our name no longer captures the core of what we do (and is often confused with other organizations in our region). How might we … find a better name that matches our mission and is uniquely ours?
We focus on building awareness of a deadly -- but “nonsexy” -- hereditary incurable disease. How might we ... find innovative ways to deliver programs to effectively inform, educate, and engage the community at large about the disease, its impacts, and preventative measures they might take?
Want to learn more about Thinksgiving’s creative approach to moving the needle on some of St. Louis’ most pressing challenges? Here’s how it works:
CHALLENGE WORKSHOP
OCTOBER 2, 9 & 15, 2020
To get the most out of Thinksgiving, we’ll help our nonprofit teams identify a thorny (non-financial) challenge that really impacts the work they do in the communities they serve.
DRAFT DAY
October 20, 2020
Once the non-profit challenges are created, our innovation partners will select a challenge (without knowing the nonprofit it belongs to) that best fits their team’s skillset and expertise.
THINKSGIVING
Week of November 9, 2020
For Thinksgiving, our innovation partners will host their nonprofit for a day of collaboration, creativity, strategic thinking, and problem-solving, leveraging the same methods and tools they apply to their own organizations’ biggest challenges.
SOLUTIONS SHOWCASE
NOVEMBER 19, 2020
To celebrate everyone’s hard work, the teams will reconvene to share their day’s work and best ideas with 2-minute videos produced by the local high-school students who’ve joined each Thinksgiving session.
IMPLEMENTATION RETREATS
JANUARY - MARCH, 2021
Ideas are easy, execution is hard. That’s why Filament will design and host multiple (virtual or in-person) Implementation Retreats to help the nonprofits build doable experiments that transform their Thinksgiving ideas into action.
