As the pace of change around the world continues to accelerate and the problems in our society become ever more complex, mission-driven organizations will need to become more ambitious, more nimble, and more effective to make a much-needed difference. Lean Impact adapts the best practices that underpin the dramatic engine of innovation of Silicon Valley for the more challenging realities of social impact.

We offer workshops, consulting, and coaching services to help organizations move beyond flashy new ideas and embed the best practices for innovation to drive greater performance and results based on three principles:

  • Think Big – set audacious goals and build an engine for growth that will move the needle relative to the size of the problem
  • Start Small- build the agility to run fast experiments and drive feedback loops that will accelerate your pace of learning
  • Relentlessly Seek Impact- identify and track the metrics that matter to increase impact and scale

We work with organizations seeking to dramatically increase their impact and scale including foundations, nonprofits, government agencies, and mission-driven companies and investors.

Introducing Lean Impact

Watch the launch at the 2018 Lean Startup Conference with Ann Mei Chang and Eric Ries

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Lean Impact adapts the best practices from The Lean Startup to a new purpose – radically greater social good. The same principles of being customer-focused, building minimum viable products, and driving fast iteration through build-measure-learn feedback cycles apply, but innovation in the social sector is harder and involves some unique challenges.

Drawing on her experience across Silicon Valley, government, and nonprofits, Ann Mei Chang presents practical tools and strategies, vividly illustrated with insights from the real stories of nonprofits, social enterprises, companies, government agencies, foundations, and philanthropists around the world. Lean Impact will be an essential guidebook for anyone who seeks to maximize social impact and scale.

Is your organization interested in learning how to innovate for radically greater social good?

We offer hands-on training and coaching from successful social entrepreneurs. Send us a message.

Designing & Testing the Common App

Using user-centered design to get more families into social service programs faster. Problem Once an individual finds a resource that can help them meet a basic need, we often see…
Read It.

Our clients are saying

The Lean Impact workshop was transformational. Lean’s focus on prioritizing user needs supports our effort to become a more responsive organization that creates value together with our members. It’s a deceptively simple mindset shift that we couldn’t have made without the support of the Lean Impact team. The training leveraged real product and service challenges that our staff is working on.  Ann Mei  and Adam brought great energy and really helped us begin to develop the mindset, tools, and processes we need as the organization changes. We look forward to rolling out Lean Impact to our entire staff.

Victor Reinoso

Chief Operating Officer, Independent Sector

Lean Impact is the perfect low-resource startup model and process for community organizations, nonprofits, and activists. It makes innovation attainable to all.

Megan Smith

IREX

The world around us is rapidly changing and the time to achieve greater program impact at greater scale is now. Lean Impact is a hands-on, high-impact way to teach people who lead teams innovative ways to design and execute programs. Participants learn to systematically address uncertainty through rapid iteration and market learning, relentlessly pursuing impact. I highly recommend reading Lean Impact and participating in a Lean Impact workshop.

Sam Worthington

CEO, InterAction

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