We talk a lot about best practices in this sector, but what if the better question is: how do we keep getting better?

In this episode, I sit down with Leah Kral— author of Innovation for Social Change: How Wildly Successful Nonprofits Inspire and Deliver Results—to explore how nonprofit organizations can embrace experimentation without big budgets or safety nets.

Leah shares her journey from the for-profit world to the Peace Corps in Jamaica to two decades of helping nonprofit teams think more strategically. We dig into the relationship between scientific thinking and an innovation mindset, why running small experiments beats betting big on a single idea, and how to know when something isn't working.

We also tackle a provocative question: Is innovation actually an ethical obligation for nonprofits? Leah makes the case that staying curious and questioning our assumptions isn't risky. It's due diligence. In fact, as she says, "every nonprofit is a hypothesis."

Whether you're leading an organization or working on the front lines, this conversation will challenge how you think about trying new things.