Susan Musinsky's Idealist Award Acceptance Speech

Social Capital Inc, April 7, 2010 - Susan Musinsky's Acceptance Speech – Idealist Award

I am honored to accept this “Idealist” award from Social Capital, Inc. It is especially wonderful to receive it for work that has been so important to me for so long. For as long as I can remember, I have loved being in community and building communities--weaving together networks that become so much more than the sum of their parts.  This has been the core of my work for nearly all of my professional life.

It was what made my time at NCCJ so gratifying, especially the work I did with LeadBoston and Anytown, where I saw first-hand the power of making improbable but tremendously fruitful connections between people who might otherwise never have met. 

When I first met Andrew Wolk at Root Cause, we talked about The Social Innovation Forum. The idea was simple: Take Social Innovators--non-profit organizations with innovative and effective approaches to difficult social problems--give them support and match them with Investors--people or organizations who wanted to invest their time, talent, or resources in innovative projects. The Social Innovation Forum was the matchmaker. It was an exciting idea, but I told him straight out: If you want a development person – don’t hire me.  If you want someone to build a community of Innovators and Investors, sign me on.

Five years later the Social Innovation Forum hosts a thriving network in which Social Capital is developed and shared to solve core social problems. Throughout the year, we build our events around communal participation, where our Innovators get support, ideas, feedback, and coaching from an engaged community of Investors. And, increasingly, the lines blur between Investor and Innovator.  Investors become working board members and one innovator gives support to another.  The web of connections goes from strength to strength.

The development of social capital is both a means and an end.  But it takes work. Plenty of organizations seem to ignore it, even though their missions seem perfectly suited to its development. Other organizations devote tremendous resources to it, even though their missions seem further afield. It takes commitment; it takes work; but it is work that can be done anywhere--in our kids' schools, in our neighborhoods, in our jobs, in our places of worship.

But, why now, when times are so hard?

A few weeks ago, our basement flooded.  For the first few hours, all my husband and I could think to do was to bail water into our already-flooded yard. At some point, I said to him: "I'm not using my best skills" --- I said that I was going to call the neighbors. I found out, that they, too, were all wet.

Some problems are so small that it really does take just one person to solve them. Some are so large that it's obvious they can only be solved--if at all--by a community. It's the ones in the middle that tend to trap us into thinking that we are on our own.

In times like these, when the flood of events threatens to keep us focused inward, we need to take special care to look outward.  We need to find a place where we belong: A place where we are known and where we know those around us, where we can offer help and, equally importantly, where we can request it.

Thank you, Social Capital, Inc. for recognizing this important work. Thank you to my co-workers past and present, my friends and colleagues, and especially my family and my husband David, all of whom have supported me while I have devoted so much of my energy to creating a better community for others in so many deep and personal ways.