Innovation is both buzzword and bugbear: everyone wants to be seen as innovative but no one really wants to take on the risks of something new; no one really knows how to innovate (is that even a proper verb?); and funders seem to prefer supporting those who can sustain their organizational status quo rather than rewarding risk-takers.

Here are five examples of innovations to inspire your thinking — featuring joggers, fanboys, pint-sized chefs, crappy websites, the power of Justin Bieber, and a failure that actually won an innovation award for failing.

At the end of each case study, you’ll find a section called, “What’s the take-away for your organization?” — a series of questions and observations to help you go from “Why didn’t we think of that?” to “Eureka!”

1. The Good Gym

Moved by statistics that showed that nearly half a million UK pensioners only leave their homes once a week and that an additional 300,000 were completely housebound, Ivo Gormley envisioned The Good Gym, a group of runners who could visit the elderly in their homes, and not confine their run to laps or treadmills.

“People all over Britain run, jog and lift weights and achieve nothing particularly useful,” wrote Gormley, an associate at thinkpublic, a London-based social design firm. “The Good Gym aims to make it easy for people to channel this energy toward social good. It seems ridiculous that in cities in which people live so close to each other, people are still lonely and isolated.”

Starting as a winning entry at a Social Innovation Camp in December 2008, the Good Gym is an elegant solution to a problem faced by most nonprofits: how to recruit and engage time-pressed volunteers. In this case the solution was not to focus on the need itself (make some time in your life to visit a shut-in) but rather on the needs of the volunteer (you’re already running; here’s a destination).

Good Gym runners undergo a Criminal Records Bureau check, which is required for anyone working with children or vulnerable adults. Once approved, they are matched up with a coach, as their elderly contact is called, whom they visit weekly as part of their run. Runners are encouraged to bring a small gift with each visit, like a newspaper, and stay to chat for about 15 minutes; some even help with small tasks, like filling out forms. (For more inspiring runner and coach stories, check the stories section of the Good Gym website). There are also group runs that combine the run with gardening and composting chores in public areas.

So far, The Good Gym is only operating in East London but there is interest from places as far-flung as Chicago and Australia and closer to its home, Good Gym is working with the Olympic Park Legacy Company to bring the initiative to the boroughs surrounding the Olympic site after the Games finish.

What’s the take-away for your organization? Fitness buffs and the isolated elderly are, to put it mildly, two highly disparate groups, and yet the Good Gym’s connecting them to provide a necessary service is supremely logical. Is there an equally disparate — yet logical — connection that your organization could be making?

2. Kids Cook To Care

How can you teach children about the reality of hunger and poverty without overwhelming them with the enormity of the problem? Jill Lewis and Julie Levin started Kids Cook To Care (KCTC) and came up with a simple, yet innovative, answer: have kids cook a meal for the hungry.

Once a month, about a dozen child volunteers aged six to sixteen and their accompanying adults meet at the Christie-Ossington Neighbourhood Centre in Toronto where, under the guidance of a professional chef, they prepare, cook and serve a meal to about a hundred needy people.

Despite the straightforwardness of the idea and its approach, there were still bumps along the way, including one guest chef who brought so many assistants that the kids didn’t have much to do and a jumpy parent who grabbed a knife from a child, upsetting the kid and, presumably, scuttling any lessons in kitchen safety. And, far from keeping kids’ attention from wandering, how to handle enthusiastic kids was another challenge to overcome: “We didn’t realize how popular our chefs would be so some of the kids were left out; now we have the kids rotate their cooking stations,” says Lewis.

Since starting KCTC in 2009, Lewis and Levin have been swamped with volunteers every month (there’s currently a waiting list) as well as requests to bring the program to other cities. How to make the KCTC model exportable is the next challenge: while volunteers are encouraged to make a small donation to cover administrative costs, the chefs in Toronto not only donate their time, but also the meal ingredients.

“Without the support of our chefs and restaurant owners, we could not produce these meals with our child volunteers,” says Lewis. “We hope to gain corporate sponsorship in the near future so that we can expand and continue our meals without having to require such generosity from our chefs.”

What’s the take-away for your organization? “Once children are given the proper guidance, they too can make a difference,” says Lewis. Explore whether your organization has any opportunities — apart from fundraising — for a family of volunteers, including younger children. Can your organization’s volunteer opportunities be as tangible and meaningful to a child as cooking for and feeding someone hungry?

3. The Harry Potter Alliance

For the uninitiated, the idea that the fictional wizard Harry Potter could be a role model for anyone over the age of eight sounds, well, sad.

But for The Harry Potter Alliance, a Boston-based nonprofit, acting like the hero you love is the key to creating a better world, whether the fan is an adult or a child. Founder Andrew Slack, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brandeis University and a fan of the novels, saw the potential to turn the heroic Harry into a force for good. In 2005, he made his first in-roads into fandom by making a connection to the popular “wizard rock” band, Harry and the Potters. Band member Paul DeGeorge recalls Stack running up to him before a concert with his pitch, describing him fondly as “this crazy, sweaty guy talking to me about this idea he had for an activist organization based around Harry Potter.”

Despite those damp beginnings, the HPA gained traction with established Potter fan groups and websites and has grown to involve tens of thousands of members in dozens of chapters around the world, plus a team of volunteer staff, the support of actors from the movies and has even received the blessing of author J.K. Rowling herself.

Among other projects, the HPA has rallied Potter fans to send five planeloads of supplies to Haiti, donate books, support LGBT rights, and with its Not in Harry’s Name campaign, is petitioning Warner Brothers, the producers of the Harry Potter movies, to ensure that its Harry Potter-branded chocolates are Fair Trade.

“In the Potter series, chocolate is a force for good,” says a Not in Harry’s Name statement. “It is the most effective cure for a Dementor attack by restoring warmth and hope in those who consume it. It is essentially a Muggle product with magical qualities, a trait that emphasizes how special and important it truly is. But chocolate made on the backs of child slaves would never have that kind of effect. It would never give hope or warmth or magic. If Harry and his friends knew that their chocolate was made under those kinds of conditions, they wouldn’t stand for it.”

The HPA has also expanded from its foundations at Hogwarts and started the Imagine Better Project to rally fans of other series like Doctor Who, Firefly, Star Trek, and even Glee and Mad Men, to “take all of the stories and communities that excite us and turn them into fuel for a better world.” A recent Imagine Better project joined with Oxfam, calling on fans of The Hunger Games movie and books to raise awareness of Oxfam’s GROW program in support of food justice through their “Hunger is not a Game” initiative. Call them nerds, geeks or fanboys at your peril…

What’s the take-away for your organization? While bringing together fans to support your cause sounds easy and fun, it shouldn’t be confused with hosting a charity costume party. The fan universe is hard to crack, particularly with fans of series that have long histories (Doctor Who) or global impact (Harry Potter). If you’re serious about cultivating a new community in these rarefied realms, make a field trip to a fan convention and get a feel for the culture.

And a caution from the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished file: Lionsgate, the producer of The Hunger Games, initially threatened Imagine Better with legal action, though they have since relented after a barrage of adverse publicity. Mind the copyrights and don’t let your fun idea become a legal quagmire.

4. Canada’s Worst Charity Website contest

The town of London, Ontario, has a lot of civic pride so when the CBC announced that they were looking for a city to host an episode of Jian Ghomeshi‘s talk show Q, Londoners started a campaign to bring the show there.

One of the entries came from rtraction, a digital marketing agency, who promised to donate $20,000 worth of web or social media work to the charity of CBC’s choice if London won the contest, with an additional $5,000 in services donated by four other agencies. London did win and Q came to town, but the CBC put the decision about who the $25,000 recipient should be back in rtraction’s hands.

The agency decided to have a contest of their own to find the worthiest charity candidate — but rather than ask for nominations for the worthiest charity, they asked for nominations for the worst website and the response was vociferous.

“We had over 140 nominees, and we made contact with all of them to make sure that they were okay with being part of the contest,” says Rachel Berdan, lead copywriter at rtraction. “The majority of the ‘Thanks but no thanks’ responses were usually because it was someone’s nephew who did the website and they didn’t want to offend anybody by agreeing to be in the contest.”

Spreading the word relied on social media like Twitter which, Berdan notes, has a strong presence in London as a whole. “We asked our supporters to help us make the contest great; they showed support for the organizations that they love, then those organizations’ supporters got involved.”

The winning site belongs to the Stratford House of Blessing, which operates food, clothing and furniture banks in Stratford, Ontario. Once announced in the nomination shortlist, the House of Blessing got a voting boost after a supportive tweet from Pattie Mallette, the mother of that notable Stratford native, Justin Bieber.

“This was a contest, but it was about community from the very beginning,” says Berdan. “In a nonprofit context, perhaps there’s an opportunity for different organizations that share a common interest to band together and leverage each other’s networks to raise the profile of a campaign.”

What’s the take-away for your organization? Rather than arbitrarily selecting a beneficiary based on in-house suggestions, rtraction opened up their decision-making process to the community. Is there a project or issue where you could engage people in a similar way? They also encouraged people to point out flaws: could any aspect of your work lend itself to a light-hearted teasing (help us paint the ugliest meeting room in town!)?

5. Why admitting failure can be the most innovative thing you do

When the 2011 Calgary Nonprofit Innovation Awards were announced, three of the four winning organizations were recognized for their successes but one was being honoured for what could be described as a failure.

So how did Momentum, a Calgary-based nonprofit that focuses on skills training, business development and financial literacy, achieve recognition from the Calgary Chamber of Voluntary Organizations for shutting down two initiatives rather than sustaining them?

The answer is in the award entry form itself: the CCVO asked nominees for their bad news as well as the good.

“We were pretty intentional at the outset that we wanted to include something that didn’t work,” says Mike Grogan, vice president, programs and operations for the CCVO. “There’s a ton of things that don’t work in this sector and there’s a lot of fear that funders won’t accept that, but I think some of those fears are overblown.”

In Momentum’s case, the two initiatives simply no longer worked. The Social Purchasing Portal, which connected socially responsible sellers with buyers, couldn’t compete as purchasing portals became more sophisticated. The Rent Bank lost impact as rising rents, increased consumer debt and the availability of government grants, rather than loans, reduced the appeal of taking a loan from Momentum.

And when looked at closely, both programs were hindering Momentum’s sustainability, rather than supporting it. After some community consultation, both programs were shuttered, though a new program called Money Coaching has been started in the wake of the Rent Bank, since showing people how to get out of debt is still important to Momentum.

“It’s not that failure is the goal,” says Grogan. “It’s ‘what did you learn? Are you pushing your organization forward through those iterative failures? Are successes popping up in other parts of the organization?’ Those experiences that don’t work out as planned are part of that larger success.”

The award judges’ statement also says it well: “This story of ‘failure’ is told in a creative way and addresses a number of issues that all nonprofits need to wrestle with — fear of failure; duplication; moving resources to meet real demands elsewhere — while at the same time acknowledging that failure creates space for new ideas.”

What’s the take-away for your organization? While much of the allure of innovation is centred on starting something new or creatively fine-tuning an existing project, true innovation can simply be to look beyond your present circumstances and assess the road ahead.

“So much of our time is focused on day-to-day service delivery,” says Grogan. “The first thing to do is to carve out the time to lift our eyesight to the horizon and say, ‘What is the environment that we’re working in going to be like? Who are we in those scenarios; are we still needed? And if we’re not, how to we change to be relevant?'”

Benita Aalto is a writer and communications consultant with extensive experience in corporate communications as well as in print and broadcast journalism. She has been a featured guest on TVO, CTV, CBC Newsworld, and CBC Radio, among others.

Please note: While we ensure that all links and e-mail addresses are accurate at their publishing date, the quick-changing nature of the web means that some links to other web sites and e-mail addresses may no longer be accurate.

Photos (from top) via iStock.com. All photos used with permission.