ANNOUNCING: 2016 DRUCKER PRIZE SEMIFINALISTS

Today we announced the 50 semifinalists for the 2016 Drucker Prize. The winning nonprofit organization, which will be chosen from this group and announced at the end of September, will receive $100,000.

The semifinalists have now been invited to move on to the second round of the application process and The Drucker Prize learning platform, which features insights from some of today’s top thinkers on management and leadership, as well as the timeless wisdom of Peter Drucker. (Semifinalists can access Round 2 of the 2016 application here using the same login credentials as were used for Round 1.)

Out of 495 applicants, here are the 50 organizations deemed by the first-round judges to have best met Peter Drucker’s definition of innovation—“change that creates a new dimension of performance”—in order to make a meaningful difference in the lives of the people they serve:

American Prairie Reserve; Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation; BoardSource; Bowery Residents Committee;Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston; CareMessage; Catholic Charities of Fort Worth; Center for Victims of Torture; Centro Community Partners; Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Center; Coalition for Compassionate Care of California; Common Threads; Community Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Indiana; Community Organizing and Family Issues; Crisis Text Line; Earn to Learn; Encore.org; Endeavor; Fabretto Children’s Foundation; Family Promise; Foodlink; Fresh Lifelines for Youth; Friends of the Reut; Grandmother Project; GreaterGood.org; Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services; Health in Harmony; Hope House; Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team; Knock Knock Give a Sock; L.A. Kitchen; Loaves and Fishes; Mercy Family Center; Mercy Ships; MIND Research Institute; National PKU News; New Visions for Public Schools; One Justice; Rare Genomics Institute; Rebuilding Exchange; Restoring Joy Ministries International; Roca Inc.; SARSEF; Seva Foundation; Sightlife; Southcentral Foundation; Team Rubicon; Union Capital Boston; University of New Mexico Foundation; and 92nd Street Y.

The Drucker Prize platform is now open to semifinalists via our website. The submission deadline for Round 2 is August 31, 2016, at 5 p.m. Pacific time.

In this second round, leaders from the 50 nonprofits will be asked to go through a series of mini-courses—featuring short readings and videos—that explore different aspects of innovation and organizational effectiveness. They will then be asked not only whether their organization currently utilizes the principles that were presented but, in addition, how they could put into practice any new ideas that they’ve learned.

“We are pleased to advance these 50 promising semifinalists to Round 2, where they will have the opportunity to learn from some of the brightest minds in the social sector, and then demonstrate how they might further leverage the discipline of innovation going forward,” said Zach First, the executive director of the Drucker Institute. “One organization will win $100,000 in the end—but everyone will walk away with powerful new knowledge.”

The 10 finalists for this year’s Drucker Prize will be announced on September 12, and at that time, all of the resources from the learning platform will be shared with all 495 applicants and made available to the entire social sector.

The winner of the $100,000 Drucker Prize will be announced on September 30.

Hailed by Businessweek magazine as the “man who invented management,” Peter Drucker not only consulted for major corporations; he also advised the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army and countless other social-sector organizations. He called the nonprofit “America’s most distinctive institution.”

If you have questions about the application or prize process, please contact druckerprize(at)druckerinstitute(dot)com.