The Gratitude Network

The Gratitude Network is ultimately focused on improving the lives of children around the world.

Nelson Mandela said, “Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be the leaders of our country, the creators of our national wealth who care for and protect our people.” June 3, 1995

Gratitude Network believes that every child is our future and the most critical way to improve the world is to improve the lives of children, insuring that every child has food, access to clean water, clear air, education—everything they need to grow to successful adults and impact their world.

We improve the lives of children through impacting the leadership of organizations on the ground throughout the world and empowering them to expand and reach more children and increase their impact. We believe our strategy is unique, but that our leverage model has the opportunity for leveraged impact.

Our original goal was to impact the lives of 50 million children by 2021. We are proud to say that we are on target to reach that goal and beyond.

The Gratitude Network is a Leadership Development organization that identifies “game-changing” growth stage social enterprises globally who are improving the lives of children and accelerates the success and growth of these organizations working in 3 critical areas (Education, Health and Well-being & Children's Rights) by supporting the leadership. We are on target to impact over 150 social enterprises by 2021, whose reach extends to over 50 million children.

Our strategy is as follows:
a. Initial focus on impacting children through leaders who’s organizations impact education, health and children’s rights - offering coaching services and a process for scaling the organization
b. Create an international community of leaders who support children and education so they can learn and grow from another, and bring them together in unique ways (physically and virtually)
c. Eventually move into new areas of social impact (women’s issues, environment, etc)
d. Eventually build a Foundation to work with our organization so that we can contribute to the scaling plans of the best entrepreneurs that come through our programs.

The purpose of the one-year Fellowship is to accelerate the growth of high-impact social entrepreneurs. Gratitude provides leadership development that leads to organizational transformation for scaling organizations that impact underserved children and youth globally.

Our approach is composed of multiple channels:

• Intense year-long 1:1 Coaching from a dedicated, professional business
Coach—they are matched with their Coach based on a number of criteria
• Assistance of Expert Advisors (experts in their field--Human Resources, law, tax, social media, marketing, sorry-telling, branding, fundraising, board development, etc.) to help solve current problems, issues, barriers they are facing that are impediments to growth.
• Periodic virtual Growth Seminars taught by industry leaders on subjects key to our cohort of leaders
• Peer-to-Peer support--our leaders meet to provide peer support and advice, as well as annually at our Leadership Summit.
• Our annual 3-day Leadership Summit where the Fellows engage with Coaches, Expert Advisors, Alumni, The Gratitude Team and others for 3 days of learning, networking, and a bit of fun
• An on-going Alumni program including
o Expert Advising
o On-going Peer mentoring
o Growth Seminars and
o The Leadership Summit

Quarterly peer calls are an important part of the program, where a highlight is the Leader Round-Table where a current "problem" is sourced, investigated, massaged, solutions offered and a strategy set for resolutions. The Fellows, together with the Gratitude Team, Coaches, Expert Advisors and Alumni gather for our annual Leadership Summit. When the Fellowship year end's, Fellows remain part of our Network via our Alumni program.

We work with multiple partners to help dentify potential leaders that meet our programmatic criteria to invite them to apply.

Our Founder, Randy Haykin, worked for 30 years in Silicon Valley coaching and investing in entrepreneurs. He found that there was little coaching and scaling-up advise for non-profits in the social sector, particularly for organizations focused on children and youth. In Gratitude's early years it was a part-time endeavor, testing the waters and various aspects of the program. In 2015, Randy and a group of primarily technology executives designed a legacy program to impact thousands of organizations, and thereby millions of children, around the world----and our Fellowship was developed. It has grown and been enhanced each year.

We currently have a team of 7 professional staff (working a combination of full and part-time). Ann Singer, our Director of Programs and Events has over 20+ years working, managing and developing non-profits. Arwen Thiel, our Director of Social Impact most recently worked for one of the top children’s foundations managing their programs that are similar to what Gratitude does today. Vicki Daughtry, our Director of Coaching and Learning Vicki has significant experience in project management, coaching and consulting. You can see more details on our team here: http://gratitude-network.org/about/leadership/

We have a solid board of 9 supporting the organization’s work and guiding our own growth and scaling. Our board has 200+ years of experience and is well-balanced in their expertise. You can see the full board here: http://gratitude-network.org/about/board-of-directors/

In addition, we have a deep network of Coaches, Expert Advisors, volunteers and supporters that are at the ready to lend a hand, advise and inform our work.

To date we have worked with 110 impact leaders throughout the world. Our 2021 cohort is planned to be an additional 40 leaders, Bringing our total number of organizations worked with to 150.

The Gratitude Network Fellowship program seeks to impact the social entrepreneurs we support, their organizations, and ultimately the children and youth who are served. Therefore, baseline and on-going data related to all of these components is gathered. Our Fellows are from a diverse range of organizations that work with children in many different ways We track a wide-breadth of data to include the diversity of our Fellow organizations. We acquire detailed baseline service delivery data from applicants. Follow up data is tracked during the course of their Fellowship year, and for 5 years post-program.

We measure our impact in two ways.

First, through significant intake and exiting organization and personal assessments, as well as shorter and less detailed mid-year assessments, the leaders provide detail on their organizational, personal and team member strength and weaknesses.

In addition, we collect data at the onset of the program regarding impact data of the organizations themselves:

• Number of countries, cities, cites, etc. in which they are operating
• Number of schools, teachers, parents, children they work with annual
• Test scores, success rates (recidivism, employment, etc.) depending on the nature of the organizations work

The overall organizations’ impact is looked at to understand the levels of scaling achieved.

To date we have worked with 110 Fellows in more than 40 countries, whose work is impacting over 25 million children globally. Of these Fellows over 89% are women of color. Our Fellows report a 44% Increase in number of programs or products offered and a 65% Increase in number of program location sites.

Examples of our impact:

• After the year-long Fellowship MindLeaps, as a result of their development during our program has signed a contract with the UN to be offering their program to 10,000 refugee children in 2019.
• In the year immediately following their Fellowship year, Meghshala released an app to reach teachers and learners throughout India. As a result, Meghshala expanded into nearly every state in India and increased their impact from 6,000 to 600,000 students – a 9,900% increase. In addition, Meghshala increased their reach to teachers from 200 to 19,000 – a 850% increase and Meghshala’s volunteer and employee numbers expanded by 16%