Social innovators serve as connectors who weave the community together. They lead with a win/win mentality born of a strongly held commitment to operate in ways that not only meet their goals, but at the same time enrich and build community. Local entrepreneur Judy Wicks, of Philadelphia’s White Dog Cafe, has inspired a generation of social innovators to work this way.

Like residents of any urban environment, we in Philadelphia learn to expect and accept some grit and decay, and a lack of green, natural spaces as we traverse both the busy thoroughfares and most distant corners of the city. We encounter trash-strewn public spaces, bear witness to graffiti-covered walls, and feel boxed in by building after building. But in our most sacred spaces—our schools, recreation centers and other youth-oriented public spaces—these bleak and uninspiring conditions are the most difficult to accept, and the hardest to ignore.

Now that we’ve lived through income tax season during the toughest time since the Great Depression, it seems appropriate to consider the future – the sustainability – of the organizations that comprise the tax-exempt sector.

Foundation executives and just about every nonprofit executive I’ve ever met share the dream of sustainability. They yearn for a business model so cleverly conceived and carefully calibrated that it can balance the books, not only today but in perpetuity. Sustainability is front and center for Next Gen social entrepreneurs who seek to create a new crop of organizations with built-in revenue streams.

Tough economic times can embolden our decisions. What’s really important? What’s not? What must we do to survive? What can we let go of, because it just doesn’t work anymore or because we can’t afford to keep doing it?

This column is called Next Gen Nonprofits, and in case you are wondering what it’s all about, I thought I would begin by defining the term.

Next Gen – short for “next generation” – Nonprofits describes organizations that use business techniques to exponentially increase their social impact. These organizations take tools and technologies that corporate America uses to create and sell product, and repurposes them to create and propel broad societal change.

Social innovators, those creative entrepreneurs who make things happen in the community, tend to be a different breed of leader. Take Jane Golden, head of Philadelphia’s nationally acclaimed Mural Arts Program, responsible for creating over 3,000 murals and educating over 20,000 underserved youth. While more traditional leaders may be motivated by power, this social innovator is driven both to get the job done and to build community as she does it. She’s not looking for recognition; she’s looking for results, social justice, and civic transformation.

When we think of the criminal justice system, sentiments of denial, punishment, confinement, and retribution may be the first to come to mind, and perhaps rightfully so. Incarcerating individuals who have committed crimes is critically important to a society that deserves to be protected and to live free of fear. And it is important to the victims of violent crime and their grieving families, who suffer in the face of something lost that can never be regained.

No question about it, it’s been a turkey of a year. As the Great Recession swept through the economy, no sector was hit harder than the nonprofit world.

Nonprofits are at the bottom of the food chain, their revenues dependent upon government contracts, corporate profits, foundation endowments, and people’s generosity and disposable income. With each of these showing the steepest decline in most everyone’s memories, it’s no surprise that nonprofit budgets have tanked.