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Unicorns Unite: How nonprofits and foundations can build EPIC Partnerships Paperback – May 15, 2018
| Jessamyn Shams-Lau (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Jane Leu (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Vu Le (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Price | New from | Used from |
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Calling all changemakers!
Open your mind, and buckle up for a bumpy ride through a truth-telling journey about the dysfunctional relationship between foundations and nonprofits. We all know that it’s broken. So why haven't we fixed it?
Enter the Unicorns.
Join unicorns Jane Leu, Vu Le, and Jessamyn Shams-Lau for a nitty-gritty, inside look at how foundations and nonprofits relate today, and why we're stuck in the status quo. Next, get ready for a rocket-ship ride to a future filled with EPIC Partnerships grounded in equality, trust, and creativity; partnerships to help us think bigger, bolder, and better about social change. Finally, make it happen! Roll up your sleeves and dive into a series of fun and thought-provoking exercises for you to do and discuss with your team, your partners, and your board.
Unicorns Unite is a whimsical journey through a challenging conversation that could hold the key to slaying the dragons of injustice and inequity once and for all.
- Print length152 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherRed Press Ltd
- Publication dateMay 15, 2018
- Dimensions8.5 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
- ISBN-101912157047
- ISBN-13978-1912157044
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Editorial Reviews
Review
This book is perfect for all the dedicated and visionary people working for charities, nonprofits, foundations and impact investors. It’s for people making the world a better place, who want to improve the way we work together. Unicorns Unite is the first book to bring everyone together in one room - to talk about why our working relationships are broken, and to get everyone working on the solution. It is NOT for those unwilling to think outside the box.
About the Author
High school dropout turned MBA, Jessamyn currently co-creates and stewards the Peery Foundation's Grantee-Centric approach to philanthropy. Jessamyn is an advocate for interdisciplinary approaches, thoughtful risk taking, and bold ideas developed through apprenticing with a problem. Jessamyn joined the Peery Foundation as its first non-family staff member in 2009, helping to shape the Foundation’s initial approach and portfolios. Currently, as Executive Director, Jessamyn shapes and supports the Peery Foundation team, develops and guides overall strategy, and brings the Foundation Board's vision to life. Jessamyn utilizes her experience as part of the founding Ashoka U team in her hands-on role as a Board. Member of BYU’s Ballard Center, where she has created curriculum now taught at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Jessamyn serves as an advisor to Ashoka U and GrantAdvisor. Jessamyn has a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Arts London and an MBA from Brigham Young University. She lives in the Bay Area with her ridiculously funny husband, defiant house rabbit, and two tiny hamsters. She used to have a mohawk haircut, she met her husband on Tinder, and her favourite Christmas movie is Die Hard 2.
An Ashoka Fellow, the Founder of Upwardly Global and Smarter Good, and four other social sector start-ups, Jane Leu is intrigued by problems and their solutions. Known for both strong vision and execution, Jane has more than twenty years of entrepreneurial leadership of migration-related organizations. The common theme across her ventures is that they leverage the private sector to ensure that migration creates economic benefit for individuals, families, companies and countries. She is a Lecturer in Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Venture Partner, and has been on the advisory boards of Ashoka U, Joshua Venture, the Peery Foundation and the Migration Policy Institute, among others. Jane's contributions and leadership have been recognized by BYU Social Innovator of the Year Award, John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneur Award, among others. She holds a MA from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and a BA from Tufts University.
Vu Le (“voo lay”) is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a nonprofit in Seattle with the mission of developing and supporting leaders of color to strengthen the capacity of communities-of-color-led nonprofits and foster collaboration between diverse communities to effect systemic change. Vu is the former Executive Director of the Vietnamese Friendship Association. He currently chairs the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC). Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work, where he learned that we should take the work seriously, but not ourselves. There’s tons of humor in the nonprofit world, and someone needs to document it. He is going to do that, with the hope that one day, a TV producer will see how cool and interesting our field is and make a show about nonprofit work, featuring attractive actors attending strategic planning meetings and filing 990 tax forms. Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at nonprofitaf.com.
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Product details
- Publisher : Red Press Ltd (May 15, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 152 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1912157047
- ISBN-13 : 978-1912157044
- Item Weight : 1.05 pounds
- Dimensions : 8.5 x 0.5 x 8.9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #275,234 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors

Jessamyn is a secondary/high school drop out turned MBA, currently co-creating and stewarding the Peery Foundation's Grantee-Centric approach to philanthropy. She's an advocate for inter-disciplinary approaches, thoughtful risk taking, bold ideas developed through patient, deliberate apprenticeship, and is very frustrated with the status quo of philanthropy so she's trying to do something about it. Jessamyn lives in the Bay Area with her ridiculously funny husband and two defiant house rabbits. She used to have a mohawk haircut, she met her husband on Tinder, and her favourite (with a ‘u’, because she’s British) Christmas film is Die Hard 2.

An Ashoka Fellow, the Founder of Smarter Good, Upwardly Global and four other social sector start-ups, Jane Leu is intrigued by problems and their solutions.
Known for strong vision and execution, Jane has more than twenty years of entrepreneurial leadership of social sector organizations. Jane founded Smarter Good to help global social sector organizations start, sustain, and scale their impact. Smarter Good believes that by making a skilled team available to nonprofits and social enterprises to support their fundraising, marketing and accounting and finance functions, they will have more time to focus on their missions, and that will lead to more global impact. With offices in the US and the Philippines, the Smarter Good team has worked at the intersection of thousands of funders and more than 80 nonprofits working in 30 countries, across a diverse range of issue areas from youth development to poverty alleviation.
As the Founder and CEO of Upwardly Global, Jane started and built a nonprofit that has grown into a global organization that has advanced the integration of thousands of skilled immigrant professionals into the workforce, turning the brain drain into brain gain for the US and beyond. Upwardly Global works closely with the private sector to connect employers, from
multinational corporations to small businesses, to the benefits of a globally diverse workforce.
Jane is a Lecturer in Social Innovation at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, helping MBAs find their place in the social impact sector. She is a Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation Venture Partner, a member of the Board of Directors of Welcoming America/International, Reset, and On the Level, and an advisory board member of Ashoka U, Workership, and the Peery Foundation.
Jane’s contributions and leadership have been recognized by BYU Social Innovator of the Year Award, John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and the Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneur Award, among others. She holds a MA from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and a BA from Tufts University.
Lesser-known facts about Jane include: she spends a lot of happy hours talking to her dog, she never cooks, and as a legacy of her Midwestern roots, she would eat entire meals comprised only of corn-on-the-cob if it was deemed socially acceptable. She lives in San Francisco with her husband Ted Levinson, a social finance professional.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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Also, don't let the title and art fool you, this book is serious, and it's written by field-leading professionals who simply know how challenging it can be to grab board members' undivided attention. The unicorns may help.
I think a lot of this book is about identifying the insecurities we have as aspiring Unicorns. If we can take ourselves a little less seriously, collaborations will become more effective, and we will better serve people.
The book's tone balances honesty and optimism in a fun way. It's a something that can only be struck by self-aware authors who have experienced EPIC PARTNERSHIPS as well as UNepic ones.
I am a slow reader. So, I was going to wait for an audio version to come out. That won't work for this book. It's meant to be read. It has graphics and pictures which will help structure your thoughts. It took a couple hours for me to read, and I will go back and do the activities again with our team.
Top reviews from other countries
Our nonprofit is a b2b (i.e. we deliver services to other NPOs). I was planning to write a review about this book in our fall newsletter. I bought the kindle version. Sadly the pages are cut so I cannot read the whole page. Second, I was surprised that the pages are just images so readers cannot select or highlight text or even zoom in. I am short-sighted and I cannot read the book on my phone without making the font larger or zooming in. The book format does not consider the needs of people like me, or people with special needs who use accessibility features in their phones/computers to read/listen to the text because the pages are images not text.
What a waste of money. A 17 years old knows how to create a Kindle book. Why did not they at least OCR the content if they are so lazy to convert the images to text?
I feel like a unicorn... a dreamer for believing that I will get value from this book
Reviewed in Canada on June 27, 2020
Our nonprofit is a b2b (i.e. we deliver services to other NPOs). I was planning to write a review about this book in our fall newsletter. I bought the kindle version. Sadly the pages are cut so I cannot read the whole page. Second, I was surprised that the pages are just images so readers cannot select or highlight text or even zoom in. I am short-sighted and I cannot read the book on my phone without making the font larger or zooming in. The book format does not consider the needs of people like me, or people with special needs who use accessibility features in their phones/computers to read/listen to the text because the pages are images not text.
What a waste of money. A 17 years old knows how to create a Kindle book. Why did not they at least OCR the content if they are so lazy to convert the images to text?
I feel like a unicorn... a dreamer for believing that I will get value from this book



