Category Archives: Social Media

Does Information Want to be Free in Philanthropy?

February 26, 2010 – 9:50 am

One of the issues I write about frequently is “information sharing in philanthropy.” My basic argument is that because the social sector is trying to create value that accrues to the public, individuals actors in the sector can enhance their total impact by sharing what they know with other actors.

However, my argument also has echoes of the popular concept among Internet devotees that “Information Wants to be Free.” This concept advances a value judgment that information (especially stuff online) should be free.

I think this concept is nonsense.

The phrase “information wants to be free” comes from a speech given by Stewart Brand (editor of the Whole Earth Catalog, and founder of The Well, Global Business Network and the Long Now Foundation) in 1984. But Brand didn’t simply say that information should be free. What he actually said was:

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.

Brand commented on his speech in a 1987 paper that this tension…

…leads to endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution, because each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.

Brands comments reveal a deep complexity that the simplistic insistence that “information wants to be free” ignores. I bring all this up, because I want to be sure that when I advance the idea that philanthropy should embrace rampant information sharing, it is clear that my argument is not based on what I believe is the simplistic moral arguments that information in general wants to be free.

Instead, I’m so excited about advancing information sharing in philanthropy because the tension that Brand points to is mostly a function of for-profit markets and largely absent from social good markets. The reason we have “endless wrenching debate about price, copyright, ‘intellectual property’, the moral rightness of casual distribution” is because most information generally becomes less valuable to its creator as it spreads.

Coca-Cola is highly secretive of the formula for Coke. If they decided to share the formula, two things would happen 1) Other people would copy Coke, flooding the market with product as good as Coca-Cola’s, drive the price down and make Coke much more widely available and 2) Coca-Cola would find that their business was suddenly far less profitable since they no longer controlled the valuable information that underpins their business.

But the social sector doesn’t face this dilemma. Let’s imagine that a nonprofit existed that ran a program which successfully raised life outcomes of inner city youth. If they decided to share their “formula” two things would happen 1) Other people would copy them, flooding the nation with programs as good as theirs, drive the cost down and make the program much more widely available and 2) Social value creation would skyrocket, the developers of the program would be national heroes and probably win the Nobel Peace Prize (as Muhammad Yunus did in 2006 for advancing the field of microfinance).

Social media and the rise of almost costless information transmission is tearing apart for-profit fields like journalism and the music industry. But philanthropy doesn’t face the tension that Brand describes.

Yet philanthropy is failing to capitalize on the biggest transformational dynamic to hit our field. Brand writes that “each round of new devices makes the tension worse, not better.” But in philanthropy each round of new devices makes the opportunity better and our failure to capitalize on the shift more dramatic.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Information Sharing, Philanthropy | Comments (20)

Glass Pockets: A Revolution in Foundation Transparency

January 29, 2010 – 9:52 am

“We think the foundation should have glass pockets.” – Russell Leffingwell, Chair, Carnegie Corporation, 1952

Hot on the heels of rolling out real time tracking of foundation grants in support of Haiti, the Foundation Center has quietly launched a new project with the whimsical name Glass Pockets.

With a mission to “bring transparency to the world of philanthropy” Glass Pockets offers reports on how transparent large, well known foundations are. These reports rate the foundations across 28 elements of transparency and accountability such as whether they explain their grantmaking process, provide a public assessment of the foundation’s performance and whether they offer a knowledge center that shares program evaluations and lessons learned.

You can currently find reports for:

Most importantly, the reports offer direct click-thru access to each element. So users can quickly find the Gates Foundation’s investment policies, the Ford Foundation’s grantmaking policy, or the Hewlett Foundation’s knowledge center.

Glass Pockets also offers a fascinating Foundation Transparency 2.0 database that shows the social media tools being used by over 400 foundations. From the database you can directly access the Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, blogs, e-newsletters and other tools being used by some of the countries largest funders.

Finally, the site offers a Google-based search tool that lets users search the websites of thousands of private foundations. For instance, a search for the term Haiti brings back The Boston Foundation’s Haiti Relief & Reconstruction Fund, The Gates Foundation’s statement on their response to the earthquake and the Case Foundations blog post on ways that individual donors can support Haiti.

This is fascinating stuff! Not only is Glass Pockets suddenly the most important way to access important information about foundations, but the reports begin to set a level of expectation for large, staffed foundations to share more about their activities and what they know with the public. For instance, the reports note that the Ford Foundation does not make its 990-PF available, the Kellogg Foundation does not have a mechanism in place to allow grantee feedback and none of the foundations being reported on share an assessment of their own performance with the public.

Talk about information overload. Glass Pockets offers users direct links to a deep library of information about foundations. I could get lost for days exploring this place!

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Foundations, Philanthropy, Transparency | Comments (4)

Causes, MySpace & ideablob

November 16, 2009 – 8:06 am

In recent days, Causes has left MySpace and IdeaBlob has shutdown. To some, these events were unimportant. In reaction to the Causes announcement, Economist bureau chief Matthew Bishop tweeted “Who knew it was on MySpace?” to which New York Times reporter Stephanie Strom tweeted back “No kidding.”

But to many people active in online social action communities, these events had deeper meaning. This is a guest post from Amy Sample Ward, NetSquared’s Global Community Development Manager

By Amy Sample Ward

The Effect on Community in Community Platforms

There’s something in the wind, other than in-coming winter, that has my attention. It’s something I can only wrap my mind around by talking to others and hope that this is a chance to further a very important conversation. First, let’s start at the beginning:

Causes Leaves MySpace

Two weeks ago, Causes, the application that lets individuals and organizations campaign and fundraise, removed itself and all Causes-related content/data from MySpace. (Read more about Causes leaving MySpace here.) This separation came with no public announcement, either before the move or when it happened, except for a very short email sent a couple days beforehand to account administrators as a warning. The message explained that Causes would be focusing on only providing service to the Facebook platform, encouraging any MySpace users that wanted to continue using the application to migrate, too. and then… 

ideablob Shuts Down

By now, you may have heard about the very abrupt closedown of ideablob, a competition and promotion platform for entrepreneurs. Late last week, registered users, interested supporters and social changemakers participating in a funding competition were all greeted with the message below when visiting the ideablob website:

 ideablobclose

Users (whether they were people with a project in the competition, those that had voted to support an idea, or were general registered users of the site) received no notice that the closure was coming, or even when it happened. The only bread crumbs to find were some business reports about Advanta declaring bankruptcy, like this one, that don’t even mention ideablob. Here’s a bit of John Brennan’s story (an ideablob member who was competition in the competition) from his comment on my original blog post:

"It’s upsetting that companies like this aren’t actually thinking or caring about the real people and ideas they are effecting. This week our idea was up for the sprint and in the top 3. Why did they even start the competition when they already were going through bankruptcy talks?"

and so… 

The Conversation

What’s this mean to you as an activist, supporter, volunteer, changemaker, entrepreneur, innovator or *insert preferred title* online? Well, it means a lot. We can see (and learn a valuable lesson about) the way current ecosystem of social media works in regards to transparency, data, and community. To unpack this, let’s narrow in on each:

Transparency
The lack of communication about the actual decision, but more so in the lack of communication about the development, direction and intention of Causes and ideablob indicates that transparency isn’t a part of the package. There are many who approach the online landscape with very different views than their offline business decisions. For example, if ideablob or Causes were a product offline, and you were a funder, an investor, or a consumer/user of ideablob or Causes as offline products providing no integral communication, you would probably not have ever considered participating/consuming. Just because you aren’t meeting offline, in real-time, in the same room with your supporters and the competitors in the ideablob competition, does not mean likewise that you do not need to know if the platform will even be around for your competition to finish. The transparency issue is a steep mountain to climb with social media. Unless you knew that ideablob was part of Advanta, and you were reading the business sections of the papers last week, you wouldn’t have had any idea ideablob was even considering discontinuing. But, transparency is even more than this, and really is a part of the Data and Community, too.

Data

We can count our Twitter followers or how many people have commented on our blog post, or could have counted the number of supporters on Causes or voters on ideablob, but that doesn’t mean we connect with them. Now that Causes removed itself, it’s content, and any related data from MySpace, organizations cannot connect with their supporters who were using Causes. ideablob participants are locked out from seeing any comments or feedback on their ideas. The fact that access to data, whether it’s supporters’ email addresses, tracking actions taken, or anything else, is instantly gone should be a big alert bell to those working in a "networked" way via social media to grow their community. To connect with supporters, organizations and individuals working on projects will need to be sure that data gets back to them. How are you encouraging your supporters all over the web to connect with you directly? For example, when you post a message (whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, or even Change.org) telling your supporters that you’re ramping up for some big news, a new project or something else, include a link where they can sign up with you to be on the email/announcement list. When supporters sign a petition or take action on your organization’s behalf in social media platforms, include "thank you" and "learn more" links wherever possible that link to ways to connect directly with your organization, ensuring the contact information is in your database, not just Facebook’s.

Community

In the Causes move, the issues around community are very clearly focused on the different demographic groups represented on MySpace and Facebook. With ideablob, it isn’t so much that groups are being separated/segregated, but entirely shut off. These events raise many questions and flags about diversity, opportunity, and even corporate decision-making. Communities on both platforms were clearly not part of the development and communications process, yet they were actively using the platform (for example, a grant from ideablob helped Epic Change implement a technology lab in a school in Tanzania). What is the difference between a community actively using a platform and one actively involved in the evolution of the platform? If a platform were to disappear, would the community be able to continue on? Perhaps so if it had been active in the development and direction (or, perhaps that would indicate that the platform would be more unlikely to disappear or at least not without notice)?

What’s Next

I don’t necessarily want to call for the communities on MySpace or on ideablob to call for the return of the tools. We can see by the issues raised above that the platforms weren’t necessarily operating in the best ethos anyway. But, I do want an arena for the communities to describe what they do want and be an integral part of the process to building and sustaining whatever that is.

How can this work? I can’t speak for others working in the "innovation sector," but at NetSquared we can’t emphasize enough that our Community is what drives us – whether’s it’s online or offline. Community feedback shapes everything from our goals to our website and everything in between. We are able to work as a small team on the organization side because of the passionate, collaborative, dedicated Community. For example, you can follow the website redesign process via the blog where the feedback and directives for the redesign, the people who stepped up to implement, and the step-by-step process have all been open and Community centered. This isn’t about creating a new splash page, this is involving the users in the design of the Gallery where their Projects are housed, showcased and voted on; involving bloggers in the design of the collaborative sharing space they contribute to already; involving Community members in telling us both the bad stuff and the good stuff, so we can work to make it everything they want.

As another example, the Net Tuesday network is now up to 56+ groups meeting every month around the world—a global network of events, bringing the NetSquared Community together offline—and growing in an entirely organic way. That doesn’t mean NetSquared’s perfect, by any measure, but it does mean that a quick abandonment isn’t in store. That also doesn’t mean that NetSquared is the *only* or the *best* place for absolutely everyone to find what they are looking for. It is, though, one example of trying to make it work.

Your invitation: Join this conversation. Tell me what the recent Causes/ideablob announcements means for our sector and for you. And share your ideas with your friends and colleagues to further the breadth of the conversation. The more voices the better! Here are some places to start:

  • Evaluate your use of social media tools: do you encourage your supporters on other platforms to register on your website, ensuring you have their contact details?
  • Evaluate your community: are you reaching a diverse community or operating in a silo?
  • Evaluate your relationship with developers: are you using tools that allow you to surface suggestions, ideas, and useful functionality for development? Do you know what the plans are for the tools you are using?

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Cross-Disciplinary Conversations, Innovation, Open Source Philanthropy, Philanthropy, nonprofits, nptech | Comments (7)

Twitter, Philanthropy & Influence

November 10, 2009 – 7:29 am

This is my newest column in the Chronicle of Philanthropy. You can find an archive of past columns here.

Twitter Presents a Chance for Savvy Charities to Reach More People
November 12, 2009 | Link of Chronicle of Philanthropy

Late one Friday afternoon this fall, Matt Flannery, the co-founder of Kiva.org, posted a message on Twitter: “It seems like my Twitter account is getting attacked by spam. 500 new followers a minute. Anyone else experiencing this?”

In fact, a small group of people who use Twitter to talk about philanthropy had also been inundated with followers. But the reason for the instant increase wasn’t anything as spurious as a spam attack. All the people who suddenly attracted new followers had just been added to Twitter’s official “suggested users” list of people worth following. Traditionally, Twitter’s suggestions have included celebrities like Al Gore, Shaquille O’Neal, and Oprah Winfrey, so adding the likes of Matt Flannery and other stars of the philanthropy world represents a big shift.

Twitter’s decision to elevate people in philanthropy to its list of those worthy of watching is important for the nonprofit world. It gives people at foundations and other nonprofit organizations a new platform to attract supporters and discuss important issues — but people in philanthropy will need to change their ways if they plan to capitalize on this important moment.

It is easy to dismiss Twitter, since it requires that people post their thoughts within a limit of 140 characters at a time. Many press releases put out by foundations feature headlines two or three times longer than an average “tweet.”

But this has been the year for Twitter to enter the mainstream of online social networks. While President Obama was considered cutting edge when he released his choice of a running mate in 2008 via text message, it’s clear he would have used Twitter to make such an announcement if he were trying to stir the same kind of excitement this year.

Twitter allows people who broadcast messages to get the word out to anyone who has signed up to listen. And reading the messages doesn’t require any special access; just sign up to follow someone and you can get all the public messages the person sends.

Twitter has also gotten some attention in philanthropy this year. At the annual conference of the Council on Foundations this spring, people were using Twitter to post messages about many of the sessions, in part because the council created an official Twitter account from which it encouraged conference goers to chat about sessions they attended.

But to a large degree, Twitter posts about philanthropy end up circulating within a small group of people who are passionate about the subject. While a hot topic might capture the interest of a small number of Twitter posters, those tweets rarely if ever “go viral” and branch out to reach the millions of people who use Twitter for reasons that go well beyond philanthropy.

However, that could soon be changing, as Matt Flannery learned.

When Twitter decided to add a group of philanthropy-focused people to its suggestion list, it vastly expanded the number of people who now get updates on nonprofit issues.

In addition to adding Matt Flannery, Twitter highlighted organizations like the Skoll Foundation and the Acumen Fund as well as individuals like the nonprofit-social-media expert Beth Kanter and the social entrepreneur Kjerstin Erickson.

The results of getting on Twitter’s suggested user list are phenomenal.

Since he was added, Mr. Flannery’s follower count has ballooned from a couple thousand to more than a hundred thousand. If the experience of the past is a guide, then the new philanthropy-focused members of the list can expect to add half a million or more followers over time. The exposure is seen as being so valuable that the Internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis once offered Twitter $250,000 if it would add him to the list.

Those kinds of numbers make Twitter a key forum for discussions of philanthropy, in many cases outstripping the number of people who subscribe to print and online publications about nonprofit affairs.

But what is even more important about Twitter’s decision to highlight nonprofit leaders in its list is that it is yet another sign that philanthropy itself is becoming more and more a part of mainstream culture. News organizations are devoting more attention to nonprofit affairs, Product Red made giving a prominent part of the consumer world, and the NBC drama The Philanthropist brought the topic to prime time.

As a result, philanthropy is no longer a topic of discussion reserved for the ultra wealthy, nonprofit executives, or academic researchers. As with any topic that goes mainstream, many insiders will complain that the subject is too nuanced for the masses to understand.

But the people and organizations that can figure out how to speak authentically about philanthropy to a mainstream voice — without dumbing down the subject or talking over the heads of the newly formed crowds — will dominate the discussions about the nonprofit world in the coming months and years.

For the most part, people in philanthropy have a tradition of speaking in jargon-filled messages to other philanthropy insiders.

But preaching to the choir never changed the world.

While it might be a strange new world for philanthropy, unless more people at foundations and charities learn to speak to the newly gathering mainstream audiences, they may blow a huge opportunity to radically expand the influence of the nonprofit world.

Sean Stannard-Stockton is chief executive of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, in Burlingame, Calif., and author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog. He is a regular columnist for the The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Chronicle of Philanthropy Column, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (4)

DonorsChoose vs Kiva

October 14, 2009 – 11:12 am

Most people in the Kiva debate have stated that the fact Kiva loans have already been funded prior to them appearing on the Kiva website is misleading, but that this pre-funding approach is better for the entrepreneurs that Kiva’s users are trying to help. However, it has also been pointed out by many that DonorsChoose, a website that let’s donors support projects in public schools, really does offer the opportunity for donors to directly fund a project.

Here’s a comment I just received from Mike Everett-Lane, former executive director of DonorsChoose Northeast:

The central issue, to me, isn’t that the pool of money is fungible (i.e., my donation goes into a large pool, out of which the partners are funded, out of which individual loans are made). Nor is the question of microphilanthropy vs. the need to fund overhead. The issue is that Kiva implies that the lender’s choice helps determine who gets a loan.

Kiva gives the impression that if lenders do not fund a project, that project will not happen. Right now there’s a project with $250 left to go, and it “expires” in 8 hours, 15 minutes. That gives me a sense of urgency. I might even give the whole amount. But if the loan has already been made, then the “expiration” isn’t true. There is no real choice.

I worked for a number of years at DonorsChoose.org, and I can tell you that giving donors an actual choice is hard. Good projects will go unfunded. You have to return credits to donors who have partially funded a project that never happened, and convince them to reapply those funds to a new project, which itself might not be fully funded, etc. Tracking it all is no piece of cake, either. But if you don’t do all of this, you’re not being transparent, and you’re not giving your donors real choice.

I don’t believe that microphilanthropy (or microfinance, peer-to-peer giving, etc.) is a good solution for most problems. DonorsChoose.org has an advantage, in that they are funding discrete classroom projects within public schools, but do not have to fund the infrastructure of the schools themselves. Most problems just couldn’t be solved in this way. (”I’d like to fund only the violas in the orchestra, please.”) But if you’re going to advertise yourself as giving choice to the donor, you’d better do it.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, microfinance | Comments (3)

Philanthropy Debate in a Twitter World

October 14, 2009 – 9:05 am

The recent debate about Kiva is the first major philanthropy blog debate since Twitter added a number of philanthropy focused users to their Suggested User list. What makes the debate doubly interesting is that Kiva and their CEO Matt Flannery are two of the Twitter users on the Suggested User list. So let’s look at some of the data points and their implications.

  • Kiva and Matt Flannery’s follower counts on Twitter went from a couple thousand a piece before being added to the Suggested User list to 61,000 and 47,000 respectively today (just 12 days since they were added).
  • To put that in perspective, the Chronicle of Philanthropy has a circulation of 34,000 (that’s paid subscription to the newspaper, not their Twitter followers. In may ways it is an apples to oranges comparison, but it does give a sense of reach).
  • Acumen Fund, another new Suggested User, has seen their follower count go from a couple thousand to 52,000.
  • After I published the post yesterday summarizing the Kiva controversy, Acumen Fund tweeted a link to the post. That link has been retweeted 37 times and generated 276 visitors to this blog (over the last 23 hours). A second Acumen Fund tweet to another post I wrote on the issue has generated another 75 visitors.
  • Reading through the profiles of the people who retweeted the Acumen Fund tweet, it appears that many of them have some familiarity with Kiva, but are not regular readers of the philanthropy blogs.
  • These new readers didn’t just click on the link and then move on. The number one outbound link on my blog yesterday was the link to the GiveWell blog’s graphical representation of how Kiva explains their process to donors compared to how they explain it to microfinance institutions. This link was halfway down the post, suggesting that many visitors read through the post and took action to learn more.
  • Including all Twitter users (not just Acumen Fund), Twitter was responsible for 44% of all Tactical Philanthropy readers yesterday.
  • Yet the official Kiva Twitter account has made no mention of the debate and Matt Flannery’s Twitter feed links only to the guest post he wrote giving Kiva’s side of the story on David Roodman’s blog.

A number of the new Tactical Philanthropy readers who came in via the Acumen Fund tweet left comments on my posts. A quick scan of other posts on the debate suggests that readers new to the philanthropy blogs found the debate engaging and are asking questions about important issues.

The Kiva debate is complicated. There is good cause to criticize them and good cause to defend them. What is exciting is that we now have a vibrant online debate about important issues in philanthropy and new platforms like Twitter are exposing non-traditional audiences to these debates.

At the time the Twitter Suggested User list was published, I suggested that the new members needed to realize they were talking to a new audience then they were before and they needed to adjust accordingly.

One small suggestion I would make is to point out that the members of the list are now speaking to a mainstream audience rather than social entrepreneur insiders. I know from my experience writing for the Financial Times, that writing for a mainstream audience is more difficult but also offers more opportunity than speaking to people who already “get” where you are coming from.

Imagine you are giving a talk to a small group of people who are passionate about social change. All of a sudden the walls around the room you are speaking in come crashing down and you realize that their are thousand and thousands of new people outside the room who are now crowding around to hear you.

What would you say?

The Twitter Suggested Users suddenly find themselves holding a powerful new tool. They have the ability to point people’s attention to the subjects they pick. This isn’t a small deal. The current debate is about the validity of Kiva, one of the most highly touted of the “new philanthropy” brands. I’m not sure where this all goes, but I think it is healthy to have so many new people being exposed to the discourse. And I think new winners and losers are going to emerge.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, Storytelling, Transparency, microfinance, nptech | Comments (0)

Twitter’s Message to Social Entrepreneurs

October 5, 2009 – 7:03 am

On Friday afternoon, Twitter added a number of social entrepreneurs to their “suggested user” list. Over the weekend, Twitter employee Claire Williams (who new suggested user Kjerstin Erickson of FORGE says made the push internally to add social entrepreneurs to the list) left a message for Tactical Philanthropy readers:

Hey All –

We’re honored to be able to use Twitter to highlight your amazing work! Do contact me with any questions.

Claire and everybody at Twitter

A quick glance at the Twitter profiles of some of the people added to the list shows that their number of followers exploded to as much as ten times what they were on Friday. It will be interesting to see how the members of the list use their new found popularity.

One small suggestion I would make is to point out that the members of the list are now speaking to a mainstream audience rather than social entrepreneur insiders. I know from my experience writing for the Financial Times, that writing for a mainstream audience is more difficult but also offers more opportunity than speaking to people who already “get” where you are coming from.

Imagine you are giving a talk to a small group of people who are passionate about social change. All of a sudden the walls around the room you are speaking in come crashing down and you realize that their are thousand and thousands of new people outside the room who are now crowding around to hear you.

What would you say?

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy, Spreading Ideas, nptech | Comments (0)

Twitter Boosts Social Entrepreneurs

October 2, 2009 – 5:31 pm

Late this afternoon, Twitter added a bunch of social entrepreneurship focused Twitter users to their “suggested users” list. For the most part the “suggested user” list is made up of people like Al Gore, Lance Armstrong, Ashton Kutcher, John McCain and Martha Stewart who have millions of followers on Twitter.

When the list was updated, Kiva.org co-founder Matt Flannery thought there was a spam attack and complained about the 500 new users a minute he was getting. This is a big and important move by Twitter. The new “suggested users” are:

To their huge credit Social Edge immediately sent out a message to all their new users pointing them to a list of 100 other social entrepreneur focused Twitter users.

In June the New York Times wrote about the “suggested user” list saying that Twitter was now a “king maker”. They said being listed could add 500,000 followers and pointed out that social media titan Jason Calacanis offered $250,000 to be listed.

Stuff like this is what pushes the evolving social capital markets into the mainstream.

Update from new “suggested user” Kjerstin Erickson: “From what I can tell, this is an initiative of Claire Williams (@trippingonwords), a 2009 Skoll Scholar now working on Social Innovation for Twitter. Just another little example of how the movement is evolving, and how social entrepreneurship can be just as effectively (and often more impactfully) practiced from within existing companies. They are also compiling a list of Twitter best practices specifically for NPOs. Cool stuff.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Philanthropy | Comments (14)

Innovating While Getting Things Done

September 17, 2009 – 8:20 am

In Tom Watson’s response to Seth Godin yesterday, he wrote:

Change ain’t easy when the world keeps moving and you have the keep the lights on…

More nonprofits need to adapt, to experiment, to take risks, to embrace change. But they need to keep on providing services while they’re doing it.

This is a real dilemma. Interestingly, the New York Times had a story about exactly this issue last week.

In Welcoming the New, Improving the Old, Sara Beckman wrote:

For decades, companies from Cisco Systems to Staples to Bank of America have worked to embed the basic techniques of Six Sigma, the business approach that relies on measurement and analysis to make operations as efficient as possible.

More recently, in the last 5 to 10 years, they have been told they must master a new set of skills known as “design thinking.” Aiming to help companies innovate, design thinking starts with an intense focus on understanding real problems customers face in their day-to-day lives — often using techniques derived from ethnographers — and then entertains a range of possible solutions.

To many, the two skill sets don’t fit together well, and Chuck Jones, vice president for global consumer design at Whirlpool, explains why that may be so. Design thinkers, he says, are like quantum physicists, able to consider a world in which anything — like traveling at the speed of light — is theoretically possible. But a majority of people, including the Six Sigma advocates in most corporations, think more like Newtonian physicists — focused on measurement along three well-defined dimensions.

…The different world views, however, can be brought together.

At Whirlpool, Mr. Jones first proved the value of design with the introduction of the Duet washer and dryer. Duet’s novel, easy-to-use, energy-efficient design made Whirlpool a player in the front-loader market. After that success, he invited Whirlpool’s Six Sigma experts to help him improve design processes. They developed various new metrics — for how customers evaluate product quality, for example — that allowed designers and Six Sigma types to understand each other better.

Progressive Insurance has also turned design and Six Sigma techniques into reasonably comfortable bedfellows. In the early 1990s, it started emphasizing showing up at an accident scene and handling situations in real time, according to a 2004 article by Michael Hammer in The Harvard Business Review. That move reflected a designer’s way of thinking about customer needs, but the company was able to execute the idea through its ability to measure, analyze and improve its processes.

Both worlds — the quantum one where designers push boundaries to surprise and delight, and the Newtonian one where workers meet deadlines and margins — are meaningful. The most successful companies will learn to build bridges between them and leverage them both.

Commenting on the article, Tim Brown, the CEO of IDEO, writes:

I have to admit that for a long time I was highly skeptical of design thinking’s ability to operate in a Six Sigma environment and I was once quoted in the Economist as saying that it was toxic to innovation.

I don’t think that anymore. Having spent more time studying companies like Toyota I have realized that high quality (the goal of Six Sigma) is a great platform for new ideas (the goal of design thinking). Similarly, as Chuck Jones implies, Six Sigma can help new ideas get better faster…

Perhaps we should think of design thinking and Six Sigma being part of a cycle, each feeding the other to create new and improved products, services and experiences. Of course the biggest challenge will be to build business cultures that are agile enough to incorporate both.

I think Tim is right that the big challenge is to “build business cultures that are agile enough to incorporate both.” This is an area where nonprofits and for-profits share the exact same challenge. There’s no simple answer to this problem. It is simply something every outstanding organization has to figure out. As it relates to the conversation yesterday about social media, great organizations need to adopt social media even while older forms of communication are paying the bills. And while older approaches are being used, they still need to be improved.

No one ever said this stuff was easy.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in Design Thinking, Innovation, New Philanthropy, Philanthropy | Comments (5)

Seth Godin : Fear : Vertigo Tolerance : Change

September 16, 2009 – 10:01 am

Seth Godin is someone who a lot of people look at with reverence. Books of his like Tribes and The Dip have been very influential for me and many other people. But boy, oh boy did his post yesterday in which he called nonprofits to task for not embracing change and social media let loose a hornet’s nest of angry nonprofit folks!

(Full disclosure: The recent redesign of Tactical Philanthropy was done by onramp Branding. While they generally work with very large corporations, they took us on as a client at the personal recommendation of Seth Godin. In addition, Tom Watson who I mention later in the post thanked me in his book CauseWired, which I wrote a very positive review of. And Beth Kanter, mentioned as well, is also a friend.)

Seth wrote:

[Nonprofits] exist solely to make change. That’s why you joined, isn’t it?

The problem facing your group, ironically, is the resistance to the very thing you are setting out to do. Non-profits, in my experience, abhor change.

…Beth has a great post about the feeling of vertigo that non-profits get when they move from the firm ground of the tried and true to the anti-gravity that comes from leaping into change.

…Where are the big charities, the urgent charities, the famous charities that face such timely needs and are in a hurry to make change? Very few of them have bothered to show up in a big way. …The internet represents a change. It’s easy to buy more stamps and do more direct mail, scary to use a new technique.

Of course, some folks, like charity: water are stepping into the void and raising millions of dollars as a result. They’re not necessarily a better cause, they’re just more passionate about making change.

A few years ago I met with two (very famous) non-profits to discuss permission marketing and online fundraising and how they might have an impact. Each time, the president of the group was in the room. After about forty five minutes, the meetings devolved into endless lists of why any change at all in the way things were was absolutely impossible. Everyone looked to the president of the group for leadership, and when he didn’t say anything, they dissembled, stalled and evaded. Every barrier was insurmountable, every element of the status quo was cast in stone.  The president of the group was (he thought) helpless.

Sorry if I sound upset, but I am. The work these groups do is too important (and the people who work for them are too talented) to waste this opportunity because you are paralyzed in fear.

On its face, the post seems simple enough. Nonprofits are scared of change. Isn’t everyone?

But Tom Watson, author of CauseWired, a look at some of the best examples of nonprofits utilizing social media in service of a cause, argued Seth was wrong in his post, “Why Seth Godin is Wrong”:

Online marketing guru Seth Godin takes aim at nonprofits in a widely-quoted blog post “The problem with non” today, a diatribe of sorts that repeats a meme that’s been active in American philanthropy circles for at least a decade: nonprofits are afraid of change.

And it’s true, of course – at least on the surface. Most organization, especially large ones, do not race to take risks. But Godin’s piece is both simplistic and under-reported. Sure, it’s easy to say – as he does – that “non-profits, in my experience, abhor change.” Yet in my experience, they hate a change a lot less than failure – and they also hate change less than vast swaths of the corporate world (Wall Street and big insurance leap to mind).

…For one, I’m impressed every week by the work of nonprofits – work that does indeed, blow me away. And for another, there is some risk-taking out there – more and more capital directed toward experimentation – and some terrific advances in story-telling, organizing, fundraising, and activism. My book spent much 200 pages covering those stories.

…nonprofits are way, way down the list of sectors that really abhor change. Wall Street, big insurance, government – now they really hate change. More nonprofits need to adapt, to experiment, to take risks, to embrace change. But they need to keep on providing services while they’re doing it.

OK. So Tom’s arguing that nonprofits are scared of change, but not any more so than the for-profit and government sector. That makes sense.

But here’s where things get really interesting in my opinion. In Seth’s post, he points to a Beth Kanter blog post where she looked at the one characteristic of all nonprofits that do successfully adopt social media: Vertigo Tolerance.

Beth wrote:

The leaders of the nonprofits that can embrace social media can tolerate vertigo.  Another way to put this is:  the c-suite is comfortable with discomfort.

Wait! My post from Monday was titled “Accepting Discomfort as We Navigate Uncertainty”:

But I wonder, at the risk of sounding too Zen, if instead we need to accept the idea that the business of creating social impact is one that explicitly makes people uncomfortable.

It isn’t fun to feel uncomfortable, but it isn’t terrible. In fact, in many cases, philanthropists are attempting to fund programs serving people who are far more uncomfortable than then donor will ever be. The “discomfort” stemming from a lack of access to water or an unplanned teenage pregnancy simply dwarfs the “discomfort” that a donor might feel from grant-making under conditions of uncertainty.

…In fact, I believe that the discomfort caused by uncertainty is a requirement of great philanthropy. Great outcomes are achieved when an appropriate level of risk is undertaken; risk is caused by uncertainty, and uncertainty causes discomfort. We should not just advocate for philanthropy to become comfortable with uncertainty, but to acknowledge that great grant-making requires funders to accept discomfort.

Humans don’t like to take risks. We are evolutionarily designed to be risk adverse. But good philanthropy, just like good investing, requires taking risks. Maybe a Zen approach to evaluation isn’t just a new age joke. Maybe accepting discomfort rather than trying to overcome it is the key to navigating uncertainty.

So we’ve come full circle. Tom, Beth and Seth are all right in my mind. Change is hard. Too many nonprofits (and philanthropists!) find change scary and by hunkering down instead of accepting uncertainty, they are wasting an opportunity to make a difference. Wasting an opportunity in the social sector means more people in poverty, fewer children with access to education, a quickly deteriorating environment. Seth is right to be pissed off.

But all is not lost! We are in the early stages of a technology and demographically driven Second Great Wave of Philanthropy. Books like Tom’s document the ways that more and more social change agents are getting comfortable with change and embracing new approaches.

Seth’s post was cranky, but he’s right. The work of nonprofits is too important for them to become paralyzed with fear.

Tom’s post was right as well. Everyone hates changes, not just nonprofits. And every day, more and more nonprofits are learning to overcome fear and more capital is being devoted to experimentation.

And Beth’s post offers the road map to take us from Seth’s world to Tom’s world: Vertigo Tolerance.

We need to get comfortable with discomfort. Philanthropy and social change is hard work. It is not enough to have a good heart and try hard. We need people who are daring.

We need Change Agents.

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By Sean Stannard-Stockton | Also posted in New Philanthropy, Philanthropy, nonprofits | Comments (8)