Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion and Analysis
“Carrot and Sticks” Philanthropy
I was recently talking with a colleague who is working with a group of private and corporate foundations to discuss strategy relating to several high-profile and struggling human and social service agencies. My colleague stated that much of the discussion surfaced around the right amount of financial support to provide to the troubled organizations while also showing some tough-love as a way to motivate the organizations to get their house in order. You can call it “Carrot and Stick” Philanthropy and is similar to a popular parenting and management tool that uses both punishment and reward as a motivator. I have come to realize that this is also a common tool used by philanthropic organizations and can be a major reason why a struggling organization’s challenges are escalated further.
This theory is also at the heart of a new book by Daniel Pink entitled Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us. According to the Publisher’s Weekly’s review, Pink states that, “everything we think we know about what motivates us is wrong”. The article states that Pink “pits the latest scientific discoveries about the mind against the outmoded wisdom that claims people can only be motivated by the hope of gain and the fear of loss. Pink cites a dizzying number of studies revealing that carrot and stick can actually significantly reduce the ability to produce creative solutions to problems.” Pink’s view of “carrot and stick” closely aligns to the philanthropic strategy in motivating organizations.
In the opening example, the human service agency was given a $25K grant to engage in building its capacity. The support that the grantee could have used was a sharing of best practices, management assistance, and the support of real-time dialogue around the next steps for the organization. $25K may provide some support, but most likely will barely move the needle. Most importantly it creates a false sense of future support against a timeframe that becomes more crucial by the minute. This is similar to another example of a struggling organization I helped merger a couple of years ago where the funder both engaged in the same type of philanthropy while also systematically tearing the organization down among fellow foundations.
Organizations in crisis live with a different sort of organizational psychology. Typically organizations that are having serious challenges are living each day with such issues as the fraying of leadership, an under or over-commitment board, blurred lines of responsibility, resistance to change, high staff turnover and feelings of burnout and isolation. In this phase in an organization’s life, a funder can be a key partner or can help put a lock on the doors. As two-thirds of the sector is currently experiencing financial distress and 31% don’t have enough operating cash in hand to cover more than one month of expenses, according to the Nonprofit Finance Fund, the relationship between funders and grantees becomes even more crucial. “Carrot and Sticks” philanthropy is part of the problem and is not remotely close to the solutions needed to help our most challenged nonprofits. Funders will need to creatively use their resources, financial and non-financial, to help their most troubled grantees move over the hump. Here’s hoping they do.
John Brothers the Principal of Cuidiu Consulting, a Senior Fellow in executive leadership with the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Wagner School for Public Service. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard.
Giving Girls a Real Start
When I was in Dakar, Senegal a year ago, I met several teenage girls. They were confident and energetic. I loved Fatimah’s clothes. Bright bold colors with a modern twist to traditional Senegalese dress. She was wearing her passion for design and sewing. “I had a small embroidery business. Now I have access to credit to buy cloth and can expand my business.”
Another girl, Lekum, had begun selling coffee beans. “I learned to check the market before I sell anything. I asked each vendor how much they would pay for coffee. I found a way to get quality beans from my town to the venders by motorbike.”
Both girls have long left school. What they earn either helps their families and younger siblings or is reinvested in their business. Each girl got her start through a community-based youth savings program set up by PLAN International to serve vulnerable youth in West Africa.
What’s impressive is that these savings and loans associations are run entirely by young people, after a short period of training. Quite simply, a group of up to twenty meets weekly. Each person saves amounts as small as 20 to 40 cents. After a few weeks, the accumulated funds are made available to group members as loans ranging from $5 to $12. Each group sets its own rules about interest rates and repayment terms. At the end of year, the group “cashes out.” Members receive their savings plus a percentage of interest earned on repaid loans.
In West Africa, close to half of the population is under the age of 25. Many young people, particularly girls, are unable to complete even the six years of primary education. Options for out-of-school, marginalized youth are dim. Employment opportunities are limited to low-paying, unskilled work and sometimes dangerous work. Young girls often work as domestic help or in restaurants and bars where there are high instances of abuse.
These savings groups represent an innovation beyond providing marginalized young people with a safe place to save money. They are channels to deliver life skills training including financial literacy and health information as well as build self-confidence. For these adolescents, this was first time they had an opportunity to learn to save, manage money and develop new skills.
What makes this program unique and exciting is that young people play a critical role in the design, management and evaluation of the program. Both Lekum and Fatimah were not only members of savings groups, but also of the national youth advisory council that PLAN formed to guide the program.
Based on learnings from a pilot program, we are working with Plan to scale up the program in Senegal, Sierra Leone and Niger to serve 70,000 youth over 4 years. As one participant told us, “This project must go beyond us. We must spread this knowledge.”
Reeta Roy is president and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation, a private, independent foundation based in Toronto. Its global mandate is to enable people living in poverty, particularly youth, to improve their lives – and the lives of their families and communities – by expanding their access to microfinance and education.
Crowdsourcing Social Change
You’re a small, scrappy social change organization. You crowdsource. [Yeah, yeah, we know. It’s cheaper. Diversity solves problems faster. There is greater wisdom in numbers. Engagement builds collaboration and collaboration brings in money and volunteers.] But that’s not all. Crowdsourcing also turns Establishment philanthropy on its ear. “There’s not a lot of openness in traditional philanthropy,” Nonprofit Technology Network’s Holly Ross told the crowd that came to hear her, Beth Kanter, Netsquared’s Amy Sample Ward, video consultant David J. Neff and the Case Foundation’s Kari Saratovsky talk about disruptive change in the sector. Part of SxSW’s Crowdsourcing Innovative Social Change panel, Ross added: “Crowdsourcing is an ethos that the nonprofit industry needs to adopt to better itself.”
To be sure, open philanthropy – the movement for more open collaboration and transparency in the giving sector – is an urgent mission by itself. Thanks to the Web’s ability to produce ever-faster and larger outpourings of free information, knowledge is no longer scarce and sharing is becoming the most efficient approach to social problem-solving. [So what are some of the better examples of high-impact crowdsourcing? Here’s the panel’s short list, mostly of mobile startups. [Kanter asked her considerable social network back in January to start aggregating examples; SxSW attendees added some examples on the spot.]
- Open Green Map, offered up by Ross, helps communities map their eco-friendly spots, whether it’s a bike rack or a solar-heated apartment complex or a public herb garden. Using this open source collaborative platform, the Manhattan-based nonprofit has so far engaged more than 600 communities in 55 countries in creating citizen maps to catalyze new environmental projects, large and small. The maps are made by community members. OGM helps.
- NPR’s online community manager Andy Carvin cited Project NOAH. The acronym stands for Networked Organisms and Habitats. NOAH, now in beta, is a free iPhone application that helps people discover their local plants and animals and document them onto a common tech platform for review by research groups and others. In this way, citizen scientists can help to track new species or changes in the environment.
- Carvin also mentioned Open Street Map, a collaborative project to create a free, editable map of the world with the help of people using data from portable GPS devices. OSM has been used recently by disaster/crisis relief organizations to share such information as which roads are accessible and which are blocked in the wake of disasters or civil strife. [Ushahidi, another example, enables users to crowdsource crisis information that is then used to make dynamic, real-time maps of public health outbreaks, street rioting, food drops and emergency facilities during crisis situations.]
- The UpTake is a Minnesota-based citizen journalist nonprofit that crowdsources the news and helps editors filter hours of raw videotape for the best clips. [Think C-SPAN meets Ghost Hunters meets CNN’s iReport.] Everything is time-stamped; the UpTake’s profile increased during the disputed 2008 U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. [UpTake provided full coverage of the recount process, earning it plaudits for accuracy from established and online news organizations.]
- Seattle Free School, suggested by Ward, uses social media to organize classes and teach students. “The owners found each other via social media and the project was born from the interaction,” Ward said. “This is ‘for the community by the community’ education and engages the best local experts to share their knowledge and experience for free.”
- Invisible People, an nonprofit that uses video storytelling to help de-stigmatize homeless people. “Our hope is that you’ll get mad enough to do something,” its Website reads. Invisible People uses crowdsourcing to select the best stories and interviews.
There are numerous other examples, but what are the lessons that can be shared from them?
Among the takeaways:
- Mix it up. Crowd-sourcing that harvests input from both experts and non-experts seems to work best for groups with a lot of in-house knowledge, said Saratovsky. “We do it this way [at Case] so it doesn’t become simply a popularity contest,” she said. Ross said Free Range Studios’ Youtopia project is another example of targeted crowdsourcing. Free Range decided to give away $30,000 worth of free consulting to the most innovative social change groups, and used the crowd to help staff narrow the field to 20 finalists. Ward urged attendees to differentiate between an open, unvetted “crowd” and a group’s “community” crowd—suggesting that tapping into an organization’s social network is a more strategic and manageable form of crowdsourcing for some initiatives.
- Small organizations with skimpy budgets have the most to gain. Said Ross: “It’s about realizing that if I want to create the most value for my cause and organization, then that value is going to come from beyond me. As a nonprofit, I am a gardener in the process.” Added Kanter: “An expert now is someone with a great network. Crowd-sourcing lets you tap into a wider range of talent and skills than you may have inside your organization.”
- Start slowly. “You can’t go from nothing to a lightbulb overnight,” said Ward. Use crowds to help you innovate in iterative steps over time.
- Don’t expect miracles.“Crowdsourcing is just another shiny object unless you can tie it to outcomes,” Kanter said. “Millions of crowd-sourced ideas don’t produce anything.” Be very clear about what you want the crowd to help you achieve and deliver before you get started, then be able to measure the impact of those efforts.
- Make it fun and keep it simple. “People don’t want to do a lot of heavy lifting but they do want to do good,” said Ward. At its best, crowd-sourcing can be a form of civic engagement. At its worst, it can be exploitative. Be careful that you don’t ask crowds for too much.
Okay, dear readers. Now it’s your turn. How do you use crowdsourcing and what lessons can you share with the crowd?
For more on the panel, see a summary of its presentation on slideshare.
Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.
Advocacy Funding Pays Off Big
A new report underscores the big impact giving organizations can make by investing their charitable dollars in advocacy, community organizing and civic engagement.
Seventy nonprofits in Los Angeles County, Minnesota, New Mexico and North Carolina that received charitable investment in policy work generated nearly $14 billion worth of benefits for their communities over five years, plus other monetary gains, says the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
The return on each dollar of those investments ranged from $89 to $157, the report says.
“Foundation support turns indifference into democracy and the benefits of a thriving democracy are indeed substantial,” says Aaron Dorfman, executive director of the group.
In a new report on policy investment in Los Angeles County, the latest in a series of studies the group has made, it found 15 local nonprofits from 2004 to 2008 generated nearly $6.9 billion in benefits for local citizens from $75.5 million invested in their advocacy, organizing and civic-engagement work, or $91 in benefits for every $1 invested.
The benefits included $2.6 billion in higher wages, $2.2 billion in health-care savings, and over $2 billion in increased use of public transit, construction of new schools and expanded affordable housing.
Kafi Blumenfield, CEO and executive director of the Liberty Hill Foundation in Los Angles, says the research shows “foundations best serve their own objectives and generate the greatest impact on communities when we support advocacy and organizing at the grassroots level.”
The report recommends foundations step up grant for advocacy and organizing; help donors understand the benefits of advocacy funding; back collaboration among community groups; pool resources with other grantmakers; and invest over the long term in the capacity of grassroots groups.
By investing in policy and community work, and in building nonprofits’ capacity, foundations and other giving organizations can spur progress in addressing the symptoms and causes of urgent social and global problems.
Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper that is a program of the Institute for Nonprofits at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.
Hitting Reset on ‘Outcomes’
Back in January, I wrote about my deep, nagging fear that many efforts to assess outcomes are woefully off track.
Not everyone agreed with my analysis. In fact, I got hard pushback on some points, and a few commentators wondered why it had taken me so long to own up to my own limitations in my approach over the years to the topic of outcomes.
The majority, however, agreed with the thesis that we’ve lost sight of the ends we’re trying to advance. In the wise words of David Hunter, Managing Partner of Hunter Consulting and former Director of Assessment for the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation: “It seems to me that the mess you describe indeed is enormous and very destructive—because few people involved in this work have thought deeply about managing towards outcomes and [they] have put the horse before the cart—focusing…on HOW to measure rather than on WHY measure…and WHAT to measure.”
Sins of Commission, Sins of Omission
The feedback confirmed for me that nonprofit executives, staff, and boards; donors; and assessment experts are deeply frustrated with our sector’s work around outcomes.
We must be intentional about surfacing these roiling frustrations that are rarely getting voiced. If we don’t, we’re going to continue to perpetrate sins of commission and omission that prevent us from making even the slightest dent in the failing status quo that defines education, healthcare, and social services in America.
The most common sin of commission is when we funders, in the name of “measurement” and “accountability,” foist unfunded, often overly simplistic, self-serving mandates on our grantees—rather than genuinely helping them define, create, and use the information they need to be disciplined managers.
The sin of omission I often see is when funders and nonprofits run away from outcomes and their measurement altogether—that is, nothing assesses whether nonprofits are delivering on their promises to the families who turn to them for services.
It’s About Management, Not Metrics
It is clear to me that our sector needs a major reset on the approach to outcomes—from how we think about them to how we assess them. More than anything else, our sector needs a singular focus on managing to outcomes. Here’s precisely what I mean:
- Nonprofits need to gain clarity, through thoughtful introspection, on what change they are trying to create;
- They need to gain specificity on how they will accomplish that change;
- They need to identify what information (hard and soft) will be most helpful for determining if they are on course to achieve that change;
- They need to collect and use this information as a basis for being disciplined within mission—that is, to plan, make important decisions, track, course correct, and improve;
- They need to combine all of the above with good judgment and keen discernment, which are more important than any metric.
What Managing to Outcomes Looks Like
Geoff Canada, founder and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone and one of my heroes, raised a stir with some provocative comments that were published in the New York publication City Limits.
When Canada was asked to define success for HCZ, he said, “The only benchmark of success is college graduation. That’s the only one: How many kids you got in college, how many kids you got out.”
Canada could not have been clearer on the ultimate outcomes HCZ is focused on achieving. It’s not improving reading levels. It’s not getting kids to graduate high school. It’s not helping kids get into college. To HCZ, these are important interim indicators to ensure they are moving in the right direction, but, ultimately, it’s ensuring those young people make it through college that matters.
With that great clarity as a starting point, Canada and his team, with the help of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Bridgespan, and others, have gotten good at identifying the information they need to collect in order to manage to these outcomes. Are all the kids in the HCZ graduating from college? Of course not. But HCZ is on a very promising path.
A Challenge to Us All
If you’re not focused on outcomes (or doing very little), then please recognize that you—the executives, staff, board, and funders—have an affirmative obligation to engage. It’s mission-critical to know whether you’re on track to deliver what you promise to those you serve. I have great respect for leaders’ intuition, but intuition alone is almost never enough.
If your nonprofit has defined your intended outcomes and maybe even progressed to reporting on them, then please stop, step back, and rigorously question what you’ve done (or plan to do). Remember the critical, first-order question, “To what end?” Think about Geoff Canada. Are you on a path to gain the clarity he has achieved (after many years of struggle!) on the ends he’s trying to advance for the children and young people he serves?
I encourage nonprofits to undertake facilitated discussions, perhaps inviting informed voices to brief their boards and staff. For example, I’ve been fortunate to be deeply engaged with The Lawrence School in Northeast Ohio, which serves grades 1-12 students with learning differences and attention-deficit disorders. We have benefited greatly by having a facilitator—a seasoned, skilled professional who understands management and organizations well—lead working groups of board and staff to sort out and define fundamental aspects of what the school does and represents. The facilitator has helped us conduct concerted and lengthy efforts to gain greater clarity of mission and vision and define the school’s guiding principles and underlying values. Similarly, discussions are well along to clarify and explain more clearly whom the school serves and to define, with specificity, its educational model and how it differentiates itself from other educational approaches. The gains have been nothing short of transformational.
None of this suggests in any way that summative and formative evaluation are not important, particularly for building information about what works and what doesn’t for the field or a discipline. But if we really want to help organizations deliver quality services most effectively, then our priority must be on identifying the nonprofits with the willingness, propensity, and capacity to manage to outcomes—and then helping them do just that, with strong encouragement, significant funding, and relevant expertise.
Mario Morino, a former software entrepreneur, is the chairman of Venture Philanthropy Partners, based in Washington, DC.
“You” Video: The New Cause Politics?
And now for the next generation of the powers of social media to cause-politicize the masses, get ready for You Video.
No, we’re not talking YouTube. That’s oh-so-yesterday. Think 2010 midterm elections. As the political waters heat up online and off, progressives are carving out a new 3.0 approach to political outreach, launching a new type of fundraising video that, well, involves the up close and personal “you.” On video. No kidding. [Quick, better spruce up that online photo.]
To see just how up close and personalized these videos are, check out the latest “Blue State” fundraising appeal from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), in partnership with MoveOn.org and Brave New Films. Called “Glenn Beck Attacks,” the campaign personalizes a video interface and, using a Facebook interface that “grabs” your photo and other personal data from your Wall, instantly creates a pseudo newscast with you all over it.
The video caption reads: “Fox host Glenn Beck spent much of the last week claiming that a normal, everyday progressive was linked to Stalin, Elvis, Joe Biden’s cousin, and the guy who came up with the idea of taxes.”
The interface adds your name and picture to a phony CNN-like news segment, but for those who wish [depending on the level of your political angst or activism], the video can be personalized even further, to include one’s hometown, friends’ names, employer, and so forth.
Have a look by clicking on http://beck.cnnbcvideo.com and walk through the paces.
Is this the next generation of political advertising, or the next privacy violation? The site advises people to worry not: “This video and site are fictional and satirical,” it says.
What do you think? Is this campaign going to go viral or is it too close for comfort? And regardless, what applications might there be here for cause-related video campaigns? Let us hear from you.
Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.
What Matters About Mobile
So here we are, several weeks after text donations crossed from cutting edge to common place. I’ve been interviewed more times than I can count on what matters about text giving, and the real experts on social media and social good (Beth Kanter, Katrin Verclas, Allison Fine, Holly Ross, Geoff Livingston) have written, been quoted, held panel discussions, and written handbooks on the subject.
After all this good discussion, I’ve come to think that the question should not be “to text or not” but “what matters about mobile?” From the point of view of nonprofits, mobile gives them the opportunity to add a new location. Essentially, every organization in the world just got the opportunity to expand their footprint to include their current location and every mobile phone.
It may be like winning the location lottery. An organization can be where they are now and also on every one’s mobile phones.* That might be through a text short code. It might be through an App. It might be by being on FourSquare or other geolocation services. Maybe NPOs should start tagging their service delivery areas on Google Maps? The possibilities are many - far more than “just” a question of getting text donation enabled. Of course, like winning the lottery, organization now have to make choices they never had to worry about before.
Mobile matters. It matters as a news source and distribution channel. It matters as a payment system. It matters as a marketing platform. It matters as an organizing tool. Yes, I know the “to text donate or not question” is complicated in and of itself. Sadly, it is also too simple a question.
*(Noting that more and more nonprofits are being born on mobile phones - e.g., Ushahidi, The Extraordinaries)
Lucy Bernholz is the founder and president of Blueprint Research & Design, Inc, a strategy consulting firm that helps philanthropic individuals and institutions achieve their missions. She is the publisher of Philanthropy2173, an award winning blog about the business of giving and serves as executive producer of The Giving Channel on Fora.tv.
America’s Most Obese Areas Have A Few Things In Common
Although California is often admired for its healthy living, three of it’s cities made it to the 10 Most Obese Metro Areas list. Stockton, CA—which was also recently crowned Most Miserable US City by Forbes—has the highest obesity rate, with 34.6 percent of residents being overweight. This compares to a national average of 26.5 percent obesity, up from 25.5 percent in 2008.
Results from the Gallup poll show that regions ranking high on obesity generally rank low on healthy behavior indicators. Specifically, all of the 10 most obese metro areas (shown above) fall within the bottom two-thirds of all areas surveyed for frequent exercise. Furthermore, when they asked if people had a safe place to exercise, six of the areas came in below the national average.
In terms of eating habits, “of the 10 most obese places, seven are in the bottom two-thirds among all metro areas for reporting eating healthy “yesterday” and for fruit and vegetable consumption.” We know that eating habits develop based on food access and affordability, as well as nutrition education.
“Everyone has a role to play in this fight: the private sector, the public sector and parents must unite to combat the challenge,” said Lisa Gable, Executive Director of the The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation . In fact, the group just launched a $20 million anti-obesity campaign to encourage some of the world’s largest food makers (including Pepsi, General Mills, and Nestle) to reconsider the way they sell their products. This includes encouraging food companies to make packaging and labeling easier for consumers to manage their calorie intake while preserving or enhancing overall nutrition quality.
Interestingly enough, The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation is a partnership between these very organizations they seek to influence. More than 60 of the nation’s largest retailers, non-profit organizations, food and beverage manufacturers and trade associations are behind this effort to reduce obesity, especially childhood obesity, by 2015.
Because obesity is linked to chronic health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attack, it becomes an economic problem, too. Lack of access to health insurance only exacerbates the problem, leaving people sick and public services stretched. (A few months ago, the New York Times shared two graphs showing national obesity rates and Medicare expenditures).
Gable describes their program to target the fitness and nutrition aspects of the problem: “We are supporting physical and nutrition education in schools, promoting workplace wellness within our organizations, and making more healthy foods and beverages available to consumers in the marketplace.”
She continues, “Obesity is a serious health and economic issue for our country, one we all must work together to solve.”
Halle Tecco is a San Francisco resident and social entrepreneur passionate about technology, service and healthy living. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Yoga Bear, a non-profit providing more opportunities of health and wellness to cancer patients through the practice of yoga. Halle has worked as a Product Manager at various consumer-internet startups, including Enternships.com and Kiva.org. She also serves as an advisor to GreatNonprofits.org. She is pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School and will graduate in 2011.
Subtle Nudges for Greater Good
Many psychologists, writers and other students of human nature have reached the same conclusion: people are usually too distracted, tired, scared, or just plain lazy to act on their best intentions. But few of these observers suggest how us humans might overcome our less noble tendencies.
Scientists at a recent Stanford Center for Social Innovation conference, however, presented a bevy of tactics for transforming even the most bumbling schlemiel into a model citizen. Called “Small Steps, Big Leaps: The Science of Getting People to do the Right Thing,” the event showcased how to use gentle nudges, subtle tweaks, and quiet prompts to summon better behavior.
One of the most overlooked strategies for getting people to be generous, for instance, is actually to ask them, related Frank Flynn of Stanford Graduate School of Business. Flynn discussed his experiments showing that one barrier to “the ask” is that people grossly underestimate how often their requests for help will be honored. And if at first you do not succeed, then ask, ask again, he recommended, presenting findings that people who say “no” to an initial ask are more likely to say “yes” to a subsequent one.
You need not even tell people how much to give, noted Leif Nelson of the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. His findings show that people sometimes donate more when they get to set the amount.
And you need not feel guilty about asking people to help, because you may actually be doing them a favor, suggested Mike Norton of Harvard Business School. His studies reveal that giving people the chance to help others can improve everything from their mood to their dodge-ball game.
Even better than asking people to take the high road is making the high road the easiest one to take, argued Eric Johnson of the Columbia School of Business. When policies and practices turn good behavior into the default option, people tend to act more ethically—or, as Johnson put it, “There’s something very special about doing nothing.” For example, in countries where people have to take the trouble to opt out of organ donation—a post-death benevolence that many societies value—vastly more people donate their organs than do in countries like the United States, where people have to go out of their way to opt in to organ donation. Likewise, people save more money when their employers automatically enroll them in retirement savings programs and use less energy when florescent bulbs are the only light in town. (For more about defaults, see “Helping the Poor Save More” in the winter 2010 Stanford Social Innovation Review.)
If you must trouble yourself with framing a message, several researchers revealed how simple shifts in wording can spell the difference between vice and virtue. Just mentioning money can throw people off their altruism game, showed Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management. Her experiments demonstrate that even minor references to cash make people stingier and less sensitive to suffering—even their own. For fundraisers whose job is to ask people for money, Vohs’ findings could inspire dismay. But she has an antidote: First ask people to donate their time, and then ask them to donate their money.
Noah Goldstein of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management similarly showed the power of getting words right. Public service announcements and other social good campaigns often communicate that everybody pollutes, steals, carouses, or otherwise behaves badly—but you shouldn’t. (“Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” exhorts Smokey Bear.) Yet humans are herd animals; and so despite our claims to uniqueness and independence, we tend to follow the crowd. As a result, campaigns that imply that the crowd is up to no good often backfire: A sign in Arizona’s Petrified Forest reporting that visitors purloin some 14 tons of wood per year, for example, doesn’t deter such theft—it encourages theft.
A better way, said Goldstein, is to convey that most people are doing the right thing—and you should, too. Accordingly, a sign saying that most guests conserved water by reusing their towels (rather than having them laundered) inspires far more towel reuse than does a sign lamenting how many guests waste water.
Pictures and stories that put a human face on an issue can also steer people towards right action, related Adam Grant of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Radiologists read X-rays more accurately when they see a picture of the bones’ owners, Grant showed, and lifeguards work harder after hearing stories about heroic water rescues.
Putting people in the driver’s seat of their own narratives also works wonders, reported Steve Cole of HopeLab, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company that makes health-promoting products for children with chronic diseases. In HopeLab’s first-person shooter video game, Re-Mission, for example, kids recovering from cancer travel through the human body and, with the help of medicines, blast would-be cancer cells out of their paths. The game is clinically proven to help kids take their post-chemotherapy maintenance drugs—a crucial, yet difficult step in their recovery.
Nonprofits too must control their own narratives, warned Jennifer Aaker of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She presented data showing that nonprofits suffer from the stereotype of being warm and caring, but not very competent. To boost donations and public confidence, nonprofits need to advertise their business acumen.
But perhaps they should do so softly, for the resounding message throughout the conference was this: You need not scream and push when a
whisper and a nudge will do. That’s advice that even the most distracted, tired, scared and even lazy social innovator can get behind.
Alana Conner, PhD is the senior editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review. A social science writer, editor, and consultant whose specialty is cultural psychology, Alana received her doctorate in social psychology from Stanford University and her postdoctoral certificate in psychology and medicine from the University of California, San Francisco. In addition to her blog, Alana has written for a number of venues including The New York Times Magazine and Static.
The Normative Problem with the Term ‘Next Generation’ Leaders
Earlier this year, I profiled four “now generation” leaders to watch because they are, and will be, doing amazing things for social change in the next year. But the main reason I wanted to coin the term ‘now generation’ is because I think the ‘next generation’ moniker gives young people (and everyone else) the sense that we have to wait for some undetermined time before we can lead. We have to wait until someone hands us the baton. We have to sit on the sidelines until someone passes us the ball. And until then, we’ve got to sit quietly with the other kids and try to catch the crumbs of wisdom and power that fall from the big kid’s table. We’ve got to wait until we get “next.”
If that’s what we mean by ‘next generation’ leaders, I sure don’t want to be one. To be clear, I don’t see anything wrong with the term in and of itself, but rather how it may be being used to reinforce the current distribution of power in the nonprofit sector.
The Normative Problem
In some ways, I see the term ‘next generation’ being used to further the normative problem we have in nonprofits. Harvard professor and scholar Ron Heifetz talks about how “normative issues” in leadership can make it difficult for new leaders to emerge. Basically, the term ‘normative’ means relating to an ideal model or standard for something, i.e. the “norm.” Heifetz says that we have a normative problem when a community believes collectively that leaders have certain characteristics like age, experience, pedigree, etc. And when a community believes that leaders come packaged in a particular way, they are more likely to wait for those types of leaders to come, instead of allowing different kinds of leaders to emerge. By saying ‘next generation’ leaders, I think we may be implying that young people are up “next” when we reach a certain age or level of experience, which is, in effect “the norm” for current leadership.
‘Next Generation’ Leaders are Not That Young
Most characterizations of the ‘next generation’ assume that these leaders are much younger than current leaders. Hence, the waiting “until we get old enough” connotation. But the reality is that young nonprofit leaders who are typically referenced as the ‘next generation’ are not as young as people think. We’re not all college kids anymore. This year, the oldest of Generation Y will be 30 years old. We’re no longer the “baby” in the workplace, we’re managers and directors and CEOs of great organizations. In short, the young professionals I’ve been talking about on this blog for three years have quickly become the ‘now generation.’ But I’m not sure the term ‘next generation’ takes that into account.
Who Decides When ‘Next Generation’ Leaders Become ‘Now Generation’ Leaders?
Having a cadre of bright young leaders in the nonprofit sector is great, but typecasting us as the ‘next generation’can also indicate that we need someone from up on high to deem us “ready” to lead when our time comes. Using the term can make it seem as if young people will lead after all the Baby Boomers are gone, however we all know that’s not gonna happen anytime soon. Baby Boomers are staying in their jobs longer as a result of the economic downturn, and many are taking on “encore careers” as nonprofit leaders. So it’s up to us, the young nonprofit leaders, to redefine who gets to say when we’re ready to lead. It can’t be our bosses, our mentors, or some older and wiser colleague. It is we who must decide for ourselves whether and when we will lead. I’ve heard too many stories of young people who come into the nonprofit sector, do their jobs well, and wait to be promoted or included or at the very least, heard. What I’ve realized in hearing these stories is that if young people wait for approval from their organizations to lead, if we wait for someone to deem us worthy of leadership opportunities, it will never happen. We have to make our own opportunities. Malcolm X once said (my brackets), “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man [or woman], you take it.” I want to see us take it.
So the new question I think we need to ask ourselves is not what we will do as ‘next generation’ nonprofit leaders, but what we are already doing to lead right now today. How do you answer that question for yourself? Do you consider yourself to be a ‘next generation’ leader?
Rosetta Thurman is a writer, speaker, professor and consultant working and living in the Washington, D.C. area. She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofits, leadership and social change at rosettathurman.com
Give Permission to Peer Influence
A new report from the team at Forrester came out last week: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. It comes at the same time that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the importance of community builders/managers/leaders or organizational voices to give permission back to the community members. The evaluation and recognition of peer influence, something that is not only prevalent but inherent in social media, is something that help empower and sustain your communities AND increase your staff capacity. Let’s discuss!
First, let’s talk about permission.
As organizations or community builders active online, working to practice and create quality engagement, we are often trying to guide, collect or herd conversations and interactions into spaces that we have created or monitor closely. When I say “give permission,” in this post, I’m really saying that you should balance the herding and collecting of the community with the encouragement and empowerment for the community to go wherever it wants with your message or information.
Giving permission to the community is really just recognizing that conversations already take place in spaces online where you don’t have a presence, a fan page, or a profile. That people talk about your services or programs, issues or sector wherever they are and you may never know about it, know them, or be part of the conversation.
Giving permission to the community to have conversations without you requires trust. You have to trust that the community will take your communications or mission forward. You have to trust that the community will monitor or respond to comments or issues in a way that matches the way you would (that you’ve modeled the behavior the way you want it repeated).
The conversations and connections that are taking place elsewhere, whether it’s on or offline, don’t have to remain a mystery to you, though. Give permission for your community to report back - and provide the mechanisms to do so. Create places for or explicitly ask for feedback, not just about what you do and how you do it (which you probably already do) but also what your community is doing, learning, hearing, seeing, interested in and so on. This way you can build active two-way communications that help you stay informed but also empower the community members to be part of team.
Now, what about peer influence?
I’ve talked before about how to map your community and the messages within it. What’s so great about the chart from Forrester at the top of this post is that it shows you a great way to view segments of your database in an influential way. You don’t simply have to say there are people that respond to action alerts and those that don’t… I may not sign your petition, but what if I’m forwarding it on? What if you could send powerful invitations to spread the word or rally behind a cause or action to a select group of people instead of creating mass mailings to everyone you know? Think of the difference: your communications become more strategic, more streamlined, and more efficient by recognizing those in your list that fall into the different peer influence categories!
Giving permission to peer influence
All of this is really to say: you can create a multiple win for your organization and your community by giving permission to broadcast and influence on your behalf. It sounds simple, but there are always infastructre requirements behind everything. In order to give permission and leverage the peer influencers in your community, you need:
- to create a dashboard, toolbox, or any other catchy name where influencers can grab images, videos, files or messages that are ready to be broadcast
- to create opportunities for influencers to be unique or valuable with their participation
- to monitor how your influence tools are used (“share with a friend” or RT or so on) to see what content is best or most successfully shared and if there are new influencers emerging
- to provide recognition or spotlight for those that are taking your message into their networks and creating impact
- to help your staff, team or organization to understand the value in distributing the communications and influence of your work, and help them leverage the network in similar ways across all departments and campaigns
What do you think?
How has your organization seen peer influence or community leaders emerge in social media? How have you created ways to give value back to those driving your message to their own communities? (Think about all of this in terms of campaigns, fundraising, events and more!)
Amy Sample Ward’s passion for nonprofit technology has lead her to involvement with NTEN, NetSquared, and a host of other organizations. She shares many of her thoughts on nonprofit technology news and evolutions on her blog.
Third Sector Grit
Grit, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary, is a “firmness of mind or spirit, unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger”. Tales by Robert Louis Stevenson or the movie The Red Balloon were the stories of my childhood that got to the essence of “grit”. Recent movies like Life Is Beautiful, Shawshank Redemption and Slumdog Millionaire are examples of modern stories that outline that grit is still popular.
The nonprofit sector is great for many reasons, but one of the main reasons for its greatness is what I term, “Third Sector Grit” and it lives out every day to the many stories of unyielding courage in the face of hardship or danger. It is a quality that is overly abundant and at times minimized in the face of “innovation”. Third Sector Grit is most times not the stories of the sector’s executive leaders; more often it refers to those community champions in each nonprofit who do not have the larger titles but who are individuals that the organization could not move forward without. I would venture to say that the definition of Third Sector Grit are the individuals and stories in each nonprofit that showcase its most valuable asset, the ‘firmness of spirit and unyielding courage in the face of the hardship’ toward fulfilling its mission.
I led an organization through a merger a couple years ago and we were discussing the immersion of staff between the organizations. Through this process some staff cuts were planned for and nearly every staff member within the organization fought tooth and nail for a long-term administrative assistant. This person came to resemble the heart and soul of the organization and when the others described her, they described the many courageous acts that she had taken, without recognition, putting herself in very difficult circumstances. She lived and bled the organization and if Third Sector Grit was in the dictionary, her picture would be right there, smiling.
Recently I attended an event with many corporate social responsibility leaders throughout the United States. Networking with several beforehand, they spent much of their time talking about the amazing stories of their grantees or their site visits they had made to “the field”. They called them their “war stories”. The ensuing luncheon peppered various inspiring tales about their work with their nonprofit partners. Nearly every conversation outlined Third Sector Grit and it served as one of the major motivating forces behind this convening of these corporate philanthropy leaders. If I could have bottled Third Sector Grit, I would have sold it by the truckload.
Third Sector Grit is the main motivating force to why I work in the sector. I have many stories and love to share them. From the boxing coach in Washington State who used his pet orangutan to build relationships with young people to the two former drug dealers who turned their lives around following the death of a family member to start a touch football league to the counselor who works with lonely seniors each Saturday in the back room of an Embers. Talk to most in the nonprofit sector and you will get Grit stories all day.
As part of my regular blog postings with the Stanford Social Innovation Review, I will periodically feature a “Third Sector Grit” story. If you have one that you would like to share, please feel free to send to me as I may highlight. My e-mail is john@cuidiuconsulting.com Look forward to hearing from you!
John Brothers the Principal of Cuidiu Consulting, a Senior Fellow in executive leadership with the Support Center for Nonprofit Management, and an adjunct professor at New York University’s Wagner School for Public Service. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard.
The Right Measures
I still remember the embarrassed silence that followed when a colleague, over a decade ago, stood up in a room full of foundation leaders at a Council on Foundations conference and asked “What if we all committed to one common goal – to end child poverty in the U.S. in ten years?” People reacted as if she had made a rude noise. It was awkward, but beautiful too. Her question evoked the possibility of collective progress to a vital goal, and at the same time, it indicted everyone in the room, called our commitment and judgment into question.
Our sector is obsessed with the search for measurable impact in specific initiatives, but, as that story illustrates, resists calls to commit to such clear, measurable objectives like eradicating child poverty.
The American Human Development Index is an important tool, new to the U.S., that could help us resolve that tension.
The Index measures the three areas that most of us would agree are the basic building blocks of a decent life: health, education and income. The Index is modeled on the approach taken by the annual U.N. Human Development Report, which has now been instituted in over 160 countries; in fact, the Human Development Report is so well accepted and well known around the world, that some reports on the progress of World Cup soccer teams also highlight their respective Human Development Index rankings, and as Bill Pitkin observes, if the rankings determined the results on the field, the Netherlands and Australia would meet in the finals this June.
The Human Development Index approach was developed by economist Mahbub ul Haq and incorporates the “capabilities approach best articulated by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Laureate economist. (Chapter 2 of Sen’s book “Development as Freedom” should be required reading for all philanthropic and social sector leaders.) I’m not capable of fully describing and advocating the capabilities approach – but in a nutshell, it is akin to what parents want for their children. If we dig deeper than “I just want them to be happy,” most parents want their children to develop the capacity to choose their paths, so far as they are able. If we were to survey a wide range of health and human service professionals, chances are they would say they want the same for all the people they serve. (The capabilities approach has many virtues; among others, it employs a strong “informational base” – it is possible to ask people what they want for themselves, their children and their communities and then measure progress in their capacities to achieve it – and unlike other theories of justice, you don’t need to imagine a pre-social contract state of nature or an original position in which people are blind to the advantages they will enjoy by birth.)
In the U.S., the Human Development Index has been championed by the renowned venture capitalist Bill Draper and Ed Cain, the VP of Grant Programs for The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, who were colleagues at the U.N. Draper and Cain were driving forces behind the first annual American Human Development Report, published by the Social Science Research Council. (For more on the genesis of the Index and the American Human Development Report, see the forewords to the report by Sen and Draper.)
The American Human Development Index can be a powerful tool for determining the greatest need, targeting resources to those needs and then measuring philanthropic impact, even when that impact is incremental. By using the Index in conjunction with GIS asset mapping tools, like Healthy City (launching statewide California service on March 3), philanthropic, nonprofit and civic leaders can see where the greatest needs are in health, education, standard of living. The Index also could help leaders track progress index over time to judge whether targeted investments push the dial upward in a community’s overall well-being. “Successful investments in health care should, for example, result in measurable increases in a community’s life expectancy (which the index shows is lowest in Kentucky’s 5th congressional district, for example),” observes As Kristen Lewis, Co-Director of the American Human Development Project “Successful investments in education should result in fewer drop-outs and higher enrollment rates (these are lowest in Arizona’s 4th). Successful investments in the standard of living should result in well-paying jobs (particularly rare in California’s 20th district).”
Another important tool built on the Index is the Common Good Forecaster, which enables users to estimate the benefits a community would reap from increases in education levels, and a compatible tool is the Self-Sufficiency Standard. 1
The Index is only sensitive to the variables that it measures; for some philanthropic initiatives, a more detailed index like the Self-Sufficiency Standard, or a custom, tailored index may be preferred (one great, as yet untold story is how The California Endowment used a series of indexes – and help from Healthy City - to select 14 communities in California on which to concentrate under its new strategic plan.) But a composite metric like the American HD Index can enable comparisons across different regions, and even internationally.
The beauty of the independent sector is that everyone can choose which causes to pursue. That can make it difficult to maximize the scale and impact of resources dedicated to a problem, but that freedom is more valuable than the inefficiency it allows. The promise of ever-improving data leading to smarter philanthropic decisions – pushed by tools like the Human Development Index, the Self-Sufficiency Standard, HealthyCity.org and others – is that a broad range of philanthropic and nonprofit enterprises, acting independently and employing different strategies, will converge toward a shared goal, like eliminating child poverty, as my colleague so rudely demanded over a decade ago.
[1] Full disclosure: United Way is a partner with the American Human Development Report in the Common Good Forecaster, and I work for a United Way affiliate, United Ways of California, which also supported the publication of a report conducted by United Way of the Bay Area assessing the proportion of California residents earning less than the standard [. I’ve been a fan of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, however, for over a decade (I’ve written about it often, such as here and here), and that may do more to explain how I ended up doing the work I do now than it influences what I write in this post. I also am a proud founding member of Healthy City, a tool I’ve recommended in this space previously .
Peter Manzo is President & CEO of United Ways of California, which improves health, education and financial results for low income children and families by enhancing and coordinating the policy advocacy and community impact work of California’s 37 United Ways.
Corporate Giving Needs Better Metrics
Corporate philanthropy plays a key role in society and business but needs to be a better job showing it is worth the cost and in sync with the corporate bottom line.
That is the conclusion of a new report from the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.
The report, Measuring the Value of Corporate Philanthropy, looks at practices and measurement trends in corporate giving, at demands for evidence about its impact, and at new ways of gauging its social and business benefit.
“To realize meaningful benefits, corporate philanthropy must be managed no less professionally, proactively and strategically than any other core business activity,” the report says.
“Systematic measurement of the value of giving,” it says, can make “a more persuasive case for why companies should engage in philanthropic initiatives.”
And it says corporate CEO’s, the investor community and giving professionals “need to understand more comprehensively the many mechanisms by which philanthropic investments can be measured and managed to achieve long-term business value and solve critical societal problems.”
In talking with the investor community, for example, CEOs have a chance to distinguish themselves “through disclosures about their philanthropic strategies” and by leading the charge for stronger standards, the report says.
And in making the case to CEOs for corporate giving, it says, corporate giving officers need to show not only its social impact but also its business impact.
“Philanthropy can provide novel pathways towards meeting strategic business needs, such as improving employee engagement, customer loyalty, reputational risk, and opportunities for innovation,” it says.
And in demanding that grant recipients show whether they are achieving intended results with corporate support, metrics that measure only output “offer little indication whether social improvement actually is occurring – or, for that matter, whether unintentional harm is being caused,” the report says.
“Developing a theory of change and explaining how the program will achieve its intended impact,” it says, “are critical preparatory elements of measurement.
To celebrate International Corporate Philanthropy Day on Feb. 22, President Barack Obama sent a letter to business leaders saying current challenges “demand solutions that come not only from government, but also from entrepreneurs and business leaders around the world.”
Through their “skills, ingenuity, financial support and dedication,” the letter says, “corporate philanthropists and their employees have answered the call to serve, giving back in meaningful ways that help those in need and improve our communities.”
Corporate giving plays an essential role in helping to address both the symptoms and causes of social and global problems.
At a time of unprecedented financial stress, corporations must develop better metrics to track the impact of corporate giving and to show its value to their businesses and to the communities they serve.
Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper that is a program of the Institute for Nonprofits at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.
Mobile: Increasingly on Call
On February 20, Harvard Business School (HBS) hosted its eleventh annual “Africa Business Conference,” a collection of high-profile discussions, many of which focused on the centrality of telecommunications, mobile banking, and new media in African development. On February 27, Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) held its “Policy Making in a Digital World” conference featuring luminaries such as Jonathan Zittrain, co-Founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, panelists from the U.S. Department of State, and innovators from new platforms such as Ushahidi that enable crowd-sourced crisis mapping via SMS, and were instrumental to saving lives in Haiti.
Topics ranged from private equity in Africa to crisis response, but the commonality across both events for managers and innovators focused on international development was that new technology –open-source but coordinated and non-redundant, crowd-sourced platforms– is central to progress. That high mobile penetration makes it the platform of choice is no novel news. However, such conferences shed light on the empirics of how firms are innovating today, and raise important issues such as the fact that poor coverage and mobile promotions from competing networks impel many in Africa to own more than one phone, eroding the presumed mobile penetration associated with a number like 4 billion cell phones.
As I highlight in a Yale Journal of International Affairs article entitled, “Bringing Africa Online: Leveraging Technology to Empower Entrepreneurs,”, there are a number of challenges today. The HBS conference focused on one such issue in that current transaction platforms insufficiently enable informed African consumers to access global retail outlets, and preclude entrepreneurs from providing goods on the world stage. Online payment platforms limit access to many in emerging markets, and this impacts both consumers who want access to global providers, and retailers who cannot accept payments, and cannot fully leverage international promotion online.
Peter Ojo, CEO of Virtual Terminal Network (VTN), described how his service empowers Nigerian consumers by enabling GSM mobile transactions from all 36 states. Nigerian businesses can utilize VTN to accept mobile payments from consumers, and over 3,000 Nigerian businesses have adopted this platform. Whereas PayPal and Google Checkout are cumbersome and ineffective on the continent due to legal and payment restrictions, VTN streamlines transaction costs for Nigerian businesses while concurrently offering access to domestic consumers. Cost savings can inspire profit re-investment, leading to growth and employment.
As mobile is still the device of choice in Africa, mobile banking and mobile payment facilitation is a natural extension to what VTN offers in Nigeria. While lacking the patina of fellow HBS panelists, young Benjamin Lyon, Executive Director of Frontline SMS, discussed his innovative company that facilitates institutional mobile transaction capabilities. Frontline SMS is focused on helping provide back-end infrastructure that enables microfinance institutions to manage the logistics of frequent and voluminous inflow of mobile payments.
At Columbia University SIPA, Ushahidi Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships, Patrick Meier, spoke on the groundbreaking humanitarian management applications for crowd-sourced mobile response. Ushahidi, which means “witness” or “testimony” in Swahili, is a Kenyan organization supported by the Omidyar Network that focuses on crowd-sourced crisis mapping. Following the earthquake in Haiti, Ushahidi –a network of volunteers who had undergone brief training– scoured a diverse array of media, from YouTube, UN reports, local radio in Creole and French, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to collect instant on-the-ground information from Haiti, map, tag, and geo-code it with GPS coordinates for immediate search and rescue application. Whereas official mobilization took days, technology mobilization took hours, and within a week Ushahidi had been featured on CNN, referenced by Secretary of State Clinton, and thanked from the decks of a US Aircraft Carrier, by Marine commanders, and aid volunteers.
Meier stressed coordinated open-source development, wherein creation can happen without proprietary impediment, but wherein duplication is minimized, improving the consolidation of actionable information. He stressed real-time, visual presentation of information, and audience-attuned presentation. In the case of crisis response, GPS coordinates drive how teams are dispatched and lives saved.
On October 1-3, 2010 the International Conference on Crisis Mapping, focused on “Haiti, Chile and Beyond” will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, and will seek to expand on platforms that crowd-source local information via SMS, and relay actionable “tagged” information in real-time, GPS geo-coded maps. A demand-driven, volunteer network of organizations, the conference will be a call for input.
Whether in expanding financial services access to the un-banked in Africa, improving access to payments platforms to enable consumers and entrepreneurs seeking global online markets, or responding to crisis, mobile is on call. Many-to-many platforms that are developed open-source, and made available to all with the caveats of coordination, can continue to build upon crowd-source local knowledge. Repackaged in intuitive, actionable ways, its rapid response availability and ease of use will ultimately necessitate its adoption for pragmatists and humanists, a statement that was evident at Harvard and Columbia, and now echoed at Stanford.
Scott E. Hartley (Stanford, ’05) is a former Google.org Business Development Consultant and dual-degree MIA/MBA graduate student at Columbia University School of International & Public Affairs and Columbia Business School. He writes on Internet & Democracy for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
Donor, Dearest
Times are tough for old-line causes, but let’s be frank. It’s not just the economy that’s beating up today’s traditional charities. Donors are, too.
Truth is, donors have never been so fickle, nor so ambivalent. Now more than ever, they want details about the impact their money is having but don’t want to pay charities to do the analysis that will tell them. They’re loving the instant gratification they’re getting when using new click-and-donate forms of online giving [text-messages during the 9-day campaign by the Red Cross to engage mobile supporters brought in $26 million,] but surveys show that many younger donors, especially, would rather spend $10 a pop now (because they can) versus committing to higher amounts later. And despite all the talk about collaboration in the sector today, many donors still would much rather give their $10 to a Haitian quake victim than to the middleman charity administering those donations, just to keep the lights on. And that’s not all. As the use of the Net and social networks in fundraising are encouraging micro-giving – donations in smaller increments—it’s getting harder for some organizations to pinpoint who, precisely, their donors really are. A recent survey of six progressive nonprofits shows that at least one-third of their text-donors unsubscribe from charity text-messaging lists shortly after a campaign, partly due to concerns over the cost of incoming messages.
Governments aren’t helping. According to New York Times journalist Stephanie Strom, there is rising sentiment in the states and on Capitol Hill that maybe charities (perhaps in part due to the chronic pay and charity fraud scandals in recent years) no longer deserve all of the tax breaks they’re getting. “As states and localities contend with dwindling tax receipts,” Strom told a recent NYU philanthropy conference, Charities on Trial, “they are looking at the tax preferences enjoyed by the nonprofit sector and are beginning to ask whether those preferences are good public policy.”
[Not convinced? Pennsylvania recently tried to impose a small payroll tax on nonprofits; Kansas is considering reducing nonprofits’ tax exemption from sales taxes in that state, and many other states are eyeing the property tax exemption.]
But perhaps one of the most unsettling behavioral trends by today’s donors, says Strom, is their willingness to switch alliances to for-profit causes, apparently favoring the end results over the means. Newer forms of philanthropy have been quick to promote the use of for-profit models for social good, and the case they make is persuasive, Strom says. “Why shouldn’t GE get some sort of tax break for creating a system that better enables the management of health records, a system that would benefit nonprofit hospitals? “ she said. “When Citibank provides mortgage financing to low-income families, why shouldn’t that portion of its operations be eligible for the same tax treatment as a local community loan bank gets?”
Trouble is, Strom told the NYU conference, some of the projects seeking funding on some of the new online giving sites—such as Global Giving, for example—are corporate programs. Donors making gifts to support those projects “are, effectively, underwriting corporate social responsibility,” Strom says. “In other words, companies are using gifts for which a donor has received a tax deduction to finance their corporate philanthropy – something they used to have to fund out of their profit streams.” Meanwhile, she says, the Gates Foundation, among other private grantmakers, are starting to devote a small portion of some of their grants to partnerships with for-profit companies ranging from MTV to JPMorgan Chase and Merck, Strom says. Is this right? Should American taxpayers be co-funding some of these corporate programs?
Charities, in reaction to some of these trends, Strom says, feel like they need to “look more like business in analysis and evaluation of their impact. … Fundraisers, consultants and experts are now appropriating the language of business to try to explain what nonprofits achieve. What is social investing if it’s not philanthropy? And is SASIX, the South African Social Investment Exchange really a capital marketplace? Its Web site (www.sasix.co.za/) says SASIX ‘makes carefully selected social development projects available as investment opportunities with a social return.’ It sounds a lot like the materials I just got from Charles Schwab.’”
Is Strom correct? As the philanthropic landscape continues to shift and redefine society’s approach to social problem-solving, it’s clear that our notions of philanthropy – and the decades-old regulations that govern it —also need to change. But how much change is too much? Donors —not just the charities, themselves — need to be a greater part of that conversation.
Marcia Stepanek is Founding Editor-in-Chief and President, News and Information, for Contribute Media, a New York-based magazine, Web site, and conference series about the new people and ideas of giving. She is the publisher of Cause Global, an acclaimed new blog about the use of digital media for social change. She also serves as moderator and producer of New Conversations for Change, Contribute’s forum series highlighting social entrepreneurs and new trends in philanthropy.
A Revolution in Foundation Transparency
“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 a number of large foundations including:
- The Ford Foundation
- Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
- The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
- W. K. Kellogg Foundation
- The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
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 country’s 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 Foundation’s 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 listed above 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!
Sean Stannard-Stockton is CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors, a philanthropy advisory firm that serves individual and family philanthropists. Sean is the author of the Tactical Philanthropy blog and writes a monthly column for the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Philanthropy & Social Investing and has been quoted or referenced in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Financial Times and many other media outlets.
28 Days of Black Nonprofit Leaders: Benjamin Jealous
This post is part of a special series by Rosetta Thurman entitled “28 Days of Black Nonprofit Leaders.” In honor of Black History Month, Rosetta will be “highlighting 28 Black nonprofit leaders who have done or are doing their part to make our world a bit better, a bit more hopeful for the generations that will come.”
In her introduction to the series on her blog, Rosetta writes, “I love Black History Month because it reminds me of how far we still have to go in this country in terms of race relations and giving everyone a fair chance to take part in the “American Dream.” How far we still have to go before Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of social justice and economic opportunity for everyone will be realized. Fortunately, there are countless leaders out there who are continuing to address so many aspects of social change.” The SSIR is proud to publish some of their stories.
Benjamin Jealous is President and CEO of the NAACP.
From the NAACP website:
Benjamin Todd Jealous grew up believing that there was no higher calling than to further the cause of freedom in this country and in the world. It is a mindset he inherited from of his parents and grandparents. Their drive for community betterment blazed the trail for Jealous’ own deep commitment to social justice, public service and human rights activism. Now, as the 17th President and Chief Executive Officer of the NAACP, and the youngest person to hold the position in the organization’s nearly 100-year history, Jealous is well positioned to answer the call.
During his career, he has served as president of the Rosenberg Foundation, director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International and Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), a federation of more than 200 black community newspapers. From his early days of organizing voter registration drives up until his nomination and election as NAACP president, Jealous has been motivated by civic duty and a constant need to improve the lives of America’s underrepresented. All things considered, Jealous’ leadership roles and active community involvement have well prepared him for his current duties as president of the NAACP. In fact, his path through journalism and the Black Press is not unlike several other former NAACP presidents, including Roy Wilkins, Walter White, Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Dubois.
As a student at Columbia University, he worked in Harlem as a community organizer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. On campus, Jealous led school-wide movements, including boycotts and pickets for homeless rights, a successful campaign to save full-need financial aid and need-blind admissions when other national universities were cutting such programs, and an environmental justice battle with the University.
These protests ultimately led to the suspension of Jealous and three other student leaders. Jealous used this time off to work as a field organizer helping to lead a campaign that prevented the State of Mississippi from closing two of its three public historically black universities, and converting one of them into a prison. He remained in Mississippi to take a job at the Jackson Advocate, an African American newspaper based in the state’s capital. His reporting — for the frequently firebombed weekly — was credited with exposing corruption amongst high-ranking officials at the state prison in Parchman. His investigations also helped to acquit a small black farmer who had been wrongfully and maliciously accused of arson. His work at the Jackson Advocate eventually lead to his promotion to Managing Editor.
In 1997, Jealous returned to Columbia University and completed his degree in political science. With the encouragement of mentors, he applied and was accepted to Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar where he earned a master’s degree in comparative social research.
Jealous eventually went on to serve as Executive Director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA). While at the NNPA, he rebuilt its 90-year old national news service and launched a web-based initiative that more than doubled the number of black newspapers publishing online.
Most recently, Jealous was President of the Rosenberg Foundation, a private independent institution that funds civil and human rights advocacy to benefit California’s working families. Prior to that, he was Director of the U.S. Human Rights Program at Amnesty International. While there he led efforts to pass federal legislation against prison rape, rebuild public consensus against racial profiling in the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks, and expose the widespread sentencing of children to life without the possibility of parole.
Active in civic life, Jealous is a board member of the California Council for the Humanities, and the Association of Black Foundation Executives, as well as a member of the Asia Society. He is married to Lia Epperson Jealous, a professor of constitutional law and former civil rights litigator with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. They presently reside in Washington, DC with their young daughter.
See also: Benjamin’s 2009 interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy (video)
See also: Julian Bond’s interview with Benjamin during University of Virginia’s Explorations in Black Leadership series (video)
Photo credit: NAACP
Rosetta Thurman is a writer, speaker, professor and consultant working and living in the Washington, D.C. area. She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofits, leadership and social change at rosettathurman.com
Nonprofit Sector Needs to Be Better Understood
The nonprofit sector does not get enough respect.
The sector is big and sprawling, plays an indispensable role in society and the economy, and faces daunting financial and operating challenges.
Yet the sector generally is poorly understood and underappreciated.
A report prepared for Congress last fall by the Congressional Research Service gives a good snapshot of the sector’s magnitude and impact.
Released in November, “An Overview of the Nonprofit and Charitable Sector” features lots of data and information about the size and scope of the sector and how it is funded, and about its relationship with government and key policy issues it faces.
“The nonprofit and charitable sector represents a significant, highly diverse component of the U.S. economy,” the report says.
Noting that President Barack Obama has “turned toward the nonprofit sector while seeking solutions to social problems,” the report says the economic downturn “increased the demand for many of the goods and services provided by charitable organizations, while simultaneously placing the same organizations under increased financial constraints.”
In providing an overview of the charitable sector’s relationship with government, the report says that, in theory, “economics suggests that the government should subsidize activities that are either public goods or have positive external effects.”
And it says it “can be argued that some charitable activities possess these qualities.”
The report also examines the costs to government of providing grants; allowing charitable contributions to be deductible; exempting investment income of charities from tax; and providing property and sales tax exemptions.
It also looks at government’s oversight role.
And it reviews key policy options affecting the sector, including increasing government grants and subsidies to charities; creating an oversight agency within the federal government to gather data, conduct research, and advocate for the charitable sector; implementing policies to help charities and foundations in economic downturns; and changing the itemized deduction for charitable contributions by limiting the deduction, converting it to a credit or making it more widely available.
Among data in the report:
- Over 1.5 million nonprofits are registered in the U.S., nearly 64 percent of them public charities, nearly 8 percent private foundations, and 29 percent other types of nonprofits.
- In 2005, the nonprofit sector overall employed 12.9 million people, or 10 percent of the workforce,
- From 1998 to 2005, nonprofit employment overall grew 16.4 percent, compared to 6.2 percent for overall employment in the U.S.
- In 2004, the charitable sector alone employed an estimated 9.4 million people, or over 7 percent of the U.S. workforce, plus the equivalent of 4.7 million full-time volunteer workers.
- Based on employment, the charitable sector is larger than the construction sector and larger than the finance, insurance and real-estate sectors combined, and it has nearly half as many employees as federal, state and local government combined.
- In 2009, public charities reported $1.4 trillion in total revenue and $2.6 trillion in assets, while private foundations reported $181 billion in revenue and $621 billion in assets, and other nonprofits reported $386 billion in revenue and over $1 trillion in assets.
- In 2008, a broad category of nonprofits known as “nonprofit institutions serving households,” a subset of the overall nonprofit sector, generated 5.2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, or GDP, representing $751.2 billion worth of output.
- Nonprofits’ share of GDP grew 0.4 percentage points from 1998 to 2008, consisting of wages paid to nonprofit employees, the rental value of assets owned and used by nonprofits while providing services, and rental income from tenant-occupied housing nonprofits own.
- Charities raised $1.2 trillion in revenue in 2005, with fees or private payments for service accounting for 49 percent of overall revenue and government grants and contracts accounting for 29 percent; private contributions, return on investments, and other sources accounted for the remainder.
- Total revenue for charitable institutions grew 68.6 percent from 1995 to 2005.
- During the recession, from 2007 to 2008, charitable giving fell 2 percent in nominal terms, and 5.7 percent adjusted for inflation. Todd Cohen, a veteran news reporter and editor, is editor and publisher of Philanthropy Journal, an online newspaper that is a program of the Institute for Nonprofits at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C. Cohen has taught nonprofit reporting and media relations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Duke University, and regularly speaks on the topics of nonprofit media relations and trends in the charitable world.
Patient Optimists
I’m not an “impatient optimist” like Bill and Melinda Gates. When it comes to making the world a better place, I think impatient optimists are quite possibly a part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Led by some terrific organizations, the nonprofit and social entrepreneurship sector is generating solid evidence on the effectiveness of programs aimed at alleviating poverty, combating homelessness, preserving natural resources, and the like. The Obama administration has embraced this emphasis on rigorous evidence—and caused many in the sector to raise the specter of “epistemological nihilism” or paralysis due to demands for proof that is too hard and expensive to generate.
The real problem, and the real fear, among nonprofits and social entrepreneurs is not the difficulty and expense of finding evidence, however—it’s that the changes realized are often small ones. Indeed, sociologist Peter Rossi has gone so far as to coin the Stainless Steel Law of Evaluation: “The better designed the impact assessment of a social program, the more likely is the resulting estimate of net impact to be zero.”
There’s good reason for this, and it’s not a flaw of evaluation. It’s that human beings, political systems, economic systems and the social problems they create are complex. Despite this basic fact, the nonprofit sector and, increasingly, social entrepreneurs have told us for years that small donations or investments can “change lives” or make other huge impacts. It’s obvious why they do this—to raise money. But it also sets ridiculously high expectations among the general public. That’s why evidence that microfinance has had a small but positive impact in poor rural communities has been portrayed by some as a “failure.” To quote Esther Duflo, a co-founder of Jameel Poverty Action Lab and recent winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant: “[Microfinance is] useful, but it’s not like the miracle drug to end poverty.” The only reason we would expect it to be a miracle drug is that we were told it was.
Who’s telling us that? You guessed it—the impatient optimists. They’re doing it for understandable reasons. The needs are great; big solutions seem like the right way to fix big problems; and it seems cruel not to try to fix such pressing problems quickly. So if a program shows some promise, it’s quickly promoted as a “solution.” Only later do we learn that early results aren’t replicable, the program doesn’t work at scale, or the benefits are far more modest than initially advertised. The impatient optimists run the risk of producing inspired donors in the short term and cynics in the long term.
What’s the solution? Patient optimism—a view that combines the belief that change is possible with the belief that any significant transformation takes a great deal of time and effort. It recognizes that programs that produce small or marginal benefits even for a small portion of aid recipients are good programs. It funds continued experimentation to find ways to achieve a little bit more with each dollar. It doesn’t believe in silver bullets but is willing to place small bets on risky innovations with potentially high returns.
What’s an example? Deworming. Hundreds of millions of children suffer from a variety of parasitic worms and treating them is both low cost (usually less than $2 per child) and has a large impact on school attendance. However, we know that in the same locales where worms are a problem, the children don’t learn much when in school because of failures of the education system. Does that mean that we shouldn’t fund deworming? Absolutely not. But we should do so with the full understanding that we’re not likely to see large gains in educational achievement as a consequence any time soon. That doesn’t mean we need to try to fix everything at once—which doesn’t work either—but that we should make what small improvements we can, where we can. Deworming will improve lives in many ways other than test scores and will allow the people who benefit to take more action to help themselves.
Impatient optimists are like investors in subprime mortgages in 2007. They can be so blinded by the upside that they fail to do their due diligence. In the end, their impatience and pursuit of outsize returns fuels waste and disappointment. Patient optimists, by contrast, have lowered their expectations of any particular program or intervention, but not their belief in a better world over the long term. If we’re going to succeed in making the world a better place, we need to convince more people to lower their expectations, too. Then we can get about the work of trying, failing, learning, improving—and truly making the world a better place.
Tim Ogden is Executive Partner at Sona Partners, a thought leadership communications firm. He has edited 4 books on the intersection of business strategy and technology published by Harvard Business School Press and co-authored or ghostwritten several articles for Harvard Business Review. He is frequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Financial Times.
