SSIR Opinion & Analysis: Community-Centered Planning

Swine Flu: Why Local Organizations Matter

2009-05-05T18:25:00+00:00

The “Swine Flu” scare was fun, wasn’t it? No, it really wasn’t; but it did give most of the world a chance to react in real-time to what could have been much worse. In a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, David Brooks compared the global response vs localized response to the outbreak. I think this comparison, and context, is a great example of why local (read: non-global) organizations are still key in social change work, and why we need to be building stronger networks for data and information sharing.

Power to the People
Brooks shows that if the world had a global approach to outbreaks like Swine Flu, then the decision-making and directive power would be in a really bumped up World Health Organization-like group. This umbrella organization would require time for consideration and input from its members and wouldn’t necessarily be in-tune with the communities or cultures actually touched by the issues.

Let’s consider this example in comparison to a generic sector, focusing on a global issue, like the environmental & climate sector working on climate change. Creating a huge umbrella organization is just not going to happen realistically for any sector, at least one with the governing and implementing power suggested above. Instead, we want to keep the power to address issues in the hands of organizations spread around the world. It is impossible for one organization to know the stories, issues, culture and decision-making information of all locations. It’s hard enough to master one geography!

Speak the Local Language
As Brooks points out, people like to look to someone like them, especially in times of crisis. Local organizations provide this local face. We can speak the local language, understand the local culture.

In the climate change example, this means that we can brand, communicate, and distribute information, calls to action, and important opportunities for engagement in a way that encourages response locally. The missing link, though, is that the underlying opportunity (whether it is a petition to sign, an online or offline event, or anything else) needs to be networked across all the organization. The effect of having all organizations gather signatures on the same petition versus hundreds creating and distributing their own petitions for the same issue is huge.

Innovate and Reiterate
Lastly, one enormous organization could only respond to the Swine Flu outbreak or something similar with safe, tested protocols. But those are often not efficient or necessary. With distributed power through local organizations, medical teams, and governments, the response to the Swine Flu outbreak was something involving much more innovation and experimentation.

This, again, holds true for organizations working on social change issues. New messages, campaigns, and strategies can be tested, deployed, and analyzed in separate groups. What makes this more powerful? Leveraging a networked system so that when a new campaign works, or better yet - doesn’t work, that information can be shared in real time with all of the other organizations. This means the “what works” can get implemented faster in other places and the “what doesn’t” can be cut out of the loop without more wasted capacity.

Great, Now What?
So, what do we need to make this happen? There are tools like Zanby that allow organizations to link together to share calls to action across networks. This is a great start. But, we also need to be building out collaboration platforms that allow for organizations to link in with each other, share data and calls to action, but also feedback lessons learned—a way to combine experiential and hard data across the whole network.

What do you think? What kind of tools would we need to accomplish this? What push backs or culture shocks to working in this way would need to be overcome? Where would you start?

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.

Field Building—Does it Matter What Field?

2009-02-03T20:36:00+00:00

I’ve written a lot about field building and read even more. Nowadays, the word “industry” is often substituted for field. I suppose I could take some credit for this—since a chunk of my 2004 book addressed the issue of philanthropy as an industry—and, as an idea that was ahead of its time, I have some battle scars to show for that work. First problem is, I’m not so sure some of the fields now being called industries actually fit the definition¹ or that I want credit, and two, what we call them is not my point for this post, rather my point is how they get built.

Here’s what I’ve noticed from reading some really good reports on fields/industries/sectors/ecosystems as diverse as women’s studies, microfinance, impact investing, conflict resolution, digital media and learning, philanthropy, and social entreprenuership: the recommendations for building the field, or taking it from a phase of entreprenuerial fragmentation—what Katherine Fulton aptly calls uncoordinated innovation—to organized markets are almost always the same:

Infrastructure
Intermediaries
Networks
Standards

Sometimes, the recommendations make a mention of the potential role that regulations can play in transformation (though its usually couched in the philanthropically more polite term—policy change). Sometimes they include a focus on evidence, though usually by the time the “field building” discussion starts there is already a body of evidence.

Now, like I’ve said, I’ve contributed to this body of thinking. And I rely on it. I’m asking the following questions because I’m steeping myself in this question of transformation from disconnected experiments to organized market/system/ecosystem/industry/sector yet again. So here are the questions:
Do all transitions really require the same actions?
Are these actions too separate from the content of the market/system/industry to be consistent across so many disciplines?
Are these actions too separate from the content of the market/system/industry to be consistent across so many time frames? (women’s studies in the 1960s, social entrepreneurs in the 2000s, for example)
If the same set of actions for transformation are known to be necessary, why do we keep studying them? Why don’t we just “do” them?
How do we adjust our thinking to account for changes in external conditions?—technology, policy, resources, etc?
Why do we continue to shy away from the role that rules and regulation can play in each of these transitions?
Am I correct that we know more about building fields than we think we know? And is it really possible that the same basic interventions that worked in the 1960s will work now—is it simply a matter of where, how, with what technology?

These are real questions for me—they will shape or be part of at least two chapters/article I write in 2009. Please help me out here if you can. Thanks.

Notes

1. I cribbed (with attribution) the definition that I used in the book, as well as the examples of an industry’s components and the stages of development and the possible interventions from Michael Porter‘s, Competitive Strategy.

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.

Building Capacity for Hawaii’s Nonprofits

2008-10-20T15:00:00+00:00

Now you know my vacation last week to Hawaii wouldn’t have been complete without hanging out with some awesome nonprofit folks. I even got a chance to meet Nikki Love! No, she is not Courtney’s long lost rocker sis, but Director of Operations at Community Links Hawaii. Headed by Josh Levinson, formerly Deputy Director of DC Appleseed, the group is doing some really great work to engage and support the nonprofit community. Now keep your eyes on Nikki Love—she is really an emerging leader to be reckoned with. In addition to her day job, she is embarking on a new effort to reactivate Common Cause in Hawaii!

Community Links Hawai`i (CLH) is a nonprofit organization that provides high-quality, cost-effective administrative infrastructure, shared services, and organizational development to nonprofit groups that share a commitment to a just, healthy, and sustainable Hawaii. Their goal is to leverage shared systems and technical assistance, provided at competitive or below-market rates, to build capacity in Hawaii’s nonprofit community, promote social entrepreneurship, and enable work and activities that make Hawaii a better place.

I also met Lisa Maruyama, the new President/CEO of the Hawaii Alliance of Nonprofit Organizations (HANO). Lisa is a very impressive woman of color. After only a week of holding her new position at HANO she met with the local Chamber of Commerce to speak to them about the nonprofit sector! As a statewide and sector-wide association of 280 charitable organizations in Hawai‘i, HANO unites and strengthens the nonprofit sector as a collective force to improve the quality of life in Hawaii .

Rosetta Thurman is an emerging nonprofit leader of color working and living in the Washington, D.C. area. She holds a Master’s degree in Nonprofit Management and blogs about nonprofit leadership and management issues at Perspectives From the Pipeline.