Archive for the ‘Big ideas’ Category
Posted by Jon Howard on November 17, 2009 in Big ideas, Effectiveness
Last week, I attended the Social Enterprise Rhode Island Summit, a project of Social Venture Partners of Rhode Island. I came with a chip on my shoulder.
The term “social enterprise” has swept the non-profit world. Everyone from startups to the old dinosaurs of the public service world now claim to be “social entrepreneurs.” It’s a great style statement. Just tell me: what does it mean?
What’s the harm in a buzzword? For one, hoopla about “innovative, market-based models” gives business and government more cover for starving health care, education and other critical social investments of the real resources they need. Be that as it may, the SERI Summit knocked the chip off my shoulder with its energy, optimism, good will and some really smart solutions to problems described by featured panelists.
Who could be grumpy about Hippowater International, a cool low-tech solution to the huge burdens that fetching water imposes on women and girls around the world? Who would not admire Rajiv Kumar’s clever use of peer pressure to mass-market healthy exercise through Shape Up Rhode Island or the way his group’s leveraged the market value of the mission to underwrite national impact? What child of the Sixties wouldn’t be charmed by John Abram’s stories about South Mountain, the employee-owned design and construction company he founded?
What else I loved about this summit:
- Lots of stories, lots of ages, lots of perspectives.
- A big, lively crowd – 200? 300? More? – full of people I knew and didn’t know.
- Just enough slack in the schedule for random encounters.
- Lots of energy and curiosity and a refreshing lack of certainty.
- Mashups: new-tech/no-tech, for-profit/non, thinkers/doers.
The conference moderators frankly refused to define social enterprise. (Check here for Wikipedia’s definition, or this one, from the British government’s Office of the Third Sector). Instead we heard a wide range of ideas and stories from people who put themselves under this big umbrella. Here are some common threads I captured:
- Problem-solving
- Profit-seeking
- Social mission
- Innovative, inventive, creative
- Values design
- High- and low-tech solutions
- Focus on cost reduction
- Bias for data
- No “conventional wisdom”
A list isn’t a definition and none of these are qualities are exclusive to “social enterprises.” Lots of the organizations that presented looked like regular old, resourceful, dedicated and professional nonprofits to me. But, there’s no denying that this was a different crowd with a different vibe than you’ll find at conferences called by the Association for Fundraising Professionals, the Rhode Island Foundation or the United Way, all still vital centers of learning and support for nonprofits
I still think that the lack of serious, well-directed investment capital, not a shortage of clever ideas, is the chief barrier to moving the national needle on education, among other critical needs. Social entrepreneurs won’t get the job done if they settle for praise and token funding. But I’m now more hopeful that a generation of who speak a business dialect and live in an enterprise culture could really generate or attract that investment.
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on November 3, 2009 in Big ideas, Tidbits
“Nearly half of children will be on food stamps” read the headline on page B4 of my newspaper this morning. You can read more about it here.
I have to say, I was pretty shocked at the findings. The paper was reporting a study by Mark Rank of Washington University and his Cornell University colleague Thomas Hirschl. It went on to say that “90% of black youngsters will be on food stamps at some point during childhood.”
Then I turned the page and read an editorial explaining why I shouldn’t be upset about huge compensation packages for Wall Street Traders. After all, “Wall Street professionals… lost a lot more money than Main Street did.”
Right.
Then a story came on the radio that the president of our local Ivy League University earned $800,000 last year. That put her below the over $1 million in compensation received by her peers at 23 other private colleges, as reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported that over 58 private colleges now charge over $50,000 per year for tuition, room and board. For a family of four to be eligible for food stamps, their take home pay has to be less than $22,000 a year. according to that food stamp report.
For many, myself included, a college education was the path to a better income. But today, over two-thirds of college students graduate with debt averaging over $20,000.
Even in this recession, colleges continue to raise tuition and fees to their students – and that includes the public colleges of cash strapped states. The college graduation rate of black students nationwide is 43%, though much higher at those ivy leagues. But then again, I have to wonder how that breaks out by income of students enrolled as many lower and middle class students can’t afford private colleges and 3/4 of all African American students are enrolled at state universities, according to a 2007 article in the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
“Income inequality is at an all time high.” Nonprofit income inequality is also shocking.
Education is touted as the solution.
I still ask: How much is enough? What do we owe each other?
No Comments »
Posted by Jon Howard on October 28, 2009 in Big ideas, Fundraising
The genius of the subscription marketing model lies in flipping the vast power of personal inertia from “don’t buy” to “buy.” How can we in the nonprofit world convert many separate donation decisions into the one long-term commitment of subscription? How can we help our most loyal supporters make “donate” their default setting?
That’s what “Looking at Life as One Big Subscription” by Damon Darlin of the New York Times got us thinking about recently.
Magazines, gym memberships, cell phone plans, online computer backup services and cable TV all rely on variations of the subscription business model. Netflix has used this old model to transform the movie rental business. The details vary but the basic subscription model has the consumer pay (or at least commit to pay) up front for access to a product or service over a period of time.
Consumers get reliable and often privileged access to the offering, usually at a compelling discount. Providers get an assured revenue stream and reduced marketing costs. Even better, they get paid whether or not customers actually use their cell phones or gym memberships.
As Isaac Newton taught us, bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. Subscribers must get off the couch and take an action to cancel the agreement. As long as providers don’t anger them with bad service, most subscribers will sit back and let the revenues flow.
Does this powerful business model work for philanthropy? Well, symphony orchestras and museums already use the subscription model with season tickets or admission-based memberships. However, they actually provide goods and services over time directly to the consumer, more or less like a for-profit business.
What about the usual three-cornered nonprofit proposition where A gives money to B to deliver a service to C? Direct self-interest doesn’t operate here. Still, one category of non-profits have used the subscription model to support service to third parties since the 1930s with great success. Can you name that nonprofit sector? Have you adapted the subscription model to fundraising?
I’ll provide the answer and look at what that example could mean for other nonprofit fundraisers in a future post.
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 19, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Big ideas, Nonprofit Highlights, World News
“The Humanities make us RICH.” Or so goes the sentiment on my morning tea mug.
October is once again National Arts and Humanities Month.It just so happens that I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of the humanities over the last few weeks.
What are the humanities?
According to the National Endowment for the Humanities, as described in the 1965 National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act:
“The term ‘humanities’ includes, but is not limited to, the study of the following: language, both modern and classical; linguistics; literature; history; jurisprudence; philosophy; archaeology; comparative religion; ethics; the history, criticism and theory of the arts; those aspects of social sciences which have humanistic content and employ humanistic methods; and the study and application of the humanities to the human environment with particular attention to reflecting our diverse heritage, traditions, and history and to the relevance of the humanities to the current conditions of national life.”
The humanities are essential to Cause & Effect Inc.
In an evaluation of our work, we asked a colleague to interview a number of our clients. Our clients told her that one of the things that they appreciated about working with us was that we “got it.”
While clients meant our understanding of their organizational challenges, they also mentioned our ability to appreciate and comprehend the complexity of the societal issues that they faced.
In college, I was a geography major (concentration in urban social) with a strong sociology background. Jon was a history major with literature right behind. You might say we studied the humanities.
And while there are days that I long for more of an engineering or science background, I have always been grateful for the systems perspective that college studies helped me develop. I was constantly challenged to consider the interrelationships between political systems, markets, history, culture, art, climate, habitat, food production and more. To this day, we bring that approach to our work with clients – whether we are writing, facilitating strategic planning, or framing a strong fund development program.
The humanities provide the tools that help us make meaning of our world and our lives.
Just over the last few weeks, it seems that I’ve been especially reminded how the humanities manifest in our daily lives.
Last month, Lizzi Ross, the former director of adult programming at the ICA in Boston, spoke to the students in the class I teach at Brown. In describing how she went about designing programming to enable us to appreciate art that isn’t pretty pictures, Lizzi explained that contemporary art requires us to call on our knowledge of history, contemporary culture, literature, art, science and more.
“Ah, the humanities,” I thought.
Last Wednesday, I attended “What Now? 1932 – The Highlander Center Opens Its Doors,” a live taping from Action Speaks Radio. The premise of Action Speaks is to take an “under appreciated day in American History” and look at it through a contemporary lens. That show talked about the popular education approach of the Highlander Research and Education Center, which encourages activists from multiple walks of life to explore their personal experiences and connect them to larger historical and societal issues. “That’s the humanities in action,” I whispered to my neighbor. Rosa Parks, Andrew Young, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. are just a few of the “graduates” of Highlander.
A love of the humanities can be demonstrated beyond textbooks and scholarly works.
Tonight I’m heading to the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities’ celebration of the humanities and their contribution to life in RI. I’m especially excited as I sat on the committee that nominated tonight’s awardees. A lifetime achievement award goes to cartoonist Don Bousquet, whose humorous cartoons have been lampooning Rhode Read More >>
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on October 15, 2009 in Big ideas, Nonprofit Highlights, World News
Today is Blog Action Day 2009. The theme is Climate Change.
Bloggers around the world are helping to raise awareness and build support for gover
nment and personal action to significantly reduce greenhouse gasses which threaten the way humans live on this planet.
I decided to add our blog to this action because I care. Maybe it’s because I live in the Ocean State of Rhode Island and care about the impact that rising sea level and warming waters will have on its coastal habitat, wildlife, fisheries, and beaches. Or because so many of our clients are working so hard on this issue. Or because I’ve been environmentally aware most of my adult life. Or just because I consider myself a global citizen, accountable to current and future generations.
Why does climate change matter to you?
I recently wrote about the small ways that our household has tried to lower its environmental footprint. See “Green Musings on a Monday.” Hopefully you’ll try some yourself.
I also want to take this occasion to highlight the amazing work of the clients we’ve had over the last 13 years. These organizations do the hard work needed to restore, protect and preserve the environment.
While it may seem daunting to try to affect climate change at the micro level, every action matters.
While a local land trust or watershed organization may not be able to stop climate change in its tracks, their work creates healthier ecosystems which may prove more resilient to climate change. Resilient ecosystems are better prepared to resist, tolerate or recover from climate change.
I hope that you’ll take seek out and support some of these critical organizations or similar organizations in your own community.
On this day to build awareness of climate change, we’d like to highlight the good work of:
Aquidneck Land Trust
John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission
Connecticut Fund for the Environment/Save The Sound
Grow Smart RI
Knox Parks Foundation
Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management
Rhode Island Land and Water Partnership
Rhode Island Natural History Survey
Narragansett Bay Estuary Program
Nashua River Watershed Association
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Rhode Island Land Trust Council
Save The Bay
Tiverton Land Trust
Wood Pawcatucket Watershed Association
Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council
Westerly Land Trust
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on August 29, 2009 in Big ideas, Great quotes, Profiles of passion and courage
“Circumstances may change, but the work of compassion must continue. It is surely correct that we cannot solve problems by throwing money at them, but it is also correct that we dare not throw our national problems onto a scrap heap of inattention and indifference. The poor may be out of political fashion, but they are not without human needs. The middle class may be angry, but they have not lost the dream that all Americans can advance together…
“A fair prosperity and a just society are within our vision and our grasp, and we do not have every answer. There are questions not yet asked, waiting for us in the recesses of the future, but of this much we can be certain because it is the lesson of all our history: Together a president and the people can make a difference. I have found that faith still alive wherever I have traveled across this land. So let us reject the counsel of retreat and the call to reaction. Let us go forward in the knowledge that history only helps those who help themselves.
“There will be setbacks and sacrifices in the years ahead but I am convinced that we as a people are ready to give something back to our country in return for all it has given to us.
“Let this be our commitment: Whatever sacrifices must be made will be shared and shared fairly. And let this be our confidence: At the end of our journey and always before us shines that ideal of liberty and justice for all.”
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention 1980
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on August 24, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Big ideas, Fundraising
“Take no more than your fair share.”
That was one definition of sustainability offered by Margo Flood, Executive Director of the Environmenal Leadership Center and Chief Sustainability Official at the new student plenary at Warren Wilson College last week. (One of our sons transferred there this year).
If you’ve been following this blog, you’ll know that one of my great concerns is the concentration of the resources of the nonprofit sector in the hands of so few organizations. Fewer than 6% of US institutions hold more than 80% of the income and assets of the sector.
I’ve asked the question before “How much is enough? Philanthropic greed”
That’s why Ms. Flood’s definition resonated so strongly with me. What would happen if all philanthropic institutions held themselves to the standard of taking no more than their fair share. Perhaps more philanthropy, bequests, grants and government funding would flow to organizations that are just as worthy (maybe even more so) but without the class connections and fund development capacity that accrue to many of the largest institutions.
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 28, 2009 in Big ideas, Effectiveness, Fundraising
A robust sector includes nonprofits big and small and in-between. Keep repeating that.
In her latest op ed piece in The Nonprofit Quarterly, “Mom and Pop Giving Over to Big Brother?,” editor-in-chief Ruth McCambridge, shares our concern about national trends that overlook the value of “small, locally controlled organizations to civic life.”
She goes on to note that small businesses have disproportionately shed jobs in this recession and cites examples that indicate that this may be the result of government policy directing recovery funds toward the biggest corporations and away from the small guys. Ruth worries whether this will be repeated for nonprofits as this Administration works with “large philanthropic organizations to craft … approaches to ’social innovation.’”
We have raised the same question in different forms in this blog . See Now I’m Worried – Who decides what is effective and who should be funded or Are nonprofits only safety nets? among other entries.
If we get too caught up in focusing funder attention on “taking programs to scale,” we are destined to overlook the critical community building that can only be done by small, in-the-neighborhood organizations. Or, those scale-ups may overlook the impact of design that is an adaptation to local circumstances that doesn’t scale well or shouldn’t be scaled but should be redesigned for a new locale or new population. Or, even more likely, we may tend to forget that social change depends on a continuum of organizations, people and actions to finally tip power balances and produce desired improvements.
Thanks to The Nonprofit Quarterly for using its national platform to continue to remind the top of the nonprofit infrastructure that this is a complicated world and that the contributions of the little guys can’t be dismissed or ignored.
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 14, 2009 in 100 Things We've Learned, Big ideas, Good reads, Helpful sites, Research, Strategic Thinking
Today is definitely a web discovery kind of day. It started this afternoon when I received an email from The TCC Group heralding a new study they released called “The Sustainability Formula.”
The Sustainability Formula is based on an analysis of TCC’s Core Capacity Assessment Tool.
The formula is:
Leadership + Adaptability + Program Capacity = Sustainability.
I really liked this framework (though I think there might be a few missing pieces of the definition, for example, how about something around longevity? Or resilience as in – the ability to bounce back from adversity).
I’m working on a project now with the Rhode Island Foundation’s Initiative for Nonprofit Excellence that enlists an organization assessment tool by the Marguerite Casey Foundation that is framed around the 4 Core Capacities developed by TCC. So I was particularly interested in reading this report.
But my really amazing discovery was captured in one small paragraph at the bottom of page 2. It talked about nonprofit lifecycles and offered a framework that I hadn’t bumped into before. The stages went like this:
“Stage 1: Core program development
“Stage 2: Infrastructure development for the purpose of taking programs to scale
“Stage 3: Impact expansion which is defined as community leadership that changes the systems and policies that affect an organization’s ability to achieve its mission.”
I was floored, I have to admit it. One of those AHA! moments.
Some people have AHA! moments by finding the wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor. I have them when I discover amazing new organizational frameworks or research nuggets that challenge our sector’s core assumptions. (Or when I eat some really fabulous dark chocolate)
This was SO MUCH MORE VALUABLE than the typical “Start Up, Growth, Maturity, Decline/Renewal” lifecycle model I see so often. This was a lifecycle framework that was MISSION-focused.
Be still my beating heart.
As someone who tries to pay attention to new literature on nonprofits, I kept scratching my head on how I could have missed this gem. So of course I went on a Google journey to find more details about this model.
After a nonproductive search on TCC Group’s own website (though there are lots of interesting publications there), I ended up on The Philadelphia Foundation’s website where I found the article “Characteristics of High Performing Nonprofits based on Organizational Lifecycle.” Which I spent time reading.
That article referenced a 2005 BoardSource publication, Navigating the Organizational Lifecyle: A Capacity Building Guide for Nonprofit Leaders I had seen the book as a subscriber to BoardSource but I never ordered it because I figured it was just the same old same lifecycle framework. That will teach me to assume!
Yes, you may be asking about now, other than alerting your readers to all these great resources, what is the point of this blog entry?
Okay, here it is.
I regularly encounter individuals, usually good-hearted souls, who have done little research on best practices about how to build a great nonprofit. Or how best to build effective programs that address the problems or needs they’ve taken on. I’m always curious, when there is such great stuff out there usually for free, why they didn’t take the time to look.
Maybe they’ve taken to heart the old adage about curiosity killing cats and been scared away?
My problem is just the opposite. I rarely have difficulty finding really valuable information – besides Google, I’ve got great colleagues and Twitter to keep me busy.
No, my problem is trying to tear myself away from the next great read.
So, a word of advice: Try some research. You can learn a whole lot by looking, to paraphrase the great Yogi Berra.
No Comments »
Posted by Gayle Gifford on July 10, 2009 in Big ideas, Fundraising, Good reads, Strategic Thinking
“Give away one thing to create demand for another.” That’s the online business strategy discussed in Free: The Future of a Radical Price by Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine.
I had to stop my car so as not to miss all of Terry Gross’s interview with Anderson on NPR’s Fresh Air Wednesday, July 8th.
Now bear with me as I share a bit of my un-edited thinking as I was listening to the interview. (Why is it that I can’t resist exploring complex analogies on Friday afternoons?)
Anderson described how businesses are making money on the Internet by giving things away for free. I was particularly enthralled because the strategy he was describing — give the basic level away for free and then charge for the premium model — seemed to align with the radical museum membership program envisioned by Beverly Sheppard and John Falk in their 2006 book Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New business models for museums and cultural organizations from Alta Mira Press.
In their book, Falk and Sheppard ask why museums (and zoos, et al) discount prices for repeat users and thus receive the least proportional revenue from their best customers. In the commonly used nonprofit Read More >>
No Comments »
