The Bamboo Project Blog

Innocentive and the Rockefeller Foundation Partnering to Provide "Open Innovation" Solutions to Nonprofit Problems

A few days ago, I wrote about my growing belief that the value in Web 2.0 for nonprofits may lie more in the underlying principles, than in the actual tools.  An announcement made yesterday by Innocentive and The Rockefeller Foundation supports my case.

The Rockefeller Foundation and     InnoCentive today announced that the Foundation will create a non-profit area on InnoCentive’s     global scientific network, specifically     designed to spur science and technology solutions to pressing development problems.      The non-profit Rockefeller Foundation area on InnoCentive’s scientific platform will bring to     bear the talent of thousands of world-class scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs in solving     the most pressing and complex humanitarian challenges posed by non-profit entities selected by     the Foundation.

This “open innovation model,” which InnoCentive has pioneered in the “for-profit” arena using challenges posed by R&D-focused companies, will now be turned, for the first time, toward technological problems faced by poor or vulnerable people in the developing world.  The new agreement is the first step in a larger Rockefeller Foundation initiative aimed at promoting innovation in a manner that spurs development, and that specifically increases access to proven innovation models for work on behalf of poor or vulnerable populations around the world.  In some cases, the initiative will also help to advance access to, or distribution of, specific innovations that can be of important benefit to poor or vulnerable people.

Innocentive's process for solving scientific problems is simple--companies submit details on a scientific problem or issue they wish to have solved, along with a dollar amount they are willing to pay for the solution. Award amounts range from $10,000 to $100,000.

Researchers may then register at the Innocentive site and get detailed information on the problem to be addressed. If they wish, they can then develop a solution and submit this to the company, which reviews all of the options and then rewards the researcher(s) who provide the solutions that meet the company's guidelines.

Innocentive intends to apply the same process to resolving nonprofit issues with The Rockefeller Foundation footing the bill.

This "open innovation model" is pure Web 2.0 and I think will be interesting to watch. As a long-time consultant in the nonprofit world, I find that consulting contracts are as much based on relationships as they are on actual solutions. I've watched a number of nonprofits form relationships with consultants who, in fact, never really resolve the issues they were hired to solve, but they're so good at the relationship piece, they're consistently called back.

This model will flip things on its head, I think, putting the focus on the solutions and pulling together the best ideas. It also has the potential to harness the power of collective intelligence as you get many minds working on the same problems, but with different perspectives. Organizations would then have a range of solutions from which to select, as well as the option of combining some very different solutions that they might not otherwise receive. Seems to me to be a very viable and interesting approach that I'm looking forward to watching.

Thanks to The Business Innovation Insider for the tip.

Michele

With Web 2.0, Are We Missing the Point?

Lately there's been a lot of backlash against all things Web 2.0. It's as though we reached a crescendo of excitement, culminating in Time Magazine proclaiming "You" and Web 2.0 as People of the Year. Now, let the backlash begin.

But by focusing on Web 2.0 as just a bunch of different web-based tools, I wonder if we're not missing the point.

There's no doubt that Flickr, Vox, YouTube and BaseCamp have attracted followers because they're cool and easy-to-use. In the world of both businesses and nonprofits, they also invite scrutiny as we look at the ways to capitalize on what these new resources have to offer. 

But I'm beginning to think that the real revolution lies in the principles that these tools represent, not in the tools themselves.  In other words, it isn't whether or not you use YouTube. It's about whether or not your organization is embracing the values that YouTube represents, values that are having increasing importance in a networked, global economy.

In setting up our Web 2.0 wiki, I found an interesting article by Troy Angrignon that sums up the common themes of this generation of the Internet. Several of these are themes that I think apply to how nonprofits must evolve to survive and thrive in an increasingly connected world, even if they never create a podcast or blog a meeting:

• Collaboration--Nonprofits have long been on the collaboration bandwagon. But their collaborations aren't always effective. In a global world, working with others to achieve results is not "nice"--it's a necessity.

• Conversation--Most nonprofits have learned how to "talk" about what they do with anyone who will listen. But now we have to provide the means for people to talk back to us--and for us to do something about it. Web 2.0 multiplies the power and reach of conversations. It also provides the medium to make them more effective. 
  

• Community--Online tools make it easier to create vast webs of online "tribes " of individuals who share common interests and, often, common goals. These offer opportunities for nonprofits, as well as challenges. Creating the right kinds of communities and conversations creates the foundation for better collaboration and service.   

• Connection--People are connecting to people, but machines are also connecting to machines. Or they should be. The expectation is that we're using automation and data sharing to create deeper networks of service. And that we are collecting and using information in ways that create higher value for customers.
  

• Content Creation--It turns out that when you give people the power and opportunity to create things, they often will. And in large numbers. For organizations that are often strapped for staff, time and materials, harnessing the efforts of a willing army of content volunteers may be a major recipe for success.

• Cumulative Learning--Cumulative learning means that we build on the knowledge of others. In any organization, the ability to capture and utilize the knowledge and skills of their best staff can make a critical difference. But in nonprofits, this is even more important. Their services are often based on staff knowledge and ability. And in nonprofits with high turnover, effective managing of knowledge will ensure consistent services.

• Core Values--Transparency, openness and a focus on the customer are key core values of Web 2.0. But these are also core values that individuals are increasingly beginning to demand of the businesses and organizations with whom they work. Nonprofits that can master these skills will be more effective than those that don't.

• Cheap and Fast--Work is done quickly and for as little as possible. Nonprofits are generally good at doing things on the cheap (even when that's not advisable), but fast has often been a challenge.

While I believe that in many cases, the tools of Web 2.0 look promising for nonprofit use, I think that we can't lose sight of the larger issue here. Changes in technology inevitably create changes in culture, even for those who may never use the technology. Some of the lessons we need to learn are not just about what tools to use, but also about how our work practices may need to change even if we never actually use the tools.

Michele

Stop Managing to the Exceptions and Start Learning from the Consequences

In my work with nonprofits, I've found that there's a tendency to manage to the exceptions. This plays itself out a few ways.

In some cases, entire systems will be developed around what could go wrong. Staff management policies and and practices are based on the few who are problems, rather than the many who are not. Client services are developed to "control" the "bad" client, rather than to meet the needs of the vast majority who are "good."

I've also seen this principle in action when management are evaluating the use of new ideas or  technologies. They immediately consider the worst possible scenario and then use that as a reason to ultimately stick with the status quo. They've already proven they can live with the negative consequences of what currently exists, so in their minds it is often the case that "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't."

I think it's valuable to evaluate new ideas in light of the potential worst case scenario. You need to be clear about what COULD happen, rather than being all Pollyanna about it. But to me, envisioning worst case scenarios should be a route to planning to deal with them, rather than to shooting down something that could, in fact, serve you better.

I thought about this phenomenon when I was reading Chris Lehman's post on Dealing with the Worst Consequences of Your Best Ideas. Chris is the principal of a newly-opened high school in Philadelphia called the Science Leadership Academy. They are in the process of working through their first year and what Chris has to say about their planning process is applicable to nonprofits, too, I think:

One of the things I always try to keep in mind when I think about school planning and design, and something I said a lot to the faculty as we planned, was "There is no panacea in education and every great idea has a dark side, so what are the worst consequences of your best ideas?" It's important to do for two reasons -- one because I think that many educational institutions become reactionary too often, throwing the baby out with the bathwater when an unforeseen consequence of a really good idea comes along. I'd rather think about every potential dark side so that when they happen, I'm not surprised, I've thought about them first, and I've come to the conclusion that it's a consequence I can live with. And two, because you can look to mitigate them and plan for them, and speak about them before hand.

This is what happens in nonprofits, too. There is no panacea in nonprofit work.  We work with very complex social problems with no easy answers. These problems (should) force us to consider complex solutions with great potential to backfire. But unintended consequences shouldn't make us back away from powerful solutions. Instead, they should invite us to delve deeper and to consider how these consequences can help staff learn and grow to more workable options.

To illustrate this point, Chris discusses a recent issue that the school had with their students using instant messaging on their laptops:

We had some students use the laptops and instant messaging in really inappropriate ways. It was upsetting teachers and students alike, and we saw a creeping loss of a sense of safety. So what did we do? We talked about it as a community on our moodle site. The student forums were suddenly filled with conversations about what was going on, what screennames to beware of, how to block someone in iChat, and (I'm not kidding) discussion by students about how poorly this reflected on our community. The adults chimed in from time to time to give our perspective, and the conversations continued as we did continue to try to find out who was doing this. What was interesting is that as the conversations about the behavior continued, we saw less of the behavior, and I believe that to be two-fold, 1) We, the adults, made it clear that there would be consequences, and 2) (and more importantly) it quickly became obvious that the kids doing it didn't have a ton of support in the community. Kids were really upset.

This is the kind of thing that nonprofit managers fear will happen when staff use social media tools. Maybe they won't say inappropriate things, the way that teenagers would, but what if staff talk about non-work related things? Or link to something we don't approve of? In many cases, the fear of this will be enough to squash the idea before it's even implemented. But if you're willing to use this as a learning opportunity, these consequences can actually help you improve your community and capacity to function.

What strikes me about Chris's response is that the school chose to use this unintended consequence as a learning opportunity rather than to shut down their use of the tool.

Many schools (and nonprofits) would look at the experience and say "See--they're doing exactly what we worried they'd do. This is why we shouldn't have allowed them to do it in the first place!" But Chris and his teachers took a different approach. They used the experience to reinforce the organizational culture they are trying to create, one that is focused on developing students and their critical thinking skills, rather than one that is trying to create unthinking robots:

In the end, of course, this is about much more than how a few students used their laptops. It's about the culture of SLA, and how we create an open culture where kids aren't just told what to do, but have a lot of ability to make decisions in a caring community. There's a Vaclav Havel quote that speaks powerfully to this whole issue:

"Freedom is only one side of the coin, where the other side is represented by responsibility. . .

. . . (This experience)  reminds us of our own values and how we have to strike that balance, and not take away the kids' freedom to express themselves, freedom to make decisions, freedom to take ownership in our community, because that is our best idea, but rather, we just have to make sure we teach -- and embody ourselves -- the responsibility that goes with that."

To me, this story captures the essence of organizational capacity-building--having the courage to try complex new ideas and then to facilitate the organization through discussion and learning about the consequences of those ideas. Bad or good, there's always something to be learned.

Michele

What Happens When I Have Time to Think

Creating Passionate Users, one of my all-time favorite resources, is devoted to the idea that we need to meet learners where they're at. This, of course, means that we must first understand where they're at and then be able to do something about it.

Lately, I've been trying to put myself in my customer's shoes, something I'm forever advising them to do. Here are some things that I know for sure when it comes to nonprofits and using technology:

• They don't have time to read about all the great stuff that's available.

• There's so much information out there that even if they do have the time, many people quickly become overwhelmed.

• They want someone to explain things to them in easily digestible pieces so that they can understand the technologies, one piece at a time.

• They're most interested in seeing in a concrete way exactly what we're talking about when we say that nonprofits should have a blog or do podcasting. They need to see examples of how these tools are used by real organizations to accomplish the real work of an NPO.

Seeing this need, I went looking for resources that could help. And while I found a ton of good stuff, I didn't find anything that exactly met what I pictured.

There were a lot of great articles and how-to's and examples, but they were spread out all over the place and they were sometimes confusing to understand, especially if you don't know the jargon of the new media. I couldn't find a good "Nonprofit Web 2.0 for Dummies," that boiled down the essence of this stuff into pieces a "regular" person could understand.

So like any good denizen of the Web 2.0 world, I went and created something myself.

Our Web 2.0 for Nonprofits Wiki is meant to give nonprofits a brief introduction to the concepts and tools of Web 2.0 and to provide them with specific examples of how other nonprofits are using these tools to engage in their basic work activities. I assumed that people would either want to know about specific tools ("what is MySpace?") or they would want to know about how to get certain tasks done. To help them, I've tried to organize the wiki by both the tools, as well as by the activities for which nonprofits might use the tools. So there are sections on advocacy and engaging volunteers and there are cross-referenced sections on blogs and podcasting.

Our goal with this is not to be the definitive resource for all things Web 2.0. There are plenty of sites that are doing this, like TechSoup. We're also not trying to get too detailed and technical. Instead, we're trying to create something that's easily digestible and understandable for most nonprofits and that organizes the information in terms that they are most likely to understand.

More importantly, we wanted to create a resource that could serve as a repository of best practice examples for how other nonprofits are using Web 2.0 to do their work. To the extent possible, we wanted to show rather than to tell.

Why Use a Wiki?
I considered putting all of this into a website, and I might do that at a later date. But the reason I chose a wiki was so that other people could add their own content and examples, making this a more dynamic, collaborative resource. One of the major tenets of the Web 2.0 world is harnessing collective intelligence and with a wiki, we can do that most easily.

Isn't This Replicating Other Work Being Done By Other People?
I thought for a while about whether or not I should even begin this project, which has taken many hours to put together. But I wasn't able to find exactly what I was looking for and I felt like this was something that was really needed by our customers. One of the best services we can provide in an information-overload environment such as ours is some simplicity, guidance and pruning back of the garden of knowledge.

Why Should I Care?

Well, like I said, the power of the web is in harnessing collective intelligence. It's also in sharing what you have with other people who may be able to do something even more amazing with it. Ideally, the wiki will at least be a place where people can get some basic information. More than that, I'd really love it if others contributed their best practices and ideas. As much as possible, I'll add new information as we go along. There's also some other work I want to take care of to clean the place up a little and to continue adding information into different sections. It's definitely a work in progress.

So please take a look and feel free to add your comments and best practices to the site.

 

UPDATE: Rallyfan from Random Thoughts on Life and Work is already adding some resources! He reminds me that in order for anyone to make edits, you need the wiki password, which is "nptech," without the quotes. Sorry I didn't mention that previously.

Michele

The Nonprofit Digital Divide

Jayne Cravens of Coyote Communications has written a provocative commentary on the growing digital divide among nonprofits. She asks a powerful question:

"I'm on dozens of online communities, most of which relate to nonprofit organizations and civil society in some way. I also attend onsite conferences each year relating to the same sector. Through these online and face-to-face gatherings over the recent years, I'm seeing a disturbing trend: a gap between those organizations in the USA that are using the Internet in a myriad of ways to support their missions, and those who are still largely on the sidelines and not using network technologies in working with their volunteers. The question is, are these sidelined nonprofits there because of lack of access to resources, or lack of will to embrace them?"

After several recent conference experiences, Jayne comes down squarely on the side of lack of will, a result of command and control, top down organizational cultures that see technology as the responsibility of the Tech department, not as a critical component of their organizational strategy:

Nothing illustrates this contrast in organizations better than two conferences I attended in 2006.

At the first, a major international conference, I spoke to a room full of veteran volunteer managers and representatives of long-established nonprofits. I talked about online volunteering and online communities. From the feedback I received, these were brand new concepts to most of the attendees, even though the practices have been around for many years. No one expressed interest in immediately exploring the practices, feeling that it was something to think about, but not to urgently implement. For them, volunteer management is a top-down endeavor, and technology use in working with and supporting volunteers is something to think about someday, when there's time. Two people even said that they would be providing my materials to their tech staff, implying that it was up to the tech staff to decide if these activities would be pursued.

At the second conference, even tiny nonprofit organizations with entirely volunteer staffs were using computer and networking technology to involve volunteers, donors, advocates and the general public in a variety of mission-based activities. These organizations were very much focused on giving their volunteers a bigger voice at the organization - and, in the end, actually giving these volunteers lots more to do, an increase in work load that the volunteers liked very much. These organizations also had a focus on engaging in activities that exude transparency and openness in all aspects of decision-making and management, and on being immediately responsive to volunteers' and other supporters' thoughts, suggestions and criticisms. Their volunteer involvement is focused on their staff always listening and acknowledging what they have heard from volunteers, by action as well as by words. They made their volunteers feel included and energized, not with pins or mugs or luncheons, but through greater and more-meaningful involvement, through ongoing, interactive support, through greater responsibility, and through actions that showed volunteer feedback had been heard.

In earlier posts, I've talked about the more technical aspects of this digital divide and  strategies to effectively ride the innovation curve. But Jayne brings up the other part of the equation--the openness of nonprofits to the idea of a culture that encourages collaboration and two-way communication.

For those nonprofits to whom participatory culture is as natural as breathing, there's a strong impetus to learn the new technology tools because these fit naturally into their mission and their organizational culture. But for nonprofits that have always relied on a command and control structure, learning these tools can be not only unnecessary, but threatening to their way of life.  New media asks for a level of transparency and "letting go" on the part of organizations that does not fit in to their way of operating in the world. It demands skills that they haven't developed and asks them to fundamentally change the ways in which they do business.

While access to and information about new technologies is important, it is this fundamental need to change organizational culture that may ultimately be the biggest challenge to adopting new media. It's one thing to say "your organization needs a website," which was the change demanded in the first round of Internet-enabled communications. That's still one-way communication that can be controlled by a few people within the organization. But when we start looking at tools that require information sharing, transparency and the ceding of control to volunteers and employees, that is quite another story. It's a cultural shift akin to Henry Ford's assembly line, which fundamentally changed our society.

That, in the end, is what makes this phase so challenging. As Ford's practices were adopted, few organizations were equipped to handle it. They didn't have the management structure or practices--they didn't even have management as we know it, as that's part of Ford's legacy. Some organizations were able to adapt and change and they survived in that new world. Others were not able to make the shift and they did not survive. I'm sure that many of them thought "oh, this is just a fad, it'll go away" or "I don't really need to worry about this--it doesn't apply to my business." I suspect that those are the organizations that found themselves out of business within a year or two.

In my opinion, we've let the genie out of the bottle with new media. People have expectations that they can and should be able to get information about anything, that they should be able to participate in the creation and dissemination of information related to topics and causes that interest them. Ultimately I think they won't accept the old way of doing things and the pressure will mount for non-participatory organizations to change their ways. The question is, will they be able to do so in time to survive?

Sticky Ideas and the Tipping Point

Yesterday we talked about the three types of people necessary to move an idea from "that's interesting," to "I must HAVE it!" as it relates to helping nonprofits adopt new technologies. Today, I want to explore one more area from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point that's relevant to this conversation--the concept of "sticky ideas."

While we need the right kinds of people in an early adopter group engaged in "selling" technology, for individuals to adopt the tech,  we need to make the concepts "sticky."

"Stickiness is a specific quality of the message that makes it memorable and     spurs people into action. Big budget advertisers buy memory space with     incessant repetition – it takes at least six repetitions for people to     remember a brand name. Stickiness is a low-budget equalizer that grabs     people’s imagination on the first or second exposure. A seemingly small or     trivial property of the message – the gold box on a record club coupon, a     campus map on an informational pamphlet, the mixing of puppets and real     people in Sesame Street, the literal narrative format of Blues Clues –     resonates with the audience and grabs and holds their attention. The     stickiness factor is a simple way of packaging a message that makes it     irresistible in the right circumstances." (from Booktalk)

So it's not just about getting the right people talking, it's also about packaging the message in a way that's irresistible. This is where we get into what Seth Godin calls a "viral" message. Says Seth:

For an idea to spread, it needs to be sent and received.

No one "sends" an idea unless:
a. they understand it
b. they want it to spread
c. they believe that spreading it will enhance their power (reputation, income, friendships) or their peace of mind
d. the effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits

No one "gets" an idea unless:
a. the first impression demands further investigation
b. they already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
c. they trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time

So to me, here's the heart of what we need to do to help nonprofits  adopt those aspects of the new wave of technology that will benefit them:

1. Within both individual organizations and the industry itself, find the mavens and start communicating with them about the technology. They will be the initial "senders" of the message, so we need to help them:
   • Understand the features and benefits of the new technologies.
   • Provide ways for them to experiment and "play around" with the new technologies. Remember, mavens are all about deep learning, so they need the opportunities to do that.
   • Help mavens see "what's in it for me" to spread the ideas.
   • Give them tools and strategies for spreading ideas that are easy for them to use and that will make sense to the connectors and salespeople with whom they'll be communicating. This means making sure that we create a foundation for understanding these concepts that's concrete and easy for non-technical types to grasp.
2. Help the mavens connect with the connectors and salespeople so that the ideas can start germinating.
3. Support all three groups by providing ongoing information and technical support, as well as venues for sharing ideas and the results of their work.

Of course, all three of these things are going on in various ways through the work of groups like N-Ten  and NetSquared. What we may need to do is look at the nature of the messages we're sending--are they "sticky" enough?--as well as who we're focusing our efforts on. Have we in fact really identified these three types and are we targeting them specifically? Or are we taking a more "build it and they will come" approach?

I hesitate to take too much of a "marketing" approach with all of this--I've never wanted to be in the business of convincing people to buy something whether they need it or not. But what I do think is important is to think about how we can move good tools into wider circulation and acceptance for those organizations that can benefit. For me, it's helpful to consider who I need to be talking to and what kinds of messages I need to be sending to help move the wave along.

Michele

 

Why Blog?

We've been talking here lately about helping nonprofits to see the value in blogs. Fortunately, CK has come to the rescue with the results of her recent reader poll asking "What is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging?"

This fabulous collage is a montage of the answers she received. (You can get a PDF of her full report here.) Very visual and striking--captures a lot of key points in just a few words. Seems like a great piece to share the next time you're trying to convince someone of the value of blogging.

QUESTION--Beth asks in comments what value I find in blogging. She values the fact that it forces her to write and reflect on a regular basis. I like that I'm always learning. What do you value? Let us know in comments.

"From Struggle to Strategy"

Via TechSoup, I'm reading an interesting study, Online Technology for Social Change: From Struggle to Strategy, prepared by dotOrganize, a project organized to define best practices and provide strategic direction and information to support social change organizations in their use of technology.

The report "compiles insights from more than 400 social change organizations" and I think adds some things to consider, given our  previous  discussions about the Second Wave.

According to the study, which targeted U.S. and Canadian nonprofits:

• Survey respondents work across the spectrum of social change issues, including education (35%), the environment (30%), healthcare (34%), youth issues (29%), and economic justice (21%).
• 30% of respondents operate on a budget of $100,000 or under, and 60% operate on a budget of $500,000 or under.
• Respondents tend to have a relatively small number of paid staff. 67% employ 10 or fewer paid staff members, and a full 15% are run entirely by volunteers.

This would seem to me to be a fairly representative group of social change organizations, except for the budget size as we know that most nonprofits operate with a much smaller budget. Further, it may be biased toward more "tech-savvy" groups, as the surveys were distributed online, indicating that some level of comfort with tech was likely.

Key findings of the report include:

• Organizers view technology as important to their missions. Ninety-five percent said that tech is important or essential to achieving their mission.

• Interest in tools is wide-ranging. Beyond Excel, Outlook and Access, respondents indicated an interest in a wide range of applications, with no single application dominating, although the ten most used tools were related to either fundraising or communication.

• A significant number of organizations don't have a handle on technology fundamentals. Close to 40% don't use e-mail newsletters, 47% aren't equipped for online donations and 43% don't have information available for download on their sites. Further, only very small percentages make use of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, podcasts or social networking tools.

• Organizations expressed interest in older, less effective technologies such as bulletin boards and online forums.  According to the report, "respondents do not always want valuable newer technologies because they don't understand them, don't recognize their strategic value, or don't know they exist. This suggests that organizers may not have the information and resources they need to successfully integrate newer technology into their campaigns."

• Nonprofits are frustrated with their current tools. Respondents expressed major dissatisfaction with current software capabilities, capacity for integration and data-sharing and support for training. This held true across all organizational funding levels, with large organizations generally as dissatisfied as less well-funded NPOs.

• Lack of time, money and expertise were cited as the major reasons for not adopting new tools. Lack of training in particular was regarded as a huge impediment.

• Data disarray is at the heart of the problem. The ability to effectively capture data into a single database is elusive at best. Contact management in particular is a problem. Organizations are wasting vast amounts of time and energy with double entry and trying to get applications to "talk to one another." This also creates significant gaps in their knowledge of their customers, funders, and other stakeholders that has serious impacts on their abilities to manage their organizations on a day-to-day basis.

• Organizations with dedicated technology staff fare better. Organizations with 4 or more dedicated tech staff were 3 times more likely to be satisfied with the state of technology in their organizations.

• Technology struggles are stunting impact. "Social-change organizations are struggling to master standard and emerging technologies, as well as to manage data silos and ill-suited tools. These challenges, which drain resources away from serving communities and constituents, result in lost time, poor constituent-relationship management, fewer supporters, and missed civic-engagement opportunities. The lack of convenient donation vehicles, combined with fewer supporters and poor tracking of information, means less money coming in the door."

Clearly a lot of issues going on inside these organization, to which dotOrganize suggests some good solutions. What I particularly see is the need for identification and sharing of best practices to get the word out to NPOs about technology options and how they can work, as well as making quality learning opportunities available for staff. It appears that the interest in technology is there--organizations see technology as necessary to achieving their missions and they express a desire to learn more. The problem is getting the right information into the right hands with the right supports to make it all happen. Figuring that out is part of our job now.

Michele

Innovating Along the Curve

So on Friday I was doing some thinking about the diffusion of technology into the nonprofit sector. In other words, what will it take for us to reach critical mass in the use of social networking/Web 2.0 technologies? One area that I think deserves a closer look to remind us of where we've been and where we're going here is Everett Roger's Diffusion of Innovations Theory.

Diffusion theory examines five critical areas that influence the rate at which an innovation reaches "the tipping point." These are:

1. Characteristics of the innovation itself
2. The decision-making process that individuals use in determining if they'll adopt an innovation
3. Characteristics of individuals that make them more or less likely to adopt an innovation
4. Consequences for individuals and societies if they adopt the innovation
5. Communication channels used in the adoption process.

Let's talk about each of these in more detail as they apply to social networking and Web 2.0.

Characteristics of the Innovation--Web 2.0 technologies are by their nature social innovations. They encourage individuals to interact with other individuals and their success depends in large part on the involvement of communities in using and developing them. I can blog until I'm blue, but if I'm the only one reading what I write, then I'm talking to myself. And if I'm not interacting with others and they aren't interacting with me over the content, then I'm really missing both the point and the promise of this wave of media.

The decision-making process that individuals use  to adopt the innovation--Rogers argues that individuals go through a five-step process in making the decision to use a new technology:
 

                1) Knowledge – person becomes aware of an innovation and has some idea of how it functions,

2) Persuasion – person forms a favorable or unfavorable attitude toward the innovation,

3) Decision – person engages in activities that lead to a choice to adopt or reject the innovation,

4) Implementation – person puts an innovation into use,

5) Confirmation – person evaluates the results of an innovation-decision already made.

While this decision-making process is done on an individual basis, Rogers found that these individual decisions were, in fact, heavily influenced by the decisions of others within the same system. So, for example, looking back at the spread of e-mail--your decision to use e-mail was influenced by the number of people who asked you for your e-mail address. At first, only a few people wanted one from you. Eventually, it got to the point where having an e-mail address was the same as having a phone number--you're on the margins of society without one.  Essentially we reached a tipping point, which was somewhat predictable if we consider the next important factor.

Characteristics of Individuals--Rogers found that there were essentially five types of people involved in the adoption of innovations:

1. Innovators--People who were on the cutting edge, thinking about and planning for the next wave. These are the ones who always know the latest thing and are usually involved in developing it.
2. Early Adopters--These are important opinion leaders who are able to bridge the gap between the innovators (who are often too technical for the majority of people) and the next group--the early majority.
3. Early Majority--More careful in making changes than the early adopters, these are still people who are more open to change.
4. Late Majority--These are the skeptics. They will only adopt a change when it's clear that this is where the rest of the system is going.
5. Laggards--This crew must be dragged kicking and screaming into the next phase.

Rogers then arranged these groups into the innovation adoption curve:

It's important to recognize that this curve applies to the systems in which people operate. If we think about nonprofits, they're operating within their own world, their own system. Even individual nonprofits are their own system, with each agency having its own innovators, early adopters, etc.

When it comes to the use of social media in nonprofits, we are clearly in the leading edge of this curve, working with the innovators and early adopters within the nonprofit system. The curve reminds us that there's no point in trying to convince EVERYONE to adopt the technology. We need to be identifying the opinion leaders within the system and working on them, recognizing that the rest of the group will come later.  This will influence our work with individual organizations, too, as we need to be able to find the early adopters who are in a position to champion the cause internally.

Consequences for adopting the innovation--To adopt the innovation, individuals need to see that the benefits of the new way will outweigh the hassle and stress of doing something differently. In my experience, many nonprofits can be protected from the natural consequences of their decisions to NOT adopt a technology. For example, the government-funded organizations with which I do a lot of work will continue to get money whether or not they change the ways they do business. They may not get as much money or do as much good, but they often operate in survival mode anyway, not seeing technology as a way to do things more efficiently or effectively, but as a cost of doing business that can be cut when you need to. In the business world, if you don't adapt, you will go out of out business. Not necessarily true in the nonprofit world.

Communication Channels used in the adoption process--The whole point of Web 2.0 is to enhance collaborative communication. A hallmark of the system is embedding communication into the technology. So, for example, social networking sites make it easy for you to recruit other people to use the site. Same with things like wikis and blogs. This is great for people who are living on the Web anyway, but I'm not sure that this works as well for nonprofits. Again, speaking based on my own experiences, I just don't see the same "living on the web" mentality in nonprofit staff that I see in other industries. I think we'll have to explore other communication strategies to pull people into the tech and to show them in very concrete ways what we're talking about when we say "social media."

So What Does All This Mean?
To me, there are a few take-aways that we need to consider here:

• This is an evolutionary process and we need to recognize that it takes time to move through the curve.

• The best ways to move through the curve are to identify the opinion leaders within the nonprofit industry, its various sectors and even within individual organizations. We then need to focus on communicating with them about the features and benefits and on exploring the ways in which Web 2.0 will work best for nonprofits.

• If we look at the individual decision-making process, we need to be devising strategies for supporting how these individual decision-makers can gain knowledge of the system, be persuaded to try some things out and then be supported in their implementation of innovations so that they're able to start working on the early majority to pull them into the process.

• I'm a big believer in the whole choice/consequence thing. Figuring out the impacts of using new technology vs. not using new technology will have to be a big part of this. It's particularly important in moving into the early and late majority phases of the curve, as these are the people who are looking to be convinced of the need to change. Early adopters will do so with somewhat less evidence, but the late adopters want to see that this is going to WORK before they're going to do anything.

• We need to take a closer look at our communication channels and how we can use both web-based and other resources to communicate with the early adopters. And we need to consider what messages they need to hear in order to start trying this stuff out. I find that I often take a sort of "lecturing" tone with people, which really isn't very helpful. I personally need to work more on communicating in fun and exciting ways about how the tech can be a benefit.

I'm sure there's more here that I'm missing. I'd love to hear what others are thinking about this and how you think we can influence the adoption curve.

Michele