The Bamboo Project Blog

When E-Mail Is a Bad Idea

Dave Pollard gets specific about 10 scenarios where you should NOT use e-mail to communicate:

1. To communicate bad news, complaints or criticism
2. When you are seeking information that is not simple and straight-forward
3. When you are seeking approval on something that is involved or controversial
4. When you're sending a few people complicated instructions
5. When you are asking for comments on a long document
6. To request information from a group on a recurring basis
7. To convey instructions to a large number of people
8. To convey instructions to a large number of people
9. To explore a subject or idea
10. To send news, interesting documents, links, policies, directory updates and other 'FYI' stuff

I particularly subscribe to Dave's last item. I'm in the process of managing a few projects right now and I'm trying to get people to shift from the e-mail approach to using wikis and blogs to share this kind of information so that it's readily available to everyone in the group. It's a slow, painful process, though.

Thanks, Dave, for making things clearer.

Nonprofit Web Design Tips from Vince Flanders

Vince Flanders of "Web Pages that Suck" fame has a site devoted entirely to making sure that nonprofit web pages and other electronic communications don't suck. Check out his four-part series, "Is My Website Ineffective?," which includes some nice checklists to guide you through the process of analyzing your site and diagnosing problem areas.

You may also want to check out Designing Inward Out, a public diary of a nonprofit's work on redesigning their site. (Thanks to Allen for the tip).

IRS Training Modules Online

The IRS has put several interactive training modules online for nonprofit organizations. Topics include:

• Maintaining tax exempt status
• Unrelated business income
• Employment issues
• Form 990
• Required disclosures

It's Not Just About "Good Enough," It's About Empowerment

My post earlier this week on disruptive innovations and "good enough" solutions sparked an interesting response from Niels Unis:

"Bamboo gives the example of micro-lending which has changed many people’s lives. What is so effective about micro-lending, among other things, is that it empowers people to change their own lives finding solutions in situations that they know and understand. This empowerment, however, is a radical idea, and much more than a “good enough” solution. Mother of Peace has built a self sustaining farm. They make their own bread. . .

What I think is at stake is that in wanting to provide the ultimate solution, we want to feed our ego, increase our power over the world. The shift in thinking is not from “perfect” to “good enough.” The shift is one that recognizes that creating more power for the powerless, ultimately empowers everybody."

I think that Niels is right on with this insight. While the original intention of my post was to share the concept of catalytic innovations and "good enough solutions," , Niels accurately points out that the power of many of these innovations may lie in their capacity to empower the powerless.

"Good enough" solutions by their very nature will not be able to breed the same level of dependence found in more comprehensive programs. They are meant to be less fully-featured, easier to use, more simplistic. They are meant to get a specific job done and in the process, they empower the recipients to be the ones to do that.

I think Niels is also right that there's a touch of ego in wanting to provide more "comprehensive" solutions. On many occasions I've worked on designing education and training programs for TANF recipients and disadvantaged youth. Time and again I've been told that these people aren't "capable" of learning like other people--that we need to set up a system that basically does everything for them because they aren't able to do it for themselves. When I've been able to successfully fight this mentality and create a more empowering, more loosely-structured program, the naysayers have always been astounded by the results. Not that it doesn't mean I don't often have a fight on my hands again the next time I push for more customer control.

So another reason for us to pursue more catalytic innovations--because they empower the people with whom we are working.

Michele

You're Going to have to Participate in the Conversation Whether You Want to or Not

Seems like conversations are going to happen whether we like it or not . . .

Earlier this week, I mentioned the New Zealand CYFSWatch blog that's raised an international ruckus because of its "name and shame" tactics, taking transparency and accountability to new levels. Since I made that post my traffic from searches fort that blog has increased significantly, adding further fuel to the fires of concern that the online community WILL get the word out, whether you want to participate in the conversation or not.

On a related note, Deborah Finn points out that there are an increasing number of blogs "taking aim" at the nonproft sector, particularly the technology practitioners. While she values the transparency and accountability encouraged by the new breed of blogs, she also pleads for a civil dialogue.

Finally, the Berkley GovBlog reports on a Booz Allen study published in a recent issue of CIO:

• Web 2.0 relevance cuts across gender and age. Forty-one percent of U.S. MySpace users are older than 35. That number was 35 percent for the United Kingdom and 29 percent for Germany.
• Web 2.0 users have few privacy concerns. Sixty-four percent of U.S. messages are freely available to the public. U.K. respondents reported that number as 61 percent, while Germany reported 73 percent.
• Web 2.0 capitalizes on ubiquitous connectivity. Approximately one-quarter of surveyed MySpace users are accessing MySpace from a laptop, a school or office computer, an Internet-enabled cafe or a BlackBerry.
• Web 2.0 communities influence opinions and purchasing decisions. Thirty-nine percent of surveyed MySpace users receive product picks from virtual peers.

The study concludes that Web 2.0 is profoundly shaping consumer behaviors and expectations and that it has reached "critical mass. Businesses that don't respond may be placing themselves at risk. "

It's going to be interesting to see where this all lands for nonprofits . . .

What if Social Change Depends on More "Good Enough" Solutions?

Grameen Bank, one of the best-known microlenders in the world, fights global poverty by lending small, collateral-free sums of money to the poorest of the poor. In 2005, it had 5.6 million borrowers (97% of them women) in nearly 60,000 villages throughout Bangladesh. Since its inception in 1976, it has lent more than $5 billion to its borrowers, with a more than 98% rate of recovery.  Grameen has been so wildly successful, the Bank and its founder, Professor Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Grameen Bank is what's known as a "catalytic innovation" to spur social change and a recent Harvard Business Review article "Disruptive Innovation for Social Change" argues that we need many more Grameen success stories, if we're going to really have social impact. (Note that you can view an executive summary of the article for free, but the full version is $7. I sprang for the $7, but could have saved my money as the executive summary and other resources offered a "good enough" picture of the concept)

Modeled on the idea of "disruptive innovations", a catalytic innovation is a "good enough" social change solution that is simpler, more convenient and less expensive than the usual offerings. It serves the needs of an unserved or under-served population, creating large impact for less money. Think of the
$100 per unit One Laptop Per Child project or KickStart, which sells treadle-style irrigation pumps to poor farmers, substantially increasing their earning capacity.

What's interesting about these innovations is that they turn our existing notions of social change strategies on their head. When we see broad, sweeping issues such as poverty or hunger, we tend to believe that we need broad, sweeping solutions. If these broad solutions aren't working, then it must be because of a lack of funding. Keep throwing money at our same old solutions and the problem will eventually be solved.

This may be true in some cases. But it may be that we are mis-allocating our resources, putting too much money into maintaining the status quo when there's much that can be accomplished with smaller, simpler interventions that are "good enough."

KickStart's pumps are labor-intensive and low capacity when compared to a motorized pump. But for far less than what it would take to purchase a motorized option, a Kenyan farmer can increase annual income from $100 to $1,000, allowing him to send his children to school, invest in other equipment, etc.  The $100 laptop lacks an internal hard drive and has a hand pump to crank for power, but it puts computing power into the hands of children who might otherwise never see a computer.

Catalytic innovations don't have to be confined to just products. They can also be found in a re-thinking of the services provided to unserved or under-served populations. The Virtual High School provides online educational courses to students in schools where a course might not otherwise be offered. At a Minute Clinic, you can access basic, low-cost, non-emergency healthcare treatments in convenient locations.

As a "big picture" perfectionist, the idea of doing something less than comprehensive is difficult to swallow. But after reading some of these success stories, I'm starting to think differently. Maybe we need to be looking for more "good enough" solutions to problems. Who are the under-served populations we work with and what stripped down, simpler and less expensive idea might take them exactly where they want to go?

How might "good enough" actually change the world?

When Funding Priorities Change

An article in this morning's Marin Independent Journal about the impact of Marin Community Foundation funding cuts led me to this article on the Foundation's recent decision to change their funding priorities:

The foundation announced in June that its board of trustees had decided to split its giving equally between sustaining and initiating grants. As a result, nonprofit organizations that serve some of Marin's neediest residents will have to reconfigure their operations or face the possibility of losing millions of dollars in funding.

The change will result in a shift of more than $35 million from sustaining grants to fund new initiatives over the next four years. The foundation gave nearly $26 million to Marin organizations during the fiscal year that ended June 30.

Among the reasons they cite for their decision are the proliferation of nonprofits with similar missions and programs and the desire to have a bigger impact. Not surprisingly, this policy change has upset a lot of people from the nonprofit community. But I see it as a change that is actually moving in the right direction.

One of my all-time favorite books is Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. In it, the authors argue that in visionary organizations, there is a tension between the need to preserve the core and stimulate progress.

Preserving the core means that an organization is very clear about its organizational mission and values and sticks to the strategic and tactical decisions that support their core organizational culture. A strong core gives everyone in the organization a sense of purpose and clear guidance for making decisions and taking action.

While preserving the core is important, there's also a need to stimulate progress. Organizations will not grow and flourish if they do not continue to take new action in light of changing circumstances. Recognizing that there's a tendency to stick with the "tried and true" even when the world is changing around you, the most visionary organizations have developed policies for themselves that force their organizations to change and adapt. 3M, for example, requires that a percentage of its business each year must come from new products and services. They will never completely rely on what they've done in the past--no matter how successful--because they know that eventually this will spell their demise.

From what I can see, the Marin Community Foundation is attempting to put this strategy into practice within the nonprofit/social sector environment. They recognize that their continued funding of existing programs will ensure the continuation of the same old same old and discourage innovation or change. They want to be more strategic in their support and to drive greater innovation and collaboration. This is a bold move, one that other foundations and nonprofits themselves should consider. Ongoing change is a fact of life. Developing strategies and policies that encourage the change cycle can have great benefits and create an environment that allows changes to be more strategic and coordinated. I'll be curious to see how things turn out.

Michele

 

New Zealand CYFS Blog Causing Furor

What's going on with a "name and shame" New Zealand blog is raising some interesting questions about the power of blogs and what to do when they're negatively directed at an organization.

The CYFSWatch Blog was started by a man whose daughter was poorly treated last year by Child, Youth and Family Services staff as she tried to give her baby up for adoption. His mission:

This blogsite is dedicated to all those people who have been bullied, intimidated, or "familially raped" by the Department of Child Youth, & Family: people, it's time to get your power back. Please email any and all "name and shame" stories to cyfswatch@hotmail.com, and we will publish them - uncensored. Photos of any and all offending parties are welcome, together with private and public addresses, contact details, car registrations, etc. Your anonimity is guaranteed (unless you choose to publish under your own name) - theirs is not!

Posts on the site are brutal--naming names, describing case workers in some pretty extreme terms (" . . . a troll of a woman . . . a CYFS feminazi par excellence"). They have also promised to post photos and home addresses of the staff they are shaming. Clearly these are people who are furiously angry and have decided to take matters into their own hands. 

The blog might have remained only a tiny corner of the blogosphere, unknown to most people, if the head of the CYFS hadn't found out about it and gone public in a big way, vowing to do everything within his power to get the site down. This naturally blew traffic to the blog out the door as the story hit the papers and readers wanted to find out what was being said that was so bad it required the blog to be censored.

Currently a battle is raging in New Zealand and in the blogosphere between those who want the blog taken down and those who believe that censoring it is a blow against freedom of expression.  Some are even arguing that this supports the position that bloggers and the folks who comment on their sites should not be allowed anonymity on the Web.

The  situation raises some interesting issues for nonprofits and government agencies, which often work hand-in-hand with them.

First, while companies have been dealing for a few years now with bloggers setting up sites specifically to collect negative commentary about their products or services, this is the first situation I've seen where something similar is being directed at a government agency. Like it or not, the Internet makes it easy for someone to criticize your organization and to gain a much wider audience for that criticism than ever before.

Second, the CYFS strategy for handling the situation clearly backfired. Taking it public only drove more traffic to the blog. Most people would never have heard of the site if it hadn't blown up in the media. Now the blog has become a cause celebre for freedom of speech in the blogosphere.

It has also raised the issue of transparency. Many are suggesting that if the allegations on the blog are true, than the blogger is right in holding an organization accountable for its bad behavior, no matter how "extreme" the rhetoric. I wonder how many angry people who have been poorly treated will read about this case and want to see something similar happening in their own communities? How will the objects of their ire handle it?

These are all issues that nonprofits will increasingly need to struggle with and address. The for-profit world has had to devise strategies for managing their on-line reputations. Now it looks like nonprofits and government agencies will need to do the same.

I personally don't think that this is a bad thing. I support transparency and believe that organizations should be held accountable for what they do and how they manage. In my years in the nonprofit and government world, I've seen a lot of mismanagement and waste in the name of doing good. I've always worked to bring change from within but in many cases have found that unless there's outside pressure to change, it just isn't going to happen. With sites like the CYFSWatch on the horizon, looks like some people will be taking matters into their own hands and that organizations will have to figure out what they're going to do to deal with that.

Michele

Creating Nonprofit Skill Networks

Lately I've been exploring the concepts of nonprofit networks here, what it takes to form and nurture connections among various nonprofits and between nonprofits and individuals. We've talked about building connectivity networks that link people to people, affinity networks that reinforce commonalities among network members and production networks that move affinities into collective action.

The other day I was researching learning management systems for a client interested in tracking staff competences and training needs. I started thinking about the need for skill networks within the nonprofit community and what would have to happen in order for us to develop such networks.

What Do I Mean by a Nonprofit Skill Network?
Very simply, a nonprofit skill network would bring together the knowledge and skills of individual staff at all member organizations and make those skills available to the members of the network. For example, a staff person at Agency A might have skills in developing organizational newsletters. This skill would be cataloged in an online location--either a database or in some other form, such as through a wiki using tagging. When Agency B needs someone to do a newsletter for them, but they lack the internal skills for this to happen, then they would be able to find the staff person from Agency A who could then assist them in implementing that project. 

Why Do We Need Nonprofit Skill Networks?
Staff knowledge and skills are the lifeblood of any organization, but this is particularly true for nonprofits. The more skilled our staff are, the more access to good information they have, the more likely we are to be successful. But many nonprofits are small. They don't have the capacity within their individual organizations to cover all the skill needs that may be necessary to create an effective organization. This is particularly the case when we venture outside of traditional program areas into more functional skills, for example, IT, human resources, marketing and public relations, staff training etc.

With the creation of a skill network, member organizations would be able to expand their capacity to access particular knowledge and skills. In some cases, I could see organizations sharing a collective pool of staff. For example, Agency A might employ a marketing person who splits her time between several members of the network. Network members who used the marketing person would either reimburse the employing agency for the staff person's time or they could trade for services, perhaps offering the use of their finance person in return.

Agencies would also be able to access specialized skills and knowledge for special projects. For example, if an organization needed to run a training on case management basics, they might be able to "borrow" a staff person from one of the other organizations to provide the training. Again, they could either pay for the use of the staff person's time or they could trade for other services.

How Would a Skill Network Operate?
The first order of business would be to find a way to catalog the knowledge, skills and abilities of staff from all network member organizations. The network members would need to agree on a common taxonomy for describing skills so that member organizations are comparing apples to apples.

Ideally, these skills would be cataloged in an online system, either a shared database or by using something less sophisticated, such as tagging. If tagging was used, I could see the creation of a network wiki or blog. For each staff person there would be a detailed biography and maybe a copy of their resume, work samples, etc. Their entries would also be tagged with the appropriate knowledge and functions. Interested agencies would then be able to access the biographies by looking under the appropriate tags.

Other issues that would need to be addressed by the network would include:

• Processes and procedures for collecting the information from staff, including what information will be collected and how it will be shared.

• Will participation in the skill network be voluntary or required for individual staff?

• Processes for accessing staff from other agencies to work on various projects

• Acceptable exchanges--will trading be allowed or would it be strictly a financial arrangement? How will the organizations handle the financial side of things?

• Who will be responsible for maintaining and updating the skill database?

Cons of a Skill Network
There would be a number of challenges to creating such a skill network, not the least of which would be getting past the often siloed, territorial thinking of many organizations. Clearly this would be a complicated endeavor with logistical and practical concerns galore. Many organizations might be uncomfortable with the idea of hiring a staff person in the hopes that they would be able to share that person with other agencies and be reimbursed for those costs. (One way around that would be to look into sharing freelance consultants who would not be employed by any single agency). For various reasons, individual staff might also object to providing their services to another nonprofit. And a significant number of nonprofits operate in crisis mode, making the idea of setting up a skill network a pipe dream they feel they have little time to pursue.

Pros of a Skill Network
For all the potential problems in setting up and maintaining a skill network, I think that there are also significant benefits that make it a worthwhile endeavor. Clearly it would expand the capacity of individual organizations to provide higher quality services. They would have access to knowledge and skills beyond their organization that could give their individual organization a new lease on life.

There's also a benefit to individual staff. In many cases, nonprofit staff get burned out from dealing with the same people and problems on a daily basis. The opportunity to provide services in their strength areas to other organizations could re-energize a tired career. They could also give staff an opportunity to stretch and grow in ways that would in turn benefit their employing organization.

Some Possible First Steps
When I'm thinking about possibilities, I tend to take them to the furthest degree. I see the end result, which can be overwhelming to a lot of people. I think there are smaller steps that organizations could take, however, to start moving in the direction of a larger skill network.

Create an Internal Skill Network--The technologies exist for individual organizations to create their own internal knowledge and skill networks. Using wikis and blogs, individual organizations could take it upon themselves to catalog their internal staff knowledge and skills to make this information available to others in the organization. I would suggest delving deeply into what staff know--you may be surprised at the skills that people have developed in other parts of their lives that could be utilized within the organization.

Create a Skill Network with 1-2 Trusted Partners--Most nonprofits have developed relationships with other organizations already. To expand outside of the individual organization, they could reach out to a few of their trusted partners to build a smaller shared network of skills. You may already be doing this on an informal basis. However, making it a somewhat more structured process could reap bigger benefits for all members of the network. It could also create some major value-add for grant applications.

I think that there are a lot of possibilities for this concept and I'd love to hear from you about your thoughts, if you've seen anything like this being developed anywhere, etc. E-mail me or leave me a note in comments.

Michele

QEDWiki May Bring Mash-ups to Your Neighborhood

Yesterday I shared a tool I'd found that could help me easily create a Google Maps mash-up. Now it looks like we may be able to add another tool to the toolbox.

To this point, creating a mash-up has been a task for a programmer, or at least someone with a fair amount of technology know-how. Mash-ups have generally been a little too complicated for the regular person to do on their own. But as Dion Hinchcliffe writes at ZDNet, IBM is getting ready to put the power to create simple web-based applications into the hands of non-techies, too.

QEDWiki, which is currently being tested by IBM's corporate customers, allows end users--managers, front-line staff--to create their own simple computer programs using a simple drag and drop interface. Users can pick the type of functionality they want--for example, they want to see addresses represented on a Google Map--and the data sources they want to draw from. Dion's screencast, for example, shows how he creates a simple wiki page that would allow people to enter addresses into a web page and then have those addresses represented in a Google Map. You can also watch the 5-minute demo above to see how an insurance claims adjuster could create a simple web app to tell her which claims to process and whether or not contact information is valid.

The implications of something like this are pretty interesting. In most organizations, front-line staff are dealing with a lot of inefficiencies and have created work-arounds to deal with those problems. As a staff trainer, I get to hear about many of these in my training sessions and I'm always amazed at the ingenuity of front-line staff to figure out ways to do their jobs better.

The problem that these staff face, though, is that their work-arounds are often "paper-based." To use technology in any way, they must rely on some centralized controlled process where IT personnel who often have little understanding of the ways in which front-line staff work are developing applications that may or may not really get the job done. With access to something like QEDWiki, staff would have in their possession the means to create their own computer applications on the fly. They would be also be able to share these applications with their co-workers, who could further tweak and improve the tool. A great way to expand organizational learning and efficiency.

I'm not naive enough to believe that this solution is just around the corner for nonprofits. There are many hurdles to overcome, including cost and providing staff with the context and skills to understand how they might be able to use such a tool. But I think that there's a lot of promise with a tool like QEDWiki because it has the potential to really improve the capacity of individual staff and organizations that use it. I also believe that QEDWiki is part of a larger trend to continue pushing into the hands of individual users the power to create tools and applications that work for them. To my mind, this could be a very good thing, although we will also need to consider all the ways in which it could impact our organizations.

Michele