Category Archives: nonprofits

Networks Part Two

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Another take on networks delivering community results came by way of Bill Traynor, Executive Director of Lawrence CommunityWorks.  Bill conducted a webinar this week for Grassroots Grantmakers on Network-Centric Organizing.  Bill is a long-time community development practitioner and I received some of my first training on neighborhood planning from him at a Tufts University summer program in the early 1990s.

Bill shared these lessons, amongst others, on the webinar:

  • Community is not the network of relationships but the value and functionality that comes from those relationships
  • Traditional community improvement work tends to, in Bill’s words, “fetishize structure and form, and emphasize institution building to the detriment of building a connected environment.”  Neighborhood residents, nonprofits, and grantmakers aid and abet the problem.
  • Neighborhood networks need to be less structured with low thresholds for participation – “flexible environments filled with ambitious, creative people who are working on their stuff and engaged in public life”
  • Lawrence CommunityWorks has built a more network-centric organization and program structure through: constantly building person-to-person connections, fostering open architecture of groups and a club-like membership structure, and offering activities that are “value propositions” instead of services.
  • Donors and funders should be more patient and flexible when supporting networks and focus more on growing forms of connectivity instead of growing specific organizational structures.  The development of successful neighborhood networks takes time, needs room to experiment, and is rarely linear.

Bill’s ideas were similar to the works I cited in my last post – networks that create real community results rely on:  durable, trusting relationships, a clear value proposition for the participants, and someone purposefully connecting people and ideas.

If you want to see and listen to Bill’s presentation (and you really should want to), Grassroots Grantmakers posted it for free public access at http://www.grassrootsgrantmakers.org/page11842.cfm.  In addition, Bill blogs about these ideas and more at http://valueofplace.wordpress.com/.

And, let me know what you think about Bill’s ideas.

Building Effective Networks

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I’ve recently been repeatedly encountering the concept of building strong networks.

First, through my work for the Lumina Foundation for Education, I’ve gotten to know Paul Vandeventer.  Paul is the CEO of Community Partners and co-authored Networks That Work with Dr. Myrna Mandell.  The book is a short, “must read” guide on developing and managing effective coalitions, helping pose and answer key questions around purpose, commitment, conflict, staffing, and other issues that networks and coalitions face.  For my friends back in Indiana, Paul will be speaking at the Indiana Grantmakers Alliance conference in November.

Second, Janis Foster, Executive Director of Grassroots Grantmakers, turned me on to the blog Network Weaving.  The team has a thoughtful set of posts (here, here, and here) about how philanthropists can enhance their giving and strengthen their grantees through developing deep networks of relationships.  In a newer post, they discuss the importance of network weavers, people who intentionally connect people with each others’ assets, opportunities, and dreams.

Lastly, I ran across a short white paper by the Interaction Institute, Net Gains: A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change.  The authors believe the nonprofit sector lags behind the business sector in using networks to innovate and grow.  They then sketch out five strategies for accelerating the use of networks to improve nonprofit impact.

These resources reminded me that funders and nonprofits alike enter into networks and coalitions too lightly.  Getting organizations together to work on an issue, or even just to learn from each other, takes far more time, thought, and resources than we typically devote.  The results are typically frustration all around and coalitions and relationships that don’t begin to reach their potential.

I suspect I’ll be running into coalition development issues in my work in the coming months and am glad to have these new resources at my fingertips.

Rating Nonprofit Performance

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OK, the topic of measuring and monitoring nonprofit effectiveness is wide and controversial.  The topic is being studied, watched, and taught by people smarter and more experienced than me, and there will never be one right answer on tools and ratings.

However, two recent news items caught my attention, and I thought they were worth sharing.

Ken Berger, President & CEO of Charity Navigator, has been blogging about his goal to add accountability and program outcome measures to the financial measures the organization tracks.

His most recent post links to a presentation PDF with Charity Navigator’s current ideas on scoring a nonprofit’s accountability and transparency.  The measures mirror some of the Standards for Charity Accountability by the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance.  While I applaud measuring transparency and accountability, it doesn’t make sense to me for Charity Navigator to create a different set of measures than the BBB or the new IRS 990.  Update 7-08-09:  Ken responded to my query on this issue and said “Our Accountability Tab will not require any additional work by charities. It comes right off the IRS 990 that all charities we evaluate have to file.”

I know that I’m something of an outlier amongst my nonprofit and foundation friends in my paying attention to Charity Navigator and the BBB.  However, I know their ratings (while imperfect) have far more traction with donors, donors’ professional advisors, and the media than do the opinions and reports of foundation staff.  And those donors give far more than foundations do annually, so it does make sense to pay attention to where donors are getting advice.

The other item I caught is the next iteration of work by the Alliance for Effective Social Investing, a powerhouse group of staff from foundations, nonprofits, consulting firms, and other national groups.  The Alliance published a new social value assessment tool for nonprofits in April.  The 31-page tool, primarily for use by external evaluators, has thoughtful questions rating a nonprofit’s:

  • Tactical use of data and outcomes
  • Strategic use of information to drive program decisions and manage staff
  • Program fidelity and impact.

The individual questions likely appear in some form in other organizational assessment tools used by consultants.  This tool packages the results into a good rating of risk in giving to the nonprofit.

The tool is still being tested and the Alliance is still gaining traction.  But I think given the organizations and people involved, nonprofits and foundations will want to start paying attention to these ideas too.

Your thoughts on the use of these types of tools by donors and consultants?

1. Tactical Data Use Domain
a. Data Integrity Indicator
b. Outcomes Focus Indicator
2. Strategic Data Use Domain
a. Making Essential Adjustments Indicator
b. Relating Staff Efforts to Outcomes Indicator
3. Program Value Domain
a. Capacity to Deliver Program/Services with Fidelity Indicator
b. Program Impact Data Indicator

Relearning fed-speak

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I crossed over from public service at a state agency to the philanthropic sector 13 1/2 years ago.  It was a great honor to help communities grow through staffing a variety of state and federal grant and technical assistance programs.

However, when I walked out the door, I said something to the effect of “Now that this is over, I’ll never read the Federal Register again. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, I shall never read the Federal Register again.”  (Thanks Scarlett O’Hara!)

It turns out I was wrong.

Last month, two foundations asked me to track potential opportunities in the economic stimulus package and other federal grants that could expand their initiatives in Indianapolis.  Forgetting my old vow, I accepted the consulting assignment.

A month later, I’ve relearned how to read and speak Federal Register.  And, I remembered what drove me bonkers more than 13 years ago:  the federal government is in desparate need of editors.  Editors of content, policies, or ideas – the government needs you.

If you know unemployed journalists, writers, or publishers, do your country a service and march them down to the nearest federal agency or congressional office.  Offer their talents to translate federal laws, notices, and regulations into real English.  If you work for a foundation or donor, make grants for this purpose.  If you work for a federal agency, hire these people as a great economic stimulus contribution.

Your country will thank you.  Nonprofits and small businesses will thank you.  I will personally do your dishes for a year.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.  And now, back to the regular blog posts…


Giving, Volunteering, and Happiness

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If giving makes you happy, why don’t people give more? 

I recently encountered an interesting answer to this question, thanks to Stanford University’s Center for Social Innovation. CSI_Red_RGB

Last fall, Stanford marketing professor Jennifer Aaker published a podcast and related journal article about people’s mindsets toward giving.  Her team’s research and experiments showed that asking people for volunteer time before you ask them for money increases their financial contributions later.  

She notes in the podcast:

  • People are overwhelmed by the number of nonprofits, and more importantly, are having a tough time differentiating between them.  Creating a great brand experience (your authentic, distinct promise to your stakeholders) separates you from the crowd.
  • Relationships are driven by first impressions and are cemented in the first six weeks.  It then becomes difficult to overcome any mistakes or problems that happen in that early stage.  So, the first experience with your organization is important.
  • Asking people questions about their intentions to act increases the likelihood that they will later perform the act.  Companies frequently sponsor surveys about buying habits to prompt people into considering buying their products.
  • Volunteering correlates highly with personal happiness.  Even the idea of volunteering evokes connections to positive experience, values, personal growth, and self-actualization.
  • The concept of money and financial gifts evokes questions of utilitarian value, effectiveness, competition for resources.  Those frequently trump the values association with charitable giving. 

So, if you want to win someone’s long-term support, ask them to consider volunteering first.  And when they say yes, make sure the experience is meaningful.  Then later ask for a donation.  Try an experiment with your next batch of prospects and let me know how it goes.

You can listen to the hour-long podcast here – the first half is on the giving research and the second half is on connections to brand strategies.  The related academic journal article, a 15-page PDF, is here .