The Philanthropy411 blog posted yesterday twitter links to 90 Foundations that Tweet, along with 16 philanthropy professionals who have their own twitter accounts.
This is a great resource for any philanthropist or non-profit entity — whether solo or part of a larger organization — as reading tweets gives rare insight into real-time discussions and foci in those organizations. It also offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn from and collaborate with one another — something that happens too little in the philanthropy arena but is beginning to be recognized as a benefit to both foundation and grantee.
Here’s why tweeting is a mode of community communication you’re going to have to get on board with, at least for a while:
1. Tweeting is informal. One of the greatest breakdowns between a non-profit entity and a philanthropic body is cultural inequality. With twitter, everyone (more or less) is on the same class-level.
2. Tweeting is broadcasting. You never know who could be reading, so tweets need to be comprehensible to anyone and everyone. This means there’s very little room for specific audience manipulation.
3. Tweeting is non-committal. Twitter is a forum for discussion. People tend to finalize deals over more traditional communication streams like email, snail mail, phone, and face-to-face meetings. Whereas twitter is considered a place where you can show interest without committing yourself to a deal. This is the place to learn more, ask questions, and then take it to the next level (usually email) if necessary.
4. (At least for now) Tweeting circumvents bureaucratic barriers like calendar scheduling and gatekeepers. If you have a good idea, tweet it @ the person you think would find it interesting; no need to get time on their calendar. I strongly believe that, as the service becomes more widely used, VIPs will continue to institute stronger barricades. But, while it’s new and fun, you can often reach them directly.
Twitter remains a means to an end, but it can be a mode of conversation providing exposure to new ideas and connections without the weight of commitment.
I received comments via twitter suggesting numerous other ways philanthropy is using/funding crowdsourcing. While the jury is still out on whether crowdsourcing will provide true benefit as a new funding model, the experimentation going on is garnering lots of discussion. I’ve distilled a few of the arguments here:
Potential Pros: Crowdsourcing exposes more “real people” to philanthropy — and the organizations working to provide needed goods and services — and the concept of weighing which organizations are doing the best and most beneficial work. Also, the majority voting together will discover the greatest need (a bell curve theory).
Potential Cons: A danger that crowdsourcing will lead to popularity contests, giving an edge to organizations who are savvy with marketing or who have full coffers for influence. Also, a fear that the masses will agree on philanthropic risktaking, which some philanthropists deem necessary for the development of truly innovative ideas.
More Examples
And here are a few more examples of philanthropic crowdsourcing — let me know your thoughts:
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Through the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Foundation is crowdsourcing ideas for funding. In this initiative, the foundation planned to “invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news and social media experiments.”
Target projects are “innovations that use new or available technology to distribute content in local communities,” with the following parameters:
1. Use digital, open-source technology.
2. Distribute news in the public interest.
3. Test your project in a local community.
To date, three years of funding has been awarded. And while the initiative itself is an example of crowdsourcing funding ideas, several of the funded projects involve crowdsourcing.
One example is Ushahidi, an organization that seeks to expand an initiative to crowdsource crisis information. The strategy is to develop a free web map and timeline that journalists and citizens can use to contribute multiple reports of large news events. By allowing anyone to contribute news stories, the service would broaden information distribution even in places too dangerous for or inaccessible to mainstream media. Imagine the difference in news coverage of the recent demonstrations and uprisings worldwide had this been in place.
The British Government
Just this week, Britain suggested it was time to begin dabbling in crowdsourced giving, reports The Independent.
The Chronicle of Philanthropy gave the details stating, “Under the proposal, Britain’s Department for International Development would set aside about $65-million that the public would control by voting online between 10 aid projects in Africa and elsewhere.”
Everyone’s Doing It?
Small to Large; Corporate and Foundation; Open and Controlled. A breadth of organizations including the Case Foundation, NetSqaured, and American Express have tested their theories of crowdsourcing in philanthropy, including:
- Controlled experiments, wherein foundations maintain the role of determining grantees, but the public is sourced for suggestions and input, and
- Open experiments, which more resemble “contests”
You can read more about these foundations and their crowdsourcing programs at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.
By now, you’ve likely heard of Gmail and Google AdSense creator Paul Buchheit’s blog post titled Collaborative Charity. In it, he declares,
“I’m going to donate a bunch of money, but I want random people on the Internet to decide where it goes.”
This is crowdsourced philanthropy. You remember crowdsourcing from Who Wants to be a Millionaire. That lifeline — “ask the audience” — was the perfect example: asking a large group of people to offer their ideas on a solution to a problem. Wikipedia is another great example.
But why would we try this with philanthropy?
Well, it’s a simple case of market majority. While a lone philanthropist doesn’t necessarily have the breadth of knowledge to determine the best grant recipient, the market majority — the crowd — will most likely be able to shake out the highest priority need.
And one of crowdsourcing’s biggest benefits in the philanthropic field may be transparency. Making decisions based significantly on the suggestion of public majority means less chance of ethics or bias being called into question. And making your values and conditions clear to your “crowd” simply demands greater public transparency in order to ensure an informed decision.
There are still many unanswered questions about crowdsourced philanthropy: Will it be successful? Will it become a trend or a viable model for giving? Who exactly is the audience? Perhaps Paul Buchheit’s experiment will help us begin to understand the answers to those questions, but many more experiments will be needed to label this a success.
And one thing is certain — philanthropy will need to master technology in order to get the most benefit out of this, and most other, field trends.
Good Examples of How Philanthropy Can Use Crowdsourcing
Philanthropy Enabling Crowdsourced Solution: This is an old example, but a good one. In it, the Rockefeller Foundation funded an opportunity for a non-profit in India to generate solutions to a problem via crowdsourcing.
Philanthropy Using Crowdsourcing for Strategic Planning: The Peery Foundation is currently using a twitter hashtag notation stream to publicly discuss some significant strategic planning questions. The hashtag — #PFWhiteboard — suggests that foundation representatives, and anyone else who has a thought or good suggestion toward their progress, are “whiteboarding” solutions via twitter stream. In my experience, hashtag conversations have been a bit clunky to follow, and you don’t necessarily get a broad market spectrum of input; but the Peery Foundation is experimenting in public transparency, crowdsourcing ideas toward their strategic planning process, and taking full advantage of available technology in this process. I look forward to following the conversation and to getting great ideas from their brainstorming.
These are just a couple of examples of how philanthropy can use crowdsourcing in rather low-risk ways. And while they’re no doubt just our “first steps” toward experimenting with this idea, they offer springboards for more complex ideas in the future. You don’t have to put yourself out there like Mr. Buchheit, but you can use this age-old technique to create opportunities, define solutions, or narrow down choices.
The Roadblock
I recently participated in a regional health care panel with a group of field experts. Our task, over seven meetings, was developing a strategy for health care improvement in our region. As you’d expect, we began by identifying some major health care problems; then, we isolated several broad goals. Soon, we were discussing solutions and moving ahead like wildfire.
Until we hit the roadblock.
“All we have to do is figure out how to fix it. Paying for it is their problem.”
“Whose problem?”
“The big boys’ and girls’ problem!”
Unfortunately, quotes like this are all too common when solutions are being developed. Somehow, it’s always someone else’s job to figure out how to make all of the pieces — program, finance, and policy — work together.
What could be considered instead is that sustainable solutions require everyone to speak all three different languages. Delineations are quickly becoming blurred between the nonprofit, for-profit, and policy arenas, and those fuzzy edges can be beneficial — assuming the ability to identify with each unique perspective.
The Equation for Success
With that thought in mind, let’s suggest there’s a simple equation for sustainable social improvements:
money + public influence + programmatic excellence = change
If true, then sustainable solutions can only be achieved if there is an end to compartmentalizing the way programs are developed. By understanding and incorporating economic and political factors into how solutions are created, richer programs can be developed that are wholly supported and championed by for-profit and public representatives.
With these three sectors working in tandem, obstacles are virtually eliminated.
What it Could Look Like
Back to my health care group from the first paragraph. Ideally, my colleague wouldn’t be expecting that our group determine solutions while suggesting that it’s the job of a hypothetical group of financiers and public officials to figure out how to pay for those solutions.
Ideally, that conversation would have progressed with our group identifying not only the programmatic solutions to our health care issues, but also the payment models and incentives that would ensure buy-in to the program from for-profit payers and physicians, and the cost-reducing and quality-enhancing care models that would entice public officials to endorse the program.
Truly understanding the costs and benefits to all sectors — even when it seems like we’re all speaking different languages — will help to lay the groundwork for successful social innovations.
Philanthropy’s Role — Collaboration
So how does Philanthropy fit into all of this? It might be able to act as mortar. Those in the field of Philanthropy are tied to all three sectors as either financial supporters or colleagues; as such, their role may be as a connector and instigator of collaboration — a translator.
This will all be facilitated if Philanthropy learns to speak the individual “language” of each sector; understanding not only the lexicon, but also the goals, challenges, and motivational drivers. Only then can the best and most strategic connections between the sectors be made.
These questions may lay some groundwork for how to think about each sector’s concerns:
- Understanding and leveraging current and potential economic considerations: Who are the payers, and how can we build in benefit to them? How can economic incentives be used effectively? Could there be a market strategy? Is there a way for this program to produce not only social benefits, but also revenue?
- Understanding and leveraging current and potential public relations and policy considerations: Does/Will this have the backing of local, state, and federal government? Will an advocacy-based approach provide for the sustainability of this program? Is this complimentary to current or potential legislative items? Are there potential collaborations we can build that would affect how we develop this program? How will this be perceived in the public eye; will it demand public attention?
- Understanding and leveraging programmatic considerations: Does the program produce consistent, measureable results? Does the program have enough financial support to not only make ends meet, but to scale up to capacity — whether that’s local, regional, or national? Does the program have a strong management and governance base? Does the program have enough support from the public and government sectors to thrive should legislation development be called for?
Sectors aren’t quite as distinct today as they used to be, and many social innovators have proven that the closer we all work together to solve global problems, the closer we get to sustainable solutions. While we all have different incentives and motivations, taking them all into consideration dissolves roadblocks and allows even broader answers to develop.
The Birth of a New Era for Innovation?
The President spoke today to a room full of “do-gooders” in the White House about the administration’s new $50 million Social Innovation Fund, a pot of money created to find and expand existing social innovations — as opposed to creating new government programs — in the hope of solving serious social problems.
The fund, as I understand it, will essentially work as a giant driver of growth capital: Melody Barnes and her team build a massive due diligence program, take a road trip to find the best social innovators in the country, offer them a matching grant (the second half is required to come from the private sector) with the sole purpose of program expansion, and voila.
This sounds ideal. It shows that the Obama administration understands the (likely) fact that social innovators and entrepreneurs know their sector better than government bureaucrats do. That trusting the people who’ve been doing this for decades, building up an understanding of what really works, might be the best course of action. Basically, instead of flying in, cape in hand, to create a panoply of new social programs, the White House has decided to…well…outsource.
All of this is good news. Growth Capital-esque funding? Good. Fewer Government programs clogging the system? Good. Letting the experts be the experts? Good. Demanding collaboration between social innovators, government, and the private sector? Good.
But I have three questions I’ll be trying to answer as this new endeavor plays out:
1. With countless private foundations around the country squabbling to define the ideal due diligence process, how does Washington know exactly how to build one? How will we be certain that those deemed the “best” programs really are the best programs? The Innovation Fund team has a considerable social and political weight to carry here; how they draw up this criteria could change the nonprofit sector.
2. How far does $50 million really go? In my experience, scaling a good program nationally — even state-wide — is hugely expensive. It can cost $20 million to scale a good program to one new site or city. With matching dollars, the fund’s amount can leverage $100m, perhaps even $200m; but is that enough to really bring about the kind of social change that was discussed this afternoon? The Education Secretary’s “What Works Fund” carries $650m, after all; why is there such a large disparity?
3. When push comes to shove, how skilled are we at expanding good programs? Matthew Bishop mentions on his Philanthrocapitalism blog that, “There is not much of a track record of scaling up non-profits to draw on for guidance.” Unfortunately, this is largely true. The sector has a few outstanding performers, many of who have come from the private sector, who scale their non-profit programs expertly. But there are countless failures for every success story. Growing a business is just as difficult for a non-profit as it is for a for-profit. There are mis-calculations in budgets, market niches, growth rates, revenue, and expenses. With just $50 million, will we be able to prove the worth of this type of support?
So, no. I don’t think the Fund’s path is completely sorted out. There will be bumps on the road, but, in my eyes, this is already a success simply because of what it represents. Besides, social innovators have charted territory before, and they will again. And Obama said himself today, “There’s no such thing as a lost cause if you’re willing to…take some risks… .”