Social Ch@nge

thank god for writers like Leslie Crutchfield. though it might be fun to fundraise the viking way.

Recently, I had a chance to hear Leslie Crutchfield speak - she’s the co-author of “Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits”

She and Heather McLeod-Grant spent four years studying a dozen high-impact nonprofits to “uncover their secrets to success.” Now, I usually shy away from these kinds of books (”The Seven Highly Effective Secrets of the Wealthy Barista!”) because generally this type of “business literature,” tends towards trite, well-trodden advice. Do your homework; pay attention to your donors; work smarter, not harder. Great ideas, but you’ve heard them before.

I’m happy to say that Ms. Crutchfield and her book are different. It’s a great read, and well worth your time. I’ll cherry-pick one example that has stuck with me.

A key finding from her research was that successful nonprofits tended to treat other nonprofits as allies, not competitors. They actively nurtured collaborative networks. In fact, Crutchfield points out, many successful nonprofits have been using an “open source” approach to knowledge building, long before the term was used by us social geeks.

For example, take the Exploratorium (http://www.exploratorium.edu/). Founded in 1969 by Frank Oppenheimer (brother of atomic bomb Oppenheimer), the Exploratorium was at the forefront of the “hands-on science museum” movement. Over time, the Exploratorium decided to spend a portion of their annual budget to train staff from other museums in their philosophy of “museum as an educational centre.” Exploratorium staff would open their books and show people how to do what they did. Today, the Exploratorium Network for Exhibit-Based Teaching continues work to develop the field as a whole: as their website states, “As partners, we all reap the benefits of over 499 years of experience in the field.”

In the commercial sector, you would try and patent your ideas, hide them from your competitors or, at best, franchise. Instead, the Exploratorium adopted a philosophy of growing the network, not just the organisation. By advancing the field, they advanced their own institution.

In the end, the advice from “Forces for Good” is to think like a movement. It doesn’t matter if you are a museum or an activist group - you are part of a larger movement, and it pays us all to advance collectively.

Or so says Leslie Crutchfield - do you agree? Are you a small non-profit, struggling to keep up with big NGO fundraising shops? Or is this kind of “share the love” thinking too idealistic?