Category: Organization Development

On which side of philanthropy’s great divide do you stand? More importantly, where do your donors and potential donors stand?

The divide used to be less noticeable, but with the explosion of social media over the past five years, tweeting, blogging, and linking has brought the great divide to the forefront.

On the one side are those who assume that “social capital” belongs in the public domain and should be applied to the public good. The “public good” is defined by broad terms such as social justice and environmental ethics.

On the other side are those who are productively and satisfyingly engaged in personal philanthropy … where one’s giving is a personal expression of one’s own values, concerns, interests, (hopefully) vision, and, yes, even whim.

Do donors have a social obligation to subordinate their personal philanthropic passions to a group-think standard for how and why they should give? Isn’t that part of what we pay taxes for – how successfully have THOSE dollars been used to create social equity? Will a philanthropic “free social capital market” be any more successful – or socially just – than, say, a Goldman Sachs-school market?

The divide is more than polemics. If you think this debate has no bearing on your own nonprofit, think again. Where you stand on this issue will affect everything from how you frame your case, to how you package your appeal, to how you interact one-on-one with your supporters and those you serve.

Private philanthropic money … public good or private vision?

And what, in essence IS philanthropy … “love of mankind” or “obligation to mankind”?

Food for thought.

Farewell and fare well until next week …

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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

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So you have piles of venture ideas and don’t know where to start. Or perhaps there’s just one idea that you think looks pretty good. Either way, you need to some feasibility testing.

To narrow a long list to a manageable number, try the Quick Feasibility Screen (at www.RolfeLarson.com click on Free Resources). It’s a list of ten multiple-choice questions that has been used by hundreds of organizations to winnow down a long list into the best one or two ideas. In most cases, you can do this just using what you already know or can find out quickly.

Once you have it down to one or two ideas, take a look at the Quick Feasibility Test, which takes more time. Here are our top 10 tips for efficiently gathering the information you need to answer those questions:

1. Start with your goals. What do you want to accomplish? How will you define success?

2. Write a one page “first cut” summary of your venture, describing its products or services (benefits not just features), customers, operations, marketing strategies, and likely competitors.

3. Decide whether you want to do the feasibility research yourself, bring on a team, or hire a consultant to help.

4. Go online to find similar ventures and interview them. You’ll be surprised how open they are.

5. Your online research should also guide you to some “experts” in this field: could be retired managers, consultants, state employees, even academics.

6. If this is a venture idea you already know something about, you probably already know some other folks who can offer some insights. Talk to them.

7. If there’s an industry association that covers that area, contact them.

8. “Secret shop” potential competitors to learn how they do things.

9. Identify your target customers and then find ways to interview some of them. A dozen interviews can yield great results. Evaluate their willingness to pay; what do they currently purchase that’s more or less similar?

10. Write down everything you’ve learned. You can use the Quick Feasibility Test structure above to organize your work. Crank out some projections based on your research, and run the whole thing (5 -10 pages max) past a half dozen people with business experience. Revise and do more research if needed.

Good luck!

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Copyright © 2010 Rolfe Larson Associates – Fifteenth Anniversary, 1995 – 2010

Author of Venture Forth! Endorsed by the late Paul Newman of Newman’s Own

Read my weekly blogs on Social Enterprise and Business Planning

It’s not hard thinking up venture ideas. Often they seem to come out of the woodwork. Get some folks together for an hour and you’ll come out with a couple dozen of them. Include some entrepreneurial people from outside your group and you’ll get some new ideas that you might have missed.

But also step back to take a look at what your group or organization has to offer. Start with any services or products you’re already offering, even if they don’t make any money for you. What could you do to improve financial impact through them? Perhaps increase your prices, lower your costs, or sell more to existing customers. Is there anything else you need? Next, look at what else you could provide to these customers, based on what you know about them or could find out by asking them. Do you want fries with that burger?

After that, explore where you might find additional customers for your current products. Best thing to look for: customers who are similar in some fashion to your existing customers. Seek out similar demographics or organizations in different locations. How do we get our customers to refer us to others? Finally, consider new products or services you could provide to new customers, but only do that last. This represents the most difficult, riskiest strategy. But in entrepreneurship, anything is possible. Just don’t spend too much time discussing the least likely to succeed ideas.

I often use the Venture Brainstorming Pyramid as a tool for working through these options. Start at the bottom and work your way up. In a future blog, we’ll discuss effective strategies for evaluating the ideas you come up through feasibility testing.

The recent use of social media by the Coast Guard as part of their response to the BP oil spill, and by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation with regard to flooding in that state, are both discussed in recent posts by Erik Bernstein at the Bernstein Crisis Management Blog.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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What type of highly confidential information do you store on your mobile device? Contacts who would hate to see their information shared with spammers or identity thefts? Passwords? Photos or videos you or others wouldn’t appreciate appearing on YouTube? Text messages flirting with someone who isn’t your spouse?

It’s an odd quirk of human behavior that we will put certain types of information under lock and key and password at home or office, but then make the same information easily accessible to anyone who steals (or finds) our phone or other mobile devices. I have helped more than one organization respond to crisis that originated with such thefts. And while some types of crisis aren’t preventable, these situations are, usually employing simple-to-implement measures.

Take my Blackberry Tour, for example. By using the built-in password protection system, I can prevent access to the phone and my data. If someone fails to enter the correct password a preset number of times, all my data is wiped! I can restore it 100% from my corporate Enterprise server (and even a private Blackberry user could restore from their backup), but a thief could not unless he/she could quickly guessed my password. Are there hacks around this system? Probably. But most thieves wouldn’t have that level of sophistication. I set up my Blackberry so that it defaults to “password required” mode if it has been turned off or if haven’t used it in an hour, but there are other options. Even if the device is in password-protected mode, it can receive incoming phone calls and can be used for one type of outgoing phone call – to emergency services (911 in the United States). While it sounds like a pain in the ___ to enter a password first, I became very fast at doing so with just a little practice.

There are built-in and/or inexpensively purchased protection systems of this sort for literally every type of mobile device. Is entering a password a slightly-time-delaying pain in the ass? Sure. But it doesn’t cause nearly as much pain as dealing with the aftermath of stolen confidential data.

I recommend strongly that every organization whose employees use their mobile devices for business purposes require that those devices have some means of protecting confidential information in the event of theft or loss.

Comic Postscript: I know how well my Blackberry’s protection system works because, shortly after getting this phone, I forgot the password I’d set up. I knew my data would be wiped if I kept mis-entering, so I called for tech help with one password try left to see if there was a workaround. I was told no, the system is hard-wired for the protection of the owner. So I tried one more time and *POOF*, all my data went bye-bye.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

I’ve worked with nonprofit organizations for a very long time. I’ve noticed two distinctly different approaches to leading: reactive versus proactive. You’ll very likely notice each of the two distinctly different types in the following paragraphs.

Fundraising

The reactive nonprofit is continually fundraising and then spending whatever funds are obtained — so the organization is in a continual state of fundraising. The proactive organization sets a fundraising target and raises funds until that target is hit. Then the organization directs more energies to the rest of the organization, especially to programs.

Source of Leadership

The reactive organization is led by a person, usually the Executive Director. He/she staffs the Board with members who are expected primarily to do fundraising. The proactive organization is led by a strong working relationship between the Board and Executive Director, with emphasis primarily on planning and implementing those plans.

Sustainability

The reactive organization sees sustainability as a matter of having enough funds. The proactive organization see sustainability as being realistic in everything it does — because if the organization is not realistic, then it will not have enough resources, which will lead it into an unsustainable situation.

(Astute readers might recognize the signs of a reactive organization as very similar to the signs of an organization with Founders Syndrome.)

What do you think?

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For more resources, see our Library topic Nonprofit Capacity Building.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

Which of the following statements about a jury, civil or criminal, are true?

1. Prospective jury members never lie regarding their advance bias about a case.
2. Jury members are always truly “peers” of the defendant.
3. Jury members never talk about a case outside of jury deliberations, or read and watch TV about a case when sequestered, once directed not to do so by a judge.

If your answer is “none of the above,” you begin to appreciate the potential value of crisis/issues management for the purpose of educating a jury pool. Now, I am aware, though not an attorney, that members of the bar are not allowed to influence a jury. Ed Novak, a partner at the Phoenix-based law firm, Polsinelli Shugart, bridges the gap between influencing and educating.

“While it is unethical to attempt to influence prospective jurors, there is nothing unethical or unprofessional about having an accurate picture of your client presented to the media and other audiences,” said Novak.

A jury consultant is typically not called in until there is some high certainty that a case will, in fact, go to trial. By then, if the case in question has been highly visible in the press, it may well be too late to educate a jury pool “contaminated” by the media’s interpretation of events.

Any honest reporter (yes, there are honest reporters who might even acknowledge there are honest attorneys) will admit that he or she brings a natural bias and an institutional editorial perspective to a story. Journalists will do their best, in that context, to report in a “balanced manner,” with the exception of columnists, who are often free to say pretty much what they please and not worry about “balance.” These media representatives are a gateway through which both plaintiff/prosecutor and defendant can communicate not only to the publics thought of most often – business contacts, community VIPs, etc. – but also to potential jury members. It is the responsibility of counsel, with expert assistance as necessary, to direct media relations that can shift the balance of coverage.

“If we say something to the media, we realize we may be talking to future jury members as well, and if we don’t say something, we’re telling those jury members ‘we don’t care enough about you to keep you informed.’ When we get to court, they’ll remember that,” said Novak.

And, he notes, his firm has realized that the same analysis done by crisis management professionals to anticipate multi-audience response to various public relations tactics also helps them anticipate jury response.

“I’ve had a crisis consultant sit in on practice sessions for depositions, resulting in a change in the client’s choice of words,” he said. In that circumstance, the crisis consultant was actually hired as a jury consultant under the law firm’s umbrella of confidentiality.

What tactics can be used for this public education process? They include, but are not limited to:

• The use of spokespersons trained to deliver key messages to the media and other audiences.
• Educating employees of defendant or plaintiff’s companies about what to say or not to say about the situation at hand when they’re back home, out in the community which will eventually be the source of jurors.
• Advertorials — buying print space or broadcast time in which one puts news-like stories about your client organization that are designed to help balance any misinformation which may already be in the public eye. This tactic is usually only employed if the media has consistently mis-reported the facts.
• Launching blogs and websites.

The battle for the hearts, minds and votes of jury members does not begin in the courtroom. In my experience, advance communication begins immediately after a legal situation hits the media. It can work together with legal tactics to (a) preclude a case ever going to trial (assuming that’s a desired outcome for either side of the issue) or (b) affect public perception sufficiently to enhance either side’s chance of a favorable outcome in court.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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[Jonathan Bernstein is president of Bernstein Crisis Management, Inc. and author of Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

Do we still need a “social” enterprise sector? Many businesses have “social impact” at least with their customers. And these customers around the world are demanding greater accountability and environmental sensitivity.

Here’s what a reader to this blog wrote last week. “The underlying distinction made between social and business enterprise is thin,” noted Ashim Kumar Chatterjee. “All businesses have to serve some social need to be able to last. I would be inclined to believe that there is a direct relationship between the business of a business enterprise and social needs. So long as the deliverables of the business remain socially relevant, the business will survive and sustain itself. The entire gamut of eco-friendly products and technologies are a case in point.”

Several people who work in the business sector made similar points to me last week at the SEA Summit + World Forum in San Francisco. These are folks who share the goals of the social enterprise movement but don’t use that term in their work. For at least some of their investors and customers, “social” comes across as uncompetitive, higher priced, inefficient.

So should we call the whole thing off?

I don’t think so. We have a long ways to go before all or even most businesses incorporate public impact into their business decisions. Think BP. And the nonprofit sector has just as long an entrepreneurial row to hoe to have social impact given the challenging philanthropic realities of the 21^st Century. I think social enterprise is still a powerful term that helps organize our thinking (and ourselves) as we set out to “harness the power of the marketplace to solve critical social or environmental problems.”

What do you think?

Last Friday I was interviewed for almost five minutes on Bloomberg TV regarding crisis management and the Goldman Sachs debacle, with about 20 seconds at the end of the interview regarding the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

Funny thing at the interview itself — you probably can’t tell that, in this high-tech TV studio, I was standing…on a box. Seems that they had just installed a new remote camera (no cameraman — just a robot camera mounted on a pole) and it wasn’t set for the right height, nor could they fix it quickly. The engineer on site was quite embarrassed, but I was assured that would be fixed when I next returned. 🙂

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQeU9unToNs[/youtube]

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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I just returned from the 11^th Social Enterprise Alliance Summit+ World Forum in San Francisco. A record 700+ attendees from around the world attest to the growing strength of this vibrant sector. I met folks from Canada, the UK, Australia, the Philippines, Africa, and South America.

In an earlier blog I described social enterprise as a trillion dollar sector, and that’s just in the US. Now it feels more like a trillion kilowatts of energy, with all the electrons moving in the same direction, toward greater social impact, and in its wake, toward changing the world, one social enterprise at a time.

So many workshops, I was only able to attend a few. One that really caught my attention involved five teenagers of color from severely economically distressed sections of East Oakland. All had experienced urban violence first hand; one of them had been shot four times. They discussed their experiences launching their own ventures, from music to groceries to recycling, in affiliation with Ashoka’s Youth Venture. All I can say is if they can do it – and they were doing it – all of us can surely succeed in our own work.

Another workshop I attended included a presentation from RSF Social Finance, which borrows money from foundations, companies and individuals and lends it out to nonprofits to increase their social impact. They earn 90% of their costs from making those loans (goal is 100% within two years), have $70 million in outstanding loans, and have a tiny loss ratio (something like ½%).

If you want more information about the SEA Summit, be sure to check out the conference’s blog site at: http://www.sea-alliance.blogspot.com/ And to those flying back to their homes around the world, safe travels!