Prelude Interactive

While on my way home from Thanksgiving and my 10 year high school reunion, I had plenty of time to read through this report by the Hewlett Foundation and McKinsey & Company.  Why?  We sat on the tarmac for 2 hours due to a snowstorm, but I was planning on reading it anyway, I promise.  This is the Hewlett formerly of HP, and McKinsey of currently one of the firms your corporate leadership uses as a scapegoat during layoffs.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be so glib – management consultants are fierce minds and attack problems in a determined and obsessive way, so it’s a good thing they had a hand in doing some deep research into the nonprofit arena.

I found out about the report through, again, Social Actions (they were given props by name near page 40), and Christine Egger has already written a thoughtful response to it.  The report creators also set up a discussion board, where some have also weighed in.  This brings me to my first independent criticism of the report, which is that they opted to create a new domain name and discussion board rather than partnering with an existing community.  I’m sure NTEN or the Progressive Exchange would have been more than happy to host the report and ensuing discussion, where they may have created more intense discussion from the existing community.

I’m leafing back through the report now, and you should read it.  The next few paragraphs will be a little disjointed.

One thing I learned is that GuideStar offers more information than I thought, and is in fact a nonprofit entity.  “Dear Guidestar:  You should update your branding!  I thought you were a for profit company attempting to keep your clients in a closed information ecosystem, and your website looks a little dowdy.  The social action / web 2.0 conversation I have been trying to follow rarely mentions you.  P.s., the report is right, you should expand beyond the 990 form.”

The report also does not address a pet topic of mine, which is the movement of talented workers into nonprofits, NGOs, and the ecosystem around them.  I think a concerted PR campaign to get all the smart people who are getting laid off right now to become skilled volunteers or full time staff at social change organizations would go a long way to improving the efficiency of the ‘marketplace’ of the report.

Sure, McKinsey has a business mindset that most of their recommendations are in line with.  Why not own the stereotype and publish a Forbes 100 of giving and philanthropy?  Some donors want to remain private, sure, but some high net worth (HNW) individuals are competitive and are already trying to out-do one another.  Making it a game gives them something else to do aside from buying sportsteams or thinking they can run an airline profitably.

The report mentions Kiva, who is 2008’s darling.  If their numbers are anything close to reality, they deliver on the promise.  I thought about a similar site I saw recently that sends microloans specifically to China, and has some specific branding to attract interested donors.  Ok, I’m willing to allow that a few copycat sites will emerge before Kiva figures out how to add technology that will re-skin the Kiva engine for specific communities like that.  Otherwise, we’re wasting a bunch of energy reinventing the wheel each time.  Competition is great, mimicry is not.

Elsewhere in the report, the authors discuss the reluctance of many larger nonprofits to share their findings.  Some of their programs fail.  Some don’t go as well as hoped.  The ones they publicize are successful.  The report correctly calls upon these organizations to open their filing cabinets and share the knowledge so other organizations don’t make the same mistakes.

I am generally very critical of the structure of academia, mainly because I do not have the personality or skills to play that game.  The tradition of anonymous, rigorous peer review, though, is undeniably powerful, and I wonder how hard it would be to germinate for nonprofits. Or hey, where is the Wikipedia for social causes?  Why do I have to know the right people to find out how to register an NGO in Malawi?  There are a few isolated Wikis, of course, but nothing outstanding.

The report devotes three lines to social networking, which is sooo 2005, but something nonprofits are just now figuring out (see above regarding wisdom sharing).  “Finally, the growing popularity of Facebook, MySpace, and other social networks is clearly a force to be reckoned with.  Nonprofits need to fuel these sites with good performance information and not just let the ‘buzz’ rule”. Reckoned with?  Agreed about the performance data.

Finally, the report’s audience is large nonprofits, large donors, and their intermediaries.  Focusing on the institutional end of the spectrum is fine, that’s really where most of the action is.  However, the borders around the United States in this regard are still very apparent.  What do the report writers have to suggest for NGOs, the UN, and other international players who are trying to do good work in the other 90% of the world?

Time to walk around the B terminal s’more.  I read all my magazines.