Vastly Scaling Up the Effectiveness of Nonprofits
Specifically, there are many nonprofits, NGOs, and government groups which are really good at getting stuff done without spending a lot. However, there are also a number of such groups which waste a lot of money in overhead, and there are a lot of nonprofits running outright scams, and making bad situations even worse.
I already support a bunch of honest, ethical nonprofits directly with the few resources I have at hand, specifically cash and social capital/trust, the latter via social media. (Keep expectations low, public estimates of my net worth are vastly overstated.)
How does a person of good will work with others, across the planet and across the years, to scale up to help out everyone?
I've realized, in the past few days, that a solution could involve nonprofits which focus on vetting on-the-ground nonprofits, making sure they're effective and honest, and then getting funding for their clients.
Seriously, that already helps my nonprofit dollars and social media presence go a lot farther.
Funding networks can themselves be operating scams, I've considered that, but so far I got a good base network of such groups going, including:
- The Women's Building of San Francisco
- The Global Fund for Women
- The Bob Woodruff Foundation (families of wounded warriors)
- Sunlight Foundation (governmental transparency)
- Charity Navigator (effectiveness and social impact of nonprofits)
- Guidestar (effectiveness of nonprofits)
- GreatNonprofits.org (nonprofit user reviews)
I think I need to expand this network, over time, but first, need to use social networking to make this existing networking more effective.
That means getting the funding networks to encourage their clients to be more effective in social media. For example, the clients of a particular nonprofit might encourage the people they help to post social media status updates. The nonprofits would share the posts with their funding networks... who would share a few with folks like me.
We'd Share or retweet those updates with our own networks, which affirms the work of all involved, and generates a little buzz, and maybe more funding, for people and groups who need it.
I guess that's a "leadership by example" thing, and maybe a "leading from below" thing, which is the only approach I understand.
What's next?
Product engineer
11 年NGOs,need everyone to give a hand .
Personal Chef/Caterer/646.820.4641, Community Activist, Business Coach, IndoCaribbean expert & resource.
11 年My two cents > I think one little step that will have big dividends is what I'm calling 'Collated Administration'; essentially, one place where admin services & products is provided to small/micro non-profits for a nominal fee. Such items as printing, drafting flyers, writing letters & newsletters, cleaning databases, managing emails, fielding calls, finding event spaces, more, can all be done by one team representing a large pool of non-profits. I not sure it's a new concept, but I haven't seen it being done anywhere. I'm quite familiar with many small no-profits in the Indo-Caribbean, South Asian ans Asian communities in NYC; they can all better allocate resources and become more effective in their mandates if they can spend less money and manpower on these activities. I'm curious about your thoughts on such an initiative. Can we put together a team to explore this and initiate a pilot program? Darrel3000
Valuable Network & Experience in Sports, Music, TV, Film, Hospitality, Sponsorships, AR/VR, Web3, Fund Raising & AI, AI, OH! (Batteries Included:-)
11 年And, if the sincerity and inflection shines through in their social media posts, prospective supporters will be more eager to "open their wallets"; such as myself.
Owner/Software Architect Noizu Labs, Inc.
11 年Chris Snyder compensation is tricky. You want intelligent people at the helm of a successful nonprofit. There is a tendency for the best and brightest to shy away from nonprofits because it's more lucrative on their end to just work the high 6-7 figure job elsewhere and simply contribute financially to the nonprofits they are passionate about or to direct from the board. I think there is a difference between a nonprofit that pays nearly competitive rates to attract the best and brightest in order to maximize their ability to make a difference in their area and a nonprofit that is simply a scam to line the pocket books of the founders while avoiding taxes. The real underlying issue here is that compensation for certain positions, CEOs, CTOs, etc. for large organizations in the private sector are ridiculous. As long as that is a factor nonprofits are going to need to either pray they find talented already successful/made executives, or individuals so passionate about their cause that they are willing to throw away millions of dollars of compensation away to pursue it. There are a number of videos floating around on Tedx and the internet in general the discuss this subject and the need to run nonprofits in some ways more like a traditional corporation in order to actually grow and succeed in the underlying mission of that nonprofit.