Inquiry-Driven Social Impact Projects

“Ask yourself an interesting enough question and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you’ll find yourself all by your lonesome – which I think is a more interesting place to be.”

In Caracas, Venezuela, my city of origin, nearly 60% of its 6 million inhabitants live in what we call “barrios” (brick shacks that are built in unstable places, without the proper infrastructure or public services, and at constant risk of damage because of rains, mudslides, and even earthquakes). Personal safety issues and access to urban areas of the city make it very difficult for people to have a decent quality of life in Caracas.

When I lived there, I wanted to do something about it, but my resources were very limited. I began asking questions to determine how my knowledge and skills could be applied to help create a solution that would help answer the problems of people living under difficult conditions. Questioning has an essential role not only in determining one’s personal purpose, but also in informing oneself about how to innovatively shape her or his purpose.

My Inquiry-Driven approach and passion for teaching helped me determine that my best course of action was to create and deliver training programs for community leaders and grassroots organizations. With my NGO (“The School of Social Entrepreneurs”) I designed and delivered hundreds of trainings to empower Venezuelan communities in their social activism and skills in Project Management.

By the time I started this endeavor, there were many organizations doing something similar. Nevertheless, my initiative and theirs differed in several ways. Particularly, my approach was to take my training directly to the barrios, instead of asking these organizations and leaders to come to me. I still remember the many steps I had to take to walk up those barrios in the mountains, with a pack with my laptop, my projector and copies of my handbook.

How can you use the Inquiry-Driven approach to design Social Impact Projects? Here, I outlined the four most important questions that you have to ask yourself and your team when designing a project. 

What Questions To Ask

“Inquiring minds can identify new opportunities and fresh possibilities…We’re all hungry for better answers. But first, we need to learn how to ask the right questions.” Warren Berger, “A more beautiful question”

Why?

This is the first and most important question for individuals and organizations driving social impact. Why am I doing this? Why is my organization pursuing this? The question seems rather simple, yet it drives the most meaningful conversation around the purpose and the rationale behind its social impact. Also, the answers and additional questions derived from the “Why” gives a human perspective to the story that it will communicate to potential sponsors of the Social Impact Project.

When you are designing your Social Project it is critical that you explain why you are doing what you are doing. What drives you to invest your energy, time and passion into the specific impact you want to achieve?

When I created the NGO in Venezuela to work with community leaders and grassroots organizations my main purpose was to make a change in the way they approach their problems. I wanted to contribute on some level, and I knew that these leaders and communities lacked the tools to maximize their impact and make it sustainable.

I felt satisfied by knowing that my social projects revolved around using my skills to contribute to building other’s skills. And I used that methodology in all my projects. It is important, because the potential sponsors are humans, not machines. And they will read your project and want to make sure that not only you have the potential to do it, but that there is a strong force or purpose that drives you to do it.

• What is your purpose as a social entrepreneur?
• What is the purpose of your organization?
• What is the social pressing situation or the opportunity?

When designing the Social Project, the “Why” becomes the description of the situation, issues or opportunities, and how you fit in a potential solution.

What?

Together with the question of Why, the “What” becomes the real lasting and enduring change that the project will achieve. Your purpose, together with the change that you want to achieve in your community, your city, your country or the world, creates the impact of the project. What do you want to see at the end?

This is a critical question, because it will determine the kind of solutions or opportunities you can bring to the table. The very essence of the “What” is its correlation to the “Why”. One problem can be solved in an infinite number of ways. However, you and your organization wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing just any impact, rather, you won’t stop until you see a specific impact.

Determining the “What” we want to see at the end of the project is a collective exercise. If you are the leader of your social organization, you have the big responsibility of engaging and energizing people around a powerful purpose. The way you will deliver your impact and outcomes needs the participation of your team. You have the unique role of stimulating questions within your organization in order to create a more clear vision of what can be done and the path to get there.

When designing the Social Project, the “What” becomes both your Impact and Outcomes.

Who?

Determining your beneficiaries is a critical question in your project. Who will be the direct beneficiaries? Who is partially benefited by the project? How can we avoid “free riders” taking away the benefits for those who need them more?

As part of this question, you can also determine the network of support you might need for your project. Who can help? What can they do? How can we keep them engaged (and accountable)? There are interesting ways to summon the support provided by your network. There are two tools available that you might find particularly useful: (1) RACI (Responsibility Assignment Matrix), where you indicate the activities and the support network, and assign the corresponding level of participation (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted and/or Informed); and (2) the Support-Opposition matrix, where you can identify groups that could potentially support or oppose the project, and the strategies to maximize support and minimize opposition.

At the end of the day, the matrix will provide good information only if you are asking the right kind of questions.

How?

This question provides the action that answers the “Why” and the “What”. Nelson Mandela said that “Vision without action is just a dream, action without vision just passes the time, and vision with action can change the world."

So far, you have worked to understand your purpose and define that of your organization. Once you discover that powerful drive, then you have to make it real, to turn dreams into action. That becomes the “How”.

In Social Impact Projects, we must translate the “How” into two specific things: Outputs and Resources. It is important to not confuse or interchange outputs for outcomes. The first is an actual task or deliverable of your project, whereas the latter is a partial result of the deliverable.

In my experience training community leaders and grassroots organizations I learned that teaching skills in Project Management don’t always ensure higher quality of projects and impact. There is the need for more, including follow-ups, consultancy, innovative approaches to stay connected, and so on. At the beginning, I considered the training to be a result of my work. However, as I started seeing the results, I had to accept my own ignorance and begin asking deeper questions., I came to realize that training is just an output. The real change is determined by the quality of the impact achieved by the training.

Putting it all together

The most important takeaway is that you should NEVER STOP ASKING QUESTIONS.

It may seem obvious to ask the who, what, why and how with respect to your Social Impact Project, but breaking into the finer details of these questions is often overlooked by individuals/organizations eager to get to work.  When an organization finds resources to implement a project, it tends to ease its ways and stop asking difficult and sometimes inconvenient questions. Never stop asking questions. Keep your purpose alive by asking more and more difficult questions. “I was able to provide training to more than 10,000 community leaders, is there a way to create an accessible training program using technology to reach more leaders and organizations?” That has been one of my personal questions.

Engage your network of support, your community and your team in asking difficult questions to understand and determine what you want to see as a result of your work, and how you plan to do it. It is ok to not have an answer at the beginning. However, asking those questions will open your mind to think in more creative ways.

My new questions

Now, many years have passed since I worked to train community leaders and grassroots organizations, I have more questions than ever. How can I reach more leaders and organizations? How can I provide similar training to more people at the same time, at lower costs? Is there any way to provide a tool so that leaders and organizations have a more effective way to design and monitor their Social Impact?

In asking those questions and being inquiry-driven in my approach, I also aligned with colleagues in a similar quest. And we created Projectionary, as an online platform to connect social entrepreneurs and enterprises making a social impact.

I want to share some of those experiences with you. Even more importantly, I want to show you how the Inquiry-Driven approach is the real essence and basis of building strong Social Impact Projects thus enabling access to sponsors.
 
Join me on September 14, at 10:30 a.m., in a free webinar “Social Impact Project Essentials”. Click to register (if you cannot participate, still register. We will send the presentation and video later).     

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If you have any questions, leave them below and I am more than happy to help!

About the Author: Enrique Rubio is an HR Professional at the Inter-American Development Bank. He is an Electronic Engineer and a Fulbright scholar with an Executive Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Syracuse University. Enrique researches and writes about leadership and HR and seeks to explore the overlaps of productivity and leadership in the business and non-profit world. Enrique is also a competitive ultrarunner.

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