Bright+3

Bright Ideas Change the World

Bright Ideas

Organizational Effectiveness

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Most organizations and leaders are struggling to keep up with the change-driven pressures that digital are placing on them. There are more communications channels than ever, we’re quickly buried in data, and individuals outside the organization have the tools to create power that can both support and tear down organizations.

How do we organize our leadership and staff for digital success? How do we train and support our staff? How do we manage digital channels, social networks, and data across the broader organization. These are a few of the questions we help organizations answer.

Bright+3 helps leaders navigate the turbulent waters of new positions, changing programs, and new pressures from rapidly shifting technologies. Our experience spans the spectrum of organizational and executive support but focuses primarily on ensuring that organizational cultures are digital-facing so that organizations can prosper in a rapidly changing environment.

Some of our clients include the Sierra Club, Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and Blue Shield Foundation of California.

Offline community is where the power happens

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It was with great interest and some amusement that I read a piece by Andy Ellwood in Forbes titled (ironically, I think) Could Offline Communities be the Next Big Thing?

Occupy Monopoly
Offline community action via Flickr user Conskeptical

After all, it was only a couple decades ago that the public consumption Internet was just getting rolling. Up until that time all “communities” were, you know, happening in real life – that’s what we now call offline. But the thing is that community – civic groups, clubs, political interest groups, just neighbors getting together – was languishing at the time.

People were, as Robert Putnam described, spending a lot of time bowling alone instead of collaborating in and around their community.  This, Putnam argued, sapped citizen engagement and weakened democratic institutions (which may be continually weakening for a variety of reasons – discussion for a later day).

Ellwood’s piece in Forbes profiles several examples of offline communities strengthening entrepreneurship in the United States and abroad. Startup culture is driven by people supporting one another. It’s just about impossible for one person alone to move from seemingly brilliant idea to functional company. You can read blog posts and connect online but real progress needs time and trust of the sort that happens in person.

There is a lot of talk about online communities in the nonprofit world. Rightfully so. Engaging and supporting your social media, email, and supporter communities is important. But real changes to behavior, community decision making, and public policy require we invest in offline networks (see this recent story from the Greenpeace Mobilisation Lab about Washington Bus for a great example of offline/online working together). Offline community – it’s where the people are. It’s where empathy, reliance and trust mix together in that mystical recipe for power.

 

Annoying your list works except when it doesn’t

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This goes in the category of things you probably shouldn’t adapt from the Obama campaign for your organization.

Annoying annoying-email-wonkaA friend sent me an excerpt from Wednesday morning’s Politico Playbook. It amounted to an excerpt from Jonathan Alter’s book The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies (to be released on June 4th) that focused on the Obama digital team’s email strategy, fundraising, and the value of extensive testing.

The Obama campaign tested most everything. As Alter describes, they  even (wisely) ran tests against their experience and hunches. As the campaign progressed the need to raise more (and more) money became more (and more) pressing. Good sense and experience told the email team that too much email would annoy people to the point of tuning out, unsubscribing or maybe just not voting.

You know what’s smart? Testing the frequency of your emails.
[Read more…] about Annoying your list works except when it doesn’t

Power of the people: Acknowledge it

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We send thank you notes to donors and good organizers do what they can to thank their activists and volunteers. But it seems difficult for groups to acknowledge the power of the people – the huge cross-section of regular people that give up their time – that together make our work bigger and better than it could be if we were just staff out doing our work.

A friend, Apollo Gonzales, recently shared the story of a project he started when he worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Apollo and his team wanted to recognize and acknowledge the people (and their power) that made NRDC’s advocacy successful. Apollo tells the story best:

Before I left NRDC in 2011 I started a project that was aimed at telling the story of how our advocates and members were a major force in the work we were doing. I wanted to tell a story that told the importance of people power. I interviewed staff who I knew had been with the organization for a long time, and who I knew had a passion for how people drove the victories we were winning. This story took shape as a video, and for a thousand little reasons we were never able to get past a script and story boards. It was the one thing I regret not having finished in my time there. Yesterday, my dear friends at Giant Ant sent me the final version.

The resulting story, Loud Voices Together are Heard, is told in a wonderful video produced by Giant Ant and narrated by Shane Koyczan…

[Read more…] about Power of the people: Acknowledge it

Listening to the Obama campaign’s digital team: Four ways to strengthen organizational culture

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Last week I was fortunate to be part of two discussions in one day about digital teams in big organizations. Instead of talking about the latest big win (and one had a huge win) or cutting edge campaign, both conversations veered towards organizational culture issues. One team addressed culture concerns head on, knowing it makes a difference in digital success. The other sees problems but is stuck, unable to steer, even a bit, the culture issues that weigh down the team.

One conversation was with a key member of the digital team at a national nonprofit advocacy group. The digital team has struggled for a while as the group has tried to figure out where digital fits in the organization. As we talked – and as I reflected on the next conversation – it became obvious that structure (and continual “restructuring”) wasn’t the whole story.

The second discussion happened at an event that included a panel of four key members of the Obama campaign’s digital team, including CTO Harper Reed.

Obama digital team leaders speak at Galvanize in Denver. March 7, 2013.
Obama digital team leaders speak at Galvanize in Denver. March 7, 2013.

I expected this panel to focus on how they pulled the products and technology together. The event was organized by a start-up incubator so it would probably touch on the lessons that iterative design, open source development, and relying on a cloud application servers might offer entrepreneurs.

[Read more…] about Listening to the Obama campaign’s digital team: Four ways to strengthen organizational culture

Investment, results, and transparency: Younger generations change changemaking

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A recent study by the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy and 21/64, a nonprofit consulting practice, dives into the giving interests and preferences of young major donors. The report, available at NextGenDonors.org, provides useful insights into how young, highly engaged activists and donors view their relationship with charities and social change campaigns.

Modern fundraising integrates online and in-person approaches. Photo via Flickr user jaymiek.
Modern fundraising integrates online and in-person approaches. Photo via Flickr user jaymiek.

This study has been making the rounds. It has been covered recently by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, was introduced by its authors in Stanford Social Innovation Review, and moved Jeff Brooks to provide a valuable critique that we’ll get into shortly.

What’s important about the opinions of a few hundred wealthy young donors? It’s well known in philanthropic circles that the transition of wealth from baby boomers to younger generations is coming – it has in fact begun – and will pass trillions of dollars to donors that have come of age in a world where the Internet has radically changed both communications and donor-organization relationships.

Basically, these are important nonprofit supporters today but in years to come this cohort will be found on nonprofit boards and in other leadership positions. Their attitudes towards giving and programming will help shape nonprofit budgets, staffing, and more.

What’s less clear, of course, is how transferable the experience and opinions of a small set of young donors is to a larger populace that will (one hopes) become tomorrow’s nonprofit donors, members, activists and volunteers. We can, though, highlight some key takeaways from this survey that coincide with our own experience working in and around nonprofits in recent years.

Investment, results, and transparency

The nature people’s relationship with nonprofit organizations is constantly evolving. This is true on an individual level – most people are more engaged in their community as they get older, have kids, stay in one place for a while, and have more disposable income – and at a broader scale. The Internet has changed communications, hastening a shift in expectations people have about information sources, interaction with government and community groups, and the availability of performance or result-driven data. [Read more…] about Investment, results, and transparency: Younger generations change changemaking

Your leadership elephant

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Elephant
Is missing technology leadership in your organization shouting at you? The elephant says it is.

Chances are your organization doesn’t have people in senior leadership roles with experience in digital campaigning, technology development, or online movement building. No high-level ability to analyze and manage the relationship between technology and programmatic outcomes may be one of the greatest obstacles to organizational growth and success today. And too few are talking about it. Get your board and managers together and chances that visionary and capable leaders comfortable with technology are the elephant in the room.

Yesterday, NARAL Pro-Choice America announced that Ilyse Hogue will become its next president. Ms. Hogue brings deep campaigning experience and, notably, a background in meshing online and field systems to build movements, raise money, and change politics. I don’t know exactly why NARAL made this choice but I suspect that online experience played a role.

Technology is Pervasive

If you work with technology at all you likely are (or have been) overwhelmed by the complexity and variety of ways to solve every problem. Web and social media metrics, application development, video production, and even web design are just a few of nonprofit tech subjects that are continually evolving yet increasingly basic to digital advocacy and marketing. [Read more…] about Your leadership elephant

What community advocates should know about the Princeton Offense

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2310501543_c25c74204f_bIt occurred to me, while watching Georgetown trounce Western Carolina a few weekends ago (thanks for the game, Eric!), that nonprofit advocates might learn a thing or two from the Princeton Offense practiced by the Hoyas and others.

The Princeton Offense, so named because of its origins at its namesake university early in the 20th century, is a high-energy offense that uses constant motion, frequent passing, and sharp cuts to create shooting opportunities. The offense relies on nimbleness and speed … by making frequent and sudden cuts timed with sharp inside passes, players often find themselves all alone with the ball and an easy layup. If the defense pulls in to cut off those opportunities, the offense finds itself with more open three-point shot options.

The Princeton Offense has some limitations. For one thing, it depends on the entire squad being strong at passing, layups, and shooting three-pointers. Everyone doesn’t necessarily need to excel at everything, but they all need to be solid. For another, it requires a great deal of preparation and discipline, effective communication, and tight teamwork. This may be true for basketball in general, but it’s exacerbated in an offensive scheme based on sharp, precision movements.

But it doesn’t rely on overpowering your opponent, which is good given that small community groups are often at a disadvantage in terms of funding, political connections, and political muscle. Instead, it relies on qualities often found in spades among nonprofit advocates: agility, high-energy, and versatile team members.

This analogy is a stretch, I know, but the basic point is sound: play to your strengths. Design strategies that take advantage of your assets, and sidestep or minimize the strengths of your opponents. Whenever possible, set the terms of the engagement rather than play their game.

If you like the basketball-as-political-strategy analogy, the basketball team at Grinnell College offers another fun example. Unable to compete for the best players (it’s a small college in the middle of Iowa, after all), but still able to recruit a bunch of guys with solid high school experience, they twisted convention on its head: rather than field their best players for longer stretches, they substitute fresh legs constantly so that every Grinnell player on the court is able to play at 100% for the entire (short) time they’re on. The details vary every cycle, but they send in substitutes every half-minute or so, and within the first three minutes Grinnell has already fielded fifteen players playing an average of a minute each. They shoot like crazy and they leave guys on the offensive end (violating convention but not the rules). Although their opponents may consistently field better players, each member of the Grinnell squad can play at 100% the entire time they’re on the court (versus, say, an opponent, only playing at 80% because of their need to pace themselves for longer stretches of game time). “The System,” as it’s called, is a controversial approach, and it isn’t popular among basketball purists, but Grinnell – with a 7-2 record this season – is figuring out a way to play competitive ball despite being underpowered and out-skilled.

Analogies like these obviously have their limits, but there might be some wisdom to draw from the comparisons, and at the very least they can help reinforce some basic instincts about crafting effective strategies even when outmatched by your opponent.

(Photo by Flickr user Keith Allison.)

Jacob Smith is the co-author of The Nimble Nonprofit: An Unconventional Guide to Sustaining and Growing Your Nonprofit, the former mayor of Golden, Colorado, and a nonprofit consultant.