The Haiti Earthquake Response: A view from the trenches

The Risk of Sharing Ideas

What do you do with your great idea of how to change the world? Do you keep it secrete while you try to figure out how to make it work as your project or do you tell everyone that you know and risk having someone steal your idea? Seth Goldin blogged about the difficulty of selling ideas. In the non-profit world we rarely can be paid by an organization for developing an idea, however we do make our organizations grow by developing new ideas. We fear that if someone else hears our great idea, they will steal it and make their organization grow instead of ours.

The same thought seems to hold once we begin implementing our great idea. I recently directed a project to build capacity among local organizations. My organization was one of thirteen organizations to get a similar grant. During the implementation of these five-year grants, I was astounded at how few of my fellow implementers were willing to share even basic information about their operations. Some organizations told me that they were unwilling to share their projects' annual reports, because they contained information about their operations that were trade secrets.

In his book The Dip, Seth discussed how ideas are cheap, but champions are hard to find. I think this better matches my experience with ideas. I've come up with a lot of great ideas. However unless I have the time and energy to put into making them happen, they wither away. When I've discussed an idea that I want to implement (such as my failed idea for creating a movement to end poverty in the Caribbean that inspired me to start this blog), the discussion helps me to refine the idea (and perhaps help me to realize that it wasn't such a great idea after all!).

Seth concludes his article by stating that if you are not in the position to sell your idea, better to blog it and at least get bragging rights to have initiated the idea.  If you don't have the means to champion your idea now, wouldn't it be better to have the world become a better place because of your idea? 

Perhaps we need an Idea-a-Day website for non-profits where we can push our ideas out and hope that someone adopts and champions them.

Feed poor New Yorkers and Receive New Music

Robert Carr on the Everyday Giving Blog has highlighted a nice holiday giveaway. By downloading a free album from Peter Buffett, both Amie Street and the Robin Hood Foundation will donate a total of $3 for meal through the Food Bank of New York City.This is a great way to stimulate business for Amie Street, discover a new artist, and give money (free of charge to you!) to a great cause.

Why are we always too busy sawing?

In sticking with the theme of why NGOs are not better at fostering internal capacity-building, I read the Mckinsey & Company entitled "Effective Capacity Building in Non-Profit Organizations" (August, 2001). The report was commissioned by Venture Philanthropy Partners as part of their analysis of how they can help the nonprofit sector. The report is an interesting look at nonprofit organizations by a for-profit firm.

My favorite chapter is the second one that is entitled " WHY CAPACITY BUILDING MATTERS – AND WHY NONPROFITS IGNORE IT." The authors cite a variety of reasons why NGOs don't do it, but they basically revolve around two points:
* NGOs are too busy implementing their work to think about improving their capacity
* It is very hard to get money for capacity building

Although I agree that both of these reasons are the excuses that we use, I am also a bit baffled by them. Why are we too busy implementing to take the time to improve and why do we give it such a low priority that we don't find the money to fund it? Somehow I don't think that we neglect training because we don't believe that we need it, but that it is hard to justify the investment. I would guess that for the private sector has an easier time justifying the time and expense because they hope to see the impact in their increased sales or profits. For the non-profit sector, perhaps we focus too much on our impact today and too little on our future impact.

My favorite quote on the importance of capacity building comes from the book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven Covey and is found in the introduction to the chapter on the Seventh Habit, "Sharpening the Saw":

Suppose that you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree. “What are you doing?”, you ask. “Can’t you see,” comes the impatient reply. “I’m sawing down this tree.” “You look exhausted!” you exclaim. “How long have you been at it?” “Over five hours,” he returns, “and I’m beat! This is hard work.” “Well, why don’t you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?” you inquire. “I’m sure it would go a lot faster.” “I don’t have time to sharpen the saw,” the man says emphatically. “I’m too busy sawing!”

Why are we always too busy sawing to take the time to sharpen our saw?