PHILANTHROPY 2173

Thursday, March 31, 2011

Aggregating, Ampfliying and Accelerating

(Opening Plenary, Skoll World Forum, Thursday, March 31, 2011)

On Friday I'm participating in a session at the Skoll World Forum called "Crowds, Clouds and Social Change." I'm honored to be joined by Patrick Meier of Ushahidi, Chris Gebhardt of TakePart and Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation. It's like a "Best Of..." from Pop!Tech

Having had the incredible honor of listening to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Peter Gabriel, Rebecca Onie, Ned Breslin, Baaba Maal and many others today, I'm going to frame the session around Aggregating, Amplifying, and Accelerating Change.

Ned Breslin, in describing his work with Water For People told us of tonight about listening to the "roar of the crowd" in a Rwandan village when the commitment was made to bring water to everyone. Archbishop Tutu claims to receive accolades only because he "is carried on the shoulders of the crowd."

Roaring crowds. That's what always on, affordable mobile technology allows us to do - on a global scale. Hear the voices of the voters, the protestors, the earthquake victims, the mothers of sick children, the health promoters, the witnesses.

We can hear what people say, aggregate it to a message, and act with the people whose lives are at stake. The tools can make everyone an activist. The tools can amplify the voices of the unheard, help us find our allies, and deliver a message.

Listening to the roar of the crowd requires us to change how we act. Social entrepreneurs need to listen to what they hear if they ask for it. The only thing worse than never listening is giving a voter, an activist, a dad, a schoolkid, a consumer, a mom a chance to voice their opinion and then ignoring it. New forms of organizations - large scale volunteer networks, mobile monitors of water wells, and "tech swarms" are all made possible by these technologies. For the most part, the actions required by each participant are still small - one text message, one phone call, one uploaded video. It is the aggregate impact that accelerates each small step - that "loosely couples many small pieces" into a global network of change.

They require us to listen differently and organize differently. This is not always easy. It might bring new results. The people to be heard are likely to be the very source of the social change that social entrepreneurs are trying to make happen. Aggregating, amplifying and accelerating their efforts is the next step in large scale change.

In a place like Oxford...

"In a place like Oxford, simple things are complicated. We study justice, health, equality, happiness, truth....The scope of what we have not yet imagined is vast." These are paraphrases from Stephan Chambers' opening remarks at the Skoll World Forum.

I was quite struck by this line, "The scope of what we have not yet imagined is vast." Oxford is the birthplace of Alice in Wonderland and Dr Seuss studied here, so clearly there are some powerful imaginations in town.

In addition to Chambers, Jeff Skoll spoke - shouting out his support for Muhammed Yunus and reminding us that "We;ve made these problems, we must make the solutions."

This 8th annual conference on social entrepreneurship opened with a speech from an Government professor. Thank goodness. It's reassuring to see the realization that policy matters. That in making "large scale change" (the theme of this year's conference) it's going to take creative, persistent, diverse resources - in other words, all of us - governments, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, businesses, people.

Here's what I took down as Professor Ngaire Woods 5 things governments and social enterprise have in common:

Participatory - global multilaterals now include the people to be affected on their boards - e.g. GAVI
They have a task focus - one problem, not whole system
New ways of working with the beneficiaries and users
Demand driven approach to problem selection
Results based legitimacy

Here are three things we need to be cautious about as government starts to learn from social enterpreneurship

Including the constituencies in the leadership makes them stakeholders in the status quo, they lose their key role as external rebels/account holders
Task focus raises problems of priorities. Who is choosing the tasks and which ones are being left out?
The demand focus and market approach can us to underinvest in watchdog functions - who oversees food systems, nuclear industry, financial services if we don't invest in government to do this separate from corporate interests?

In introducing the panel on Microfinance, Chambers reminded us that "There's always a however in Oxford." Microfinance is the poster child of social enterprise. Its poster child, Muhummad Yunus, is part of a "political witch hunt." MFIs are being called out for the issue of overindebtedness (see this Tumblr post on this panel.) It's a calling to account moment for social enterprise. I'm curious and excited to see how this proceeds.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Disrupting Philanthropy - London Version

I spoke this morning on Disrupting Philanthropy at the very modest Somerset House in London, courtesy of NCVO, BigSocietyNetwork, the Guardian UK , the European Association for Philanthropy and Gicing, and many other kind hosts. One of the examples I used is about how Andy Carvin (@acarvin) influenced how many of us in the U.S. learned about the protests in Tunisia. Andy used Storify to curate Twitter, find eyewitnesses, check their information, and tell the story in real time from half a world away. It added a whole new dimension to news coverage. You can read about it here.

I know this is a meaningful example of using digital tools for storytelling and news gathering because John Bracken also mentioned it when I joined him on a recent panel at the Jewish Funders Network.

Now I've been storified. This link to the Guardian will give you a curated list of tweets, audio interview, and some photos. This link will give you the slide deck. The conversation was quite "delightful" (For you, @steve4good) - as the UK is right in the midst of making policy "sense" about giving. This is a big deal. Changing the rules of philanthropy is what stands to either accelerate or decelerate the evolutionary changes we've been experiencing for the last decade. Without changing the rules, all we've seen so far will remain evolutionary. Rule change could be revolutionary.

I'm now at the Skoll World Forum which will include some amazing discussions on the brain, the future, massive social change, and leadership. I also hope to pop in to #OxfordJam where social entrepreneurs are talking design for social impact, "Banking on Yunus", and Digital Gift Economies.

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Philanthropy, Innovation, Technology, Policy

Twitter is amazing. As I'm sitting on O'Hare's tarmac I learn about the March 26 austerity protests in London. Which is where I'm headed (with stops in Philadelphia and DC). It seems fitting to try to learn about the public responses to government budget changes as I'm headed to the UK to discuss philanthropy, technology and policy. They are all linked.

Before I get to the UK I'm honored to be speaking at the Jewish Funders Network conference about funding social media and innovation. This is great food for thought for an upcoming article on "Evaluating Innovation." Look for it - the fifth and final paper in the MacArthur Field Building Series - next month.

I'm honored to be hosted by The Guardian Voluntary Sector Network, NCVO, The Big Society Network, The European Association for Philanthropy and Giving, Steve Bridger and several others at this event in London on March 30. Hashtag #disruptphil

And I'm thrilled to be joining Patrick Meier of Ushahidi, Chris Gebhardt of TakePart and Kevin Starr of the Mulago Foundation in this discussion on "Clouds, Crowds and Social Change" at the 2011 Skoll World Forum. Hashtag #skollwf11

I'm studying up for my week in London and Oxford. What we in the U.S. call "white papers" the UK calls "Green Papers." Here are links to Her Majesty's Government's recent Giving Green Paper and several responses. (I love government services that make it this easy to find this kind of information.)