Post industrial social economy

I'm writing....articles, book review, annual industry forecast. This quote from Yochai Benkler in the NYT of September 27 really hit home and clarified something for me:

“You’re looking at a generation of 20- and 30-year-olds who are used to self-organizing,” said Yochai Benkler, a director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. “They believe life can be more participatory, more decentralized, less dependent on the traditional models of organization, either in the state or the big company. Those were the dominant ways of doing things in the industrial economy, and they aren’t anymore.”

The changes all around us in the social economy are not just the pressures on existing organizations or the adapted new organizations that are being created - they're about social good beyond organizations. 

Problems and Solutions, Difficulties and Progress

I received the following email on Thursday, September 22, 2011 from Lee Devin, retired Professor of English and Theater at Swarthmore College:

"Hi Lucy
Reading your latest, I somehow got the idea to introduce you to T. D. Weldon's little book on The Vocabulary of Politics, first published by Penguin in 1953. He makes a distinction I've found very useful and I bet you will too.

Between problem and difficulty. I'm giving you the short version--the original is more interesting, but not so direct.

Problems have solutions; solve them and problems go away.
Difficulties don't have solutions; they require continual address.

A big pothole is causing a problem on 1st Street. Fill the pothole and solve the problem. Move on.

The nation's secondary schools aren't good enough. This is not a problem, it will never be solved. Some identifiable problems might be solved, but the system as a whole requires constant attention. The school system will get better, but will never not need your attention.

We like to simplify by naming difficulties and treating them as problems. "The War on Terror." This is not a problem, it's a difficulty, a part of contemporary life. It will not be "won" or otherwise go away. It will be addressed continually and ways may be found to diminish its impact on daily life.

And so on.

Struck me while reading you that philanthropy could do well to think of addressing difficulties and get over the idea of solving problems. Certainly that would be a boon to theatres, if the dreamers up of grants and initiatives could have that view.

Cheers

Lee"

I love this letter for several reasons. First, it introduced me to new ideas - those of T.D. Weldon and those of his critics in political philosophy.

Second, it introduced me to an interesting person I didn't know, Lee Devin. I immediately emailed Lee back and asked if I could post this letter. Then I searched for information about him. Read what I could find. Exchanged a few more emails. I would like to meet Lee in person.

Third, it demonstrated, yet again, how we can connect now - finding new ideas and people, creating new conversations, learning and sharing.

Fourth, the content hits directly on a real challenge of philanthropy - one that I first encountered in my dissertation research - the whole concept of "problem definition." At the time I was interested in this in terms of the power dynamics - "He who gets to define the problem generally gets to define his preferred solution." Of course, Lee is asking me (us?) to consider the feasibility of actually solving problems - in terms of resources and time horizons and the philanthropic reality versus rhetoric of  metrics this has real implications.

Thanks Lee!

One prediction come true

 (photo from Google Wallet)

In my list of Ten for the Next Ten I predicted that smart phones would replace our wallets. This is already true in Europe and Asia - with launch of Google Wallet today (as limited as it is), it's come true in US also.

So what? Let me quite David Pogue, tech columnist for The New York Times, on why this shift matters:

"Someday, [this functionality] will be everywhere.

At that point Wallet will be much more than a glorified credit card. It will be the cornerstone of a huge economic ecosystem of banks, merchants, advertisers and other companies. It will replace everything in your wallet: tickets, boarding passes, transit cards. All electronic, all secure, all wireless and easy."

Notice who Pogue leaves out of that ecosystem  - nonprofits. Social businesses. Charitable donation collecting enterprises. That would probably be a bad thing for those enterprises, don't you think? If all our money is moving to our phones it's probably going to be part of that shift.

I don't think nonprofits and philanthropic giving will be left out (and I doubt David does either, he probably includes them in "other companies.") In fact, I'll bet that nonprofits and charitable giving fundraisers get right in there on this and embed the daylights out of their giving options with all those shopping options.

Let's hope we can be more creative than that as this scenario of wallet+data+telecommunications device comes into being.

Why I'm a philanthropy wonk

(Photo from ZD Net)



From 1990 to 1997 I worked on staff for a number of community foundations. This was the early days of email, the heyday of the Mosaic (then Netscape) Internet browser, and few of us had cell phones. The hip kids who did own mobile phones aspired to own a Motorola Razr. One community foundation CEO I know owned an Apple Newton and the PalmPilot was introduced toward the end of this period.


It was clear to me then that community foundations had more information on hand than they knew what to do with. My colleagues and I - both donor service and program folks - spent lots of time in community meetings. Our board included local activists, representatives of wealthy multi-generational cornerstone families, local newspaper officials, bankers, and public sector officials. They were involved in a wide swath of community life. Every day the mail came filled with proposals about what was going on, what needed to be going on, and who wanted to do what. We used all the data we gathered to make the best grant decisions we could and to connect and weave together all the projects, organizations and individuals we could. We did our best and at the end of every day it felt like we had been pushed back to shore by the incoming tide of information.

This professional experience was a second formative* step in my obsession with communities and information. In 1994 I published an article in the (now defunct) Foundation News and Commentary about the need for community foundations to structure themselves around their information role and coined the term "knowledge foundations." Little did I realize then I was off and running on the core issue of the next 16 years of my professional life.

Lots has changed since the early 1990s. Smart phones are everywhere, Netscape begot Mozilla, and email is yesterday's technology, replaced by IM, texting and Facebook.  Community foundations still have tons of information. Having roamed the halls of the annual community foundations meeting I can attest that these folks are now as iPad, smart phone enabled as the next set of conference goers. I'm also pleased to say many of these organizations are getting much better at organizing information, using it, sharing it, and directing it back to the communities from whence it came and to whom it is very useful. A few highlights:

The spreading use by community foundations of DonorEdge, Razoo, DonorBridge, and other online tools to share their data about community organizations and engage individuals in giving.  To my surprise, several community foundation friends came up to me in the halls of the conference hotel to ask "Did you know that they're marketing DonorEdge with direct references to your work On the Brink of New Promise?" (I guess this is one measure of having made an impact - finding out five years after publication that a vendor is using your conceptual work on the future to sell products to the market you wrote about.)

The Denver Foundation is actively involved in its region's open government efforts - helping the local agencies open up and share public data so that residents can use it. This partnership includes other foundations and the Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network. They're creating the Colorado Data Commons. (Hey Data Without Borders - check this out!)**

The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta is building an online data hub for local citizens to share their stories. It's called the Neighborhood Corner and is part of the foundation's neighborhood grantmaking strategy. (Hey Craigslist Foundation and LikeMinded - check this out!)*** 

The last two examples are funded by the Knight Community Information Challenge.

This is all good. There are no doubt many more examples of foundations using and sharing data and information as a core part of achieving their missions. There's a long way to go. But it's great to stop and appreciate the progress.

Why am I philanthropy wonk? Because private resources matter in solving public problems. Using data and information in better, more inclusive and scaled ways, organizing around it, and recognizing its unique properties as a currency are defining elements of how our world works now. We have tremendous opportunity to improve both the use of information and the use of private resources.


*Formative step number one - seeing this same paradox of information flow in the historical research for my dissertation, Private Foundations and Public Schools.
**I'm a big fan of DataWithoutBorders and have been evangelizing about their work for months. Jake Porway, founder, has just been named a Pop! Tech Fellow - Yay! (Update: 12:52 pm PDT 9/21/11 - I just joined their Advisory Committee. So excited!)
***I'm on the Board of Directors of Craigslist Foundation.