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Kjerstin Erickson is the founder of FORGE. Watch her X-Interview.
 
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Forging Ahead

Kjerstin Erickson was 20 when she launched FORGE. She didn't have a business plan. She didn't have a revenue model. She didn't have connections. And she didn't have a penny. But she now works in three refugee camps in Zambia, helping 60,000 refugees build better lives. This is her story.

Feb 02, 2010

Social Entrepreneur is an Oxymoron

I have a confession to make.  While I love the field of social entrepreneurship, I hate the term “Social Entrepreneur.”  I know, Mr. Skoll, I send my apologies... 

 

Now admittedly, I’m one of those annoying people who believe that the subtleties of word choice deeply influence our subconscious. I believe that the norms we establish around words and terminologies has a powerful effect on the way we process, deconstruct, and act within our world. And thus I believe that one of our sector’s predominant labels deserves some critical examination.

 
So…“Social Entrepreneur.” On first glance it seems so appropriate – for years the social sector has tried to battle the impression that we are all just tree-hugging, Gandhi-loving technophiles with an abundance of good intentions but a serious shortage of execution and acumen. For those of us who hate hearing, “Oh, that must be really rewarding,” when we tell people we work in the social change sector, using a more serious-sounding term like entrepreneur is very appealing.  The growth of social entrepreneurship as a movement that values efficiency and results has powerfully improved the state of social change.  And yet when it is all so often revolved around one almighty Social Entrepreneur, what is lost?

 
My concern with the label “Social Entrepreneur” is that it’s ego-flaming at best, and sector-defeating at worst. In a business setting, the label entrepreneur is, by definition, person-centric. It draws the attention not to the specific enterprise that is being created but to the person doing to the creating. It subtly affirms the notion (however accurate) that it’s the specific traits of a specific individual that matter to the success or failure of a venture. In short, it’s all about you.  We Americans love that, don't we?  When it comes to traditional profit-only business, no harm no foul. Calling Steve Jobs an entrepreneur if anything only reaffirms his desire to do what he was already doing - making money. It’s when you put the word “social” in front of “entrepreneur” that I think you run into some problems.

 
Why, you ask?  First of all, doing something ‘social’ is inherently not about you. To be focused on social outcomes means taking a specific step away from the wealth-aggrandizing paradigm and into the world of shared returns. It’s making the leap from ‘me, me, me’ to ‘we, we, we.’

 
And yet, the mythology of The Social Entrepreneur revolves the whole story around the individual. Through a shrewd slight-of-hand, our attention is turned away from the collective movement and toward an individual onto whom a Hero’s Journey is imposed. The drama of such a tale is high, but at what cost? Kings and Queens are made, and many a speaking career launched…but what is sacrificed? What collective narrative, what real representation of holistic social change, what inclusive vision for proudly joining hands as small cogs in a big wheel?

 
I say let us embrace the field of social entrepreneurship and the multitude of tools it has brought to the discipline of social change. But let us not, through our need to glorify the individual, unconsciously belittle the efforts and impact of the coalitions of human beings behind all sustainable action.   Social change is a team sport, isn’t it?

Comments: 17

Jan 18, 2010

When Our Days Become Dreary

  

Normally, I would call myself an optimist. I have a natural conviction in the achievability of a just and loving world. And yet last week, as I pondered what had happened in Haiti and what it meant for the viability of that vision, I found my faith rocked to its core.

 
As I poured over images and accounts coming from Haiti, a swell of shame and despair arose in me the likes of which any optimist (or leader for that matter) would be embarrassed to admit. Like so many of us who felt the reverberations of the quake round the world, I found myself examining my own life, questioning my basic assumptions, and even (oh blasphemy) the prudence of my work.

 
To me, the tragedy within the tragedy of Haiti is not just the human lives lost and the crumbling of a country, but that it was all so utterly predictable and preventable. The quake itself did not cause such death and destruction, the impoverished infrastructure did. If our global society had any combination of intelligence and compassion, wouldn’t it have found a way to avoid the catastrophic consequences? And if sheer moral necessity isn’t enough, what of the fact that the geopolitical entity we call “Haiti” is a completely unnatural phenomenon, created solely for the rich world’s benefit? Are we that dumb, that selfish, that shortsighted…and what combination of the three?

 
The answer is clearly yes. The way our world works is more often than not dumb, selfish, and shortsighted. This we already knew, and what happened in Haiti just gave us the gut-wrenching human images that help us to internalize the consequences. The problem is in this very moment those same consequences are going on around the world – albeit less dramatically. And in this very moment, a dozen more tragedies of similar if not worse magnitude loom on the horizon.

  
Of course, we are just human beings. On an individual basis, our capacity for compassion only extends so far. We cannot count on individuals to anticipate every crisis, remedy every wrong, and respond to every need. And yet, isn’t that what systems and institutions are for? In recognition of individual limitations, how have we not developed and empowered the institutions necessary to protect our most simple and sacred of principles?

 
And so goes the path of questioning I found myself on in the past week, probably not unlike many of us. For a few days, I admittedly found myself struggling with the question of whether the change I’m seeking is even pragmatically possible. I asked myself what all the struggle is for if it can all come crashing down in an ugly testimony to our global shortsightedness. In the midst of the shame and grief, I even asked myself if I may be happier by not even trying. In this world of optimism and change, those thoughts are sacrilege.

 
And yet, we’ve all found ourselves in moments like these. It’s part of the process of reconciling the world we want with the world we live in. To make it through such times, we often have no option but to turn to the words of those wiser than we. On this national holiday, it’s a fitting tribute to Martin Luther King’s legacy that to recognize the role that his words continue to play in the internal struggles of so many of us seekers.

 
For me personally, King’s words on the human struggle for a loving world are the first I turn to when in need of clarity or solace. To me his brilliance lies in the way that he never told anyone anything new, but rather elucidated the truths they always already knew. If you find yourself struggling with any of the questions I asked above, perhaps you will, like me, find your answer within yourself through the words of these timeless passages.

  

"All I'm saying is simply this: that all life is interrelated, that somehow we're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

 

"When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."

 

Long live the King.

Comments: 3

Jan 07, 2010

So You Left Your Heart in Africa

But did YOU fall in love with Africa, or did Africa fall in love with YOU?

 

“I just fell in love with Africa, and I can’t wait to go back.”


“I felt at home there, as if I had found a part of myself.”


“There’s something about Africa that completely enchanted me.”


Over the course of a thousand-plus interviews for field placements, I've heard the above sentiments countless times from Western applicants looking to return to their beloved continent.   At face value, the statements are sweet, innocent, and innocuous.  I, for one, can identify completely.   But could there be something below the surface of this Westerner-turned-Africa-lover phenomenon that is worth examining? My experience tells me yes.


I vividly recall my first time in Africa. Wide-eyed and freshly 17, struggling to reconcile the combination and poverty and wealth I saw before me, I remember thinking I had entered a whole new reality. There was so much about that reality that was ugly, unjust, and just plain wrong. And yet…I walked away loving it. I pined to return. Why?


The full answer to that question lies deeper than I may ever understand, let alone explain. People’s passions and motivations are far too complicated to boil down to singular cause and effect. Nonetheless, there is one central influencing phenomenon that I think goes all-too-often unnamed: being a Westerner in Africa can feel really, really good.


At home in your daily Western life, how often do people say hello to you on the streets? How often do they go out of their way to help you or find you what you need? How often do they treat you with unnecessary deference and respect, ask you questions and listen as if you were an expert, or want your address so you can be best friends? How often do they propose marriage to you, tell you you’re beautiful, and actually like it when you gain a few pounds? How often do you enter a school and get treated as royalty, get invited to a stranger’s home and find a feast prepared just for you, or have people scurry to give up their chairs when you try to sit on the ground?


The truth is that being a Westerner in the vast majority of African countries comes with a whole lotta perks (power, influence, deference, respect), and a whole lotta ego-boosting. Some of the way that Westerners are treated is just because of a different socio-cultural construct; much of it is specifically because of their color and relative ‘status’. Either way, it takes either a very experienced or a semi-robotic person to be immune to the psychological boosts that being a westerner in Africa often provides. Especially as a young girl, and still on through the years, I know that these benefits have influenced the way I perceive my experience of the continent. It feels good to be liked and to be respected. And I know that my experience is not unlike that of hundreds of people I’ve heard from throughout the years.


As any good manager or psychologist will tell you, understanding our emotions, motivations, and psychological weaknesses is critical to sound and just decision-making. In the highly emotionally charged world of aid and international development, this is ever more true. I cannot pretend to understand the complex multitude of factors that combine to form Africa’s mysterious allure. And yet as insecure and egotistical creatures, we must at least be willing to accept and examine one of the most obvious: our own psyches.  If we don’t, we’ll never mitigate its effects. We are, after all, only human.

 

-Kjerstin

www.FORGEnow.org

Comments: 6

Dec 15, 2009

The Dark Side of Online Voting Contests

 

 
In recent years, we’ve seen how the online phenomenon of 'sponsored charity voting contests' has skyrocketed. The Chase Competition, the Changemakers Competitions, Ideablob, CNN Heros…the list goes on. Sometimes, these competitions have real money on the line. Other times, they offer little more than $500 or an honorary title to the winning charity. Either way, they’ve taken off, and for good reason. Companies have learned that nonprofits are so hungry for funding that they will go to extraordinary lengths to draw votes to their cause. What better bang for your marketing dollar can you get than sponsor an online contest that a) spreads the awareness of your brand, b) associates your brand with philanthropy and social good, and c) often gives you access to the contact information of thousands upon thousands of people? If I were in corporate marketing, I’d host a competition like this every week. 
 
Corporate marketing dollars going to impactful causes is a positive phenomenon, and one we’ll only see more of in the coming years. However, there are a few things about the way many online voting contests work that have me concerned for the efficiency of the nonprofit sector - especially the resource-strapped startup-type organizations that are most likely to be motivated by such contests. 
 
My concerns are motivated from experience – FORGE has participated in dozens of these competitions over the years, of which we’ve won several. Each time, it takes a considerable amount of effort to notify, encourage, and thank our network for taking action on our behalf. More importantly, though, each time we ask our network to vote we use a valuable asset (the time and attention of our network) that we could have used for something else. That is, each request for a vote (whether fulfilled or not) represents an opportunity cost to the organization doing the asking. 
 
Whether or not it makes sense for an organization to use its valuable resources to promote a contest depends on whether or not the predicted payoff of the prize money exceeds the cost of entering the contest.  The predicted payoff of the contest is equal to the value of the prize money multiplied by the probability that it will won. Therefore, if I think that FORGE has a 30% chance of winning a contest that we do our best to get out the vote for, then the predicted payoff of that contest to FORGE is $1000 x .30 = $300. The cost on entering the contest is equal to the combined total of real costs (staff time, overhead, etc) + opportunity costs (the value of what staff could be doing with their time otherwise, the value of using a request of your network for another opportunity, etc). 
 
This decision is represented by two simple equations:
 
If Prize Money * Probability > Real Cost + Opportunity Cost --> Promote contest, utilize resources

If Prize Money * Probability < Real Cost + Opportunity Cost --> Do not promote contest, conserve resources
 
These equations illustrate that for the nonprofit industry as a whole, the most efficient use of resources would dictate that only those organizations whose predicted payoff of winning is greater than their costs should invest in these contests. In other words, only organizations that have a decent chance of winning a decent sum and don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to do so should invest in these contests. If an organization doesn’t have a decent predicted payoff, promoting the contest would simply waste valuable resources that could be used more efficiently to forward their social mission.
 
Simple enough, right? The problem, as we all know, is that most of these contests are not set up in a way that makes it even remotely easy for nonprofit executives to judge the predicted payoff, or even the real cost, of entering the contest. As we all know, in a market setting, the lack of information is the chief enemy of efficiency.  And yet, most of these contests are set up in such a way as to hide the exact information that is critical to the accurate decision making of the nonprofit parties.  
 
The fundamental divide comes down to a basic mismatch between the incentives of the sponsoring company and what is best and most efficient for the nonprofit sector. Clearly, the sponsoring company is motivated to set up the competition in such a way that they maximize the number of total votes received (ie, the number of total brand ‘touches’ and/or individual’s contact information received). However as demonstrated above, from the social sector side where each ‘vote’ collected has both real and opportunity costs, the ideal scenario would be that as few as possible votes be cast to produce the same outcome as would be produced had the maximum number been cast. In the same way that it is a waste of resources for a 2.0 GPA student to apply to an Ivy League school, it is a waste of social resources for a organization with no chance of winning to get out the vote for an online contest.
 
This is not to say that online contests shouldn’t happen. I think they can be great, and FORGE has benefited from them a lot. However, we could improve the social benefit of such contests by structuring them in ways that maximize the mutual benefit for both the participating nonprofits and the sponsoring companies.
 
Here are my two basic recommendations for all sponsored voting competitions:
 
  • All contests should have leaderboards
A lack of leaderboards (or other ways to compare your organization’s standing to that of others in the competition) is the primary problem that makes efficient decision making about resource use difficult, if not impossible. For example, in the recent Chase competition where there were no leaderboards (though at least you were able to know your vote count), countless organizations wasted countless resources on a cause they couldn’t win. Others, like FORGE, didn’t enter or entered late because they made the erroneous assumption that they wouldn’t be able to win.  Both of these types of inefficiency would have been solved if there were a clear leaderboard of the top vote getters that nonprofits could use to judge their probabilities of running a successful get-out-the-vote campaign.    
 
Leaderboards and dynamic vote counts have another benefit: they make an organization's job of getting out the vote infinitely easier.  I can't tell you how much stronger it is to say "We need 50 more votes to take the lead!" than it is to say "Vote for FORGE! We're awesome!"  In the end, companies may end up getting more votes overall because the incentive to vote when there is real feedback and real competition is so much higher.**
 
Most contests that hide the vote counts or don't disply dynamic leaderboards use the justification that they want voters to consider each organization carefully and then vote for whichever they think is best, without being swayed by the probability that that organization will or won’t win. While in theory its great to imagine people browsing carefully through online contests, weighing their options, and then ultimately voting for the best cause, I’ve never seen it actually work this way. With the possible exception of a contest promoted by the likes of CNN,** almost all voters come because they’ve been asked by a specific organization and are only interested in voting for that specific organization. Forcing them to vote for other organizations at the same time usually just results in them grazing the list for the titles that seem least likely to win so as to relieve competition from the charity they came to vote for (sorry, Changemakers, that’s just how it works!). 
 
  • All contests should aim to balance the social value of the prize money and the marketing value to the sponsor
 
A year or two ago, FORGE was in an online voting contest that awarded the winner $1000 in prize money. The contest required all voters to enter their email address, which the company immediately began using to spam everyone who was generous enough to cast their vote. The contest must have generated at least 10,000 votes – ie, 10,000 leads for the company that sponsored it. Despite a large ‘get out the vote’ effort with our constituents, FORGE and 11 other finalists didn’t win the $1000 prize money. None of us have any idea how much we lost by, and we all used up a valuable resource of a request to our network to perform an action. In total, resources worth much more than $1000 were invested into the competition, creating a net loss for the social sector. Looking back, not only was the predicted payoff for FORGE lower than our costs of promoting the contest, but the social value of the contest was lower than the social resources used! As a sector, we need to be aware of when contests are, essentially, scammy.
 
Alright, this was the diatribe result of me not being able to fall asleep tonight. Going to try again…
 
Kjerstin
 
 
**The *only* exception I can think of to the "always have a leaderboard" rule would be contests that have such massive traction and marketing that no matter the network of any one nonprofit, they won’t be able to sway the vote. The truth is that very few people go around looking for random contests to vote in, so these examples are few and far between – perhaps the CNN Heroes is one of them? In this case, the most efficient thing to do would be to tell the nonprofits not to bother trying to get out the vote because it will be decided upon by the public at large.
 

 

 

Comments: 6

Dec 10, 2009

Breaking out of the Box

Getting Communities to Understand Bottom-Up Development in a Top-Down World

 

Yesterday in a panel session I was asked what is the single greatest impediment to FORGE achieving its mission. Security threats? Funding issues? Lack of staffing capacity? Its an important question.
 
And yet the answer for us is simple: the single greatest impediment to our work is the burden of psychological patterns established by the way things have always been done. 
 
In this kitschy social innovation space, we’re used to hearing about unique models of change and exciting new approaches. Technological breakthroughs, data-based development, collaboration innovations, blah, blah, blah…The nasty truth is that on-the-ground in Africa, where it really matters, it’s been business as usual since the colonial days. Sure there are a few hotspots of innovation in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda where innovators tend to launch, but rarely have new and empowering approaches truly infiltrated or transformed the established empire governing 'relief and development.'
 
So when it comes to the challenges in accomplishing our work and fostering a spirit of hope and civic entrepreneurialism among post-conflict communities, the biggest barriers are fully psychological. If you’ve only seen NGOs operate in one specific way (top down, with highly recognizable projects like wells, schools, and health clinics), how do you get people to break their thinking out of the box? 
 
FORGE’s bottom-up approach is to facilitate a process through which post-conflict communities come up with their own unique and entrepreneurial solutions desgined around their specific challenges, needs, and assets. The options are limitless, and yet its consistently difficult to get people to think beyond the traditional interventions that they’ve always seen. Breaking established thought and dependency patterns is no easy task.  It takes immense patience, creativity, and faith.  And yet once it does happen, it’s pure magic. 
 
With that, I share with you an email our Programming Director Abby Speight recently received from Stephanie Pucetti, FORGE’s Site Coordinator in Moba, DRC...
_________________________________________________________________
 
Hi Abby,
 
I had a huge breakthrough in thinking with Vasco and Augustine today and wanted to share the happy story. After running today’s focus group, the three of us were on such a "development high" (so dorky, I know) and sat for another hour talking about Moba and what can be done to change the big, deeply rooted factors that contribute to war, unrest, and general underdevelopment. I asked the two of them what single thing they thought would contribute most to Moba's development, and they both answered the exact same thing at the exact same time: making tin roofing sheets more available. They said if you look at other cities in eastern Congo, like Bukavu and Uvira, that are demographically similar to Moba but vastly more developed, you will notice that all the houses have tin roofs, rather than thatched ones.
 
While having tin sheets has obvious structural benefits, like reducing disastrous fires, they both pointed out that there are greater, long term benefits as well. For example, you are only allowed to have electricity in your house if you have a tin roof, and electricity=radios and televisions=access to media=education=empowerment, and so on. Also, electricity allows children to do their homework in a healthy study environment. Also, permanent structures attract investment, which brings countless economic opportunities. And so on. 
 
They said that as they were doing surveys in the community, countless people told them that the single greatest need in Moba was a way to access iron sheets, because of all the long term benefits. They both said "We just wish an NGO could do something like this", to which I replied "Uhhhh guys....this is exactly the kind of thing FORGE will be doing next year- taking community problems and finding solutions". It was like a lightbulb went off in their heads. Instantly, they both asked if FORGE could do something like a co-op for housing materials, where people received tin sheets and paid them back in bricks, and then FORGE would sell the bricks to buy more tin sheets. I told them that we did something strikingly similar in Meheba with agriculture, and that if this was a need identified by the community in the Collaborative Project Planning Process and the finances worked out, this was absolutely the type of program we could do. And best of all, it would be totally sustainable.
 
So they finally REALLY got what FORGE’s model is all about and how we are not just limited to libraries and computer centers. It was so, so, so great. We then talked a lot about the need to think outside the box and make sure that returnees don't just guide the Collaborative Project Planning Process with their ideas based on what FORGE did in the camps, because this is such a different environment with such different needs. It was awesome.
Comments: 0

Oct 05, 2009

If I were making Twitter's "Suggested Users" list...

My 'Top 20 Suggested Users' for social innovation, entrepreneurship, international development, and more

Last Friday, Twitter made a huge move to bring social innovation to the masses by adding about a dozen new social entrepreneurs and organizations to its “Suggested Users” list. I was fortunate enough to be among that group. In the last three days alone, my account has ballooned from 1,000 to over 15,000 followers and counting. For a company like Twitter to even know about the rapidly evolving world of social innovation is one thing – for it to invest in consciously using its platform is a whole new dimension expanding way beyond traditional CSR.  I'm honored to be a part of the experiment!

 

That being said, I know that my suggested user status is, in many ways, a nice gift of good old-fashion luck.  In honor of FORGE’s good fortune, I’d like to pass on my own list of the “Top 20 Suggested Users” on Twitter.  My Top 20 list is compiled based on people who I’ve found to have the most consistently useful and thought-provoking content.  They are people who are willing to ask questions and engage in conversation rather than dictate and promote.  Because I find it most useful to converse with individuals, my suggested users are all personal accounts with unique points of view.  Unfortunately, that means I had to leave off the incredible Social Edge account - which is really the clearinghouse for all things social entrepreneurship on Twitter.

 

For ease, I’ve (imperfectly) divided my list by three rough themes that these individuals tend to represent: Progressive Philanthropy & Social Innovation, Social Entrepreneurship & Change Strategies, and International Development Reality & Theory.  Within the lists it’s alphabetical because I can’t prioritize between them, and they are listed with their twitter profile descriptions.  If you have any interest in these themes, I can’t encourage you enough to see what these amazing individuals have to say! 

 

 

  KJERSTIN'S TOP 20 SUGGESTED USERS ON TWITTER

 

Creative Capital, Philanthropy, & Social Innovation

 

  • Jessamyn Lau - Altruistic, slightly capitalist, out to change the world through creative social good, program leader for the Peery Foundation.
  • Kevin Doyle Jones - helping build the social capital market
  • Lauren Finzer - Stanford '09, summer intern at World Bank Inspection Panel, Fellow at Hewlett Foundation starting Fall '09, interested in Africa & health/env intersection
  • Sasha Dichter - Acumen Fund Biz Dev Director, blogger on philanthropy and communications, dad.
  • Sean Stannard-Stockton - Sean Stannard-Stockton is the CEO of Tactical Philanthropy Advisors.
  • Tony Wang - Research Associate at Blueprint Research & Design, a philanthropy consulting firm. Former RA at Hewlett Foundation. Elected board member of SEA-SF. Blogger.

 

Social Entrepreneurship & Change Strategies

 

  • Brit Bravo - Blogger, podcaster, nonprofit consultant, have fun do gooder
  • Can Sar - Apture CTO, Entrepreneur, Traveler, Stanford PhD dropout, Lifelong Learner. Interested in Media, Innovation, Africa, and Social Entrepreneurship.
  • Joseph Sinatra - social entrepreneurship, soul music and civics
  • Nathaniel Whittemore - The official twitter account of the Social Entrepreneurship channel at Change.org. Personal account @nlw
  • Paul Hudnut - Entrepreneur, advisor, educational arsonist, Envirofit co-founder
  • Steve Jennings - Humanitarian Entrepreneur. Social web explorer. Redefining 'social change' economics and models. Activating youth in the fight against poverty and hunger.
  • Teju Ravi- Connections Strategist for the Unreasonable Institute, using social entrepreneurship to create systemic solutions to global problems. Tweet for @BeUnreasonable.
  • Tom Dawkins - Social entrepreneur, activist, organiser, burner, doofer, dreamer. Currently social media guy at Ashoka (@ashokatweets).

 

International Development Reality and Theory:

 

  • Abby Speight - I am the Programming Director at FORGE (www.FORGEnow.org). I'm originally from Texas, but came to the Bay Area for Stanford.
  • Alanna Shaikh - International development optimist and skeptic, global health blogger, writer for UN Dispatch
  • Ashis Brahma - talking darfur, living africa, loving life to its deepest
  • Jacqueline Novogratz - CEO, Acumen Fund (@acumenfund) and author, The Blue Sweater (www.thebluesweater.com)
  • Pacon Miller - Married Father of 2 boys, RPCV Mali, Better World Books Analyst
  • Rachel Strohm - Enjoys Africa, critical geography, development economics, and microfinance. Northwestern student, Dartmouth alum. Has interesting articles saved as Favorites.
Comments: 1

Aug 04, 2009

News from DRC

Yesterday afternoon, I received one of those emails that's so good, its worth sharing.  The following is from Antoine Ngeleka, the former head of one of FORGE's Computer Training Centers who is currently getting his BS in Computer Science through FORGE's university scholarship program.  He has some exciting news about developments in Congo, preparations for the 2011 elections, and how FORGE's programming is helping otherwise-ineligible populations to join the reconstruction process.

This is the stuff we live for!

___

Hi Kjer,

 

I hope all is well with you and everyone near you. I just wanted to share the compliments I received from my former students who repatriated last year and this year. The voter enrolment that officially started early June in Kinshasa to prepare the 2011 elections is starting in the rest of the country this week. The last time it happened in Congo was before the 2006 elections, and most of the people who got jobs with the electoral commission during enrolment were from urban areas. The same thing is happening this time too since it is a computerized enrollment and there are no computer training centers in most rural areas of the DRC.

And yet, I have received so far seven phone calls from former students to inform me that they managed to pass the test and got a job with the electoral commission of DRC! Two of these people are in Mwange (Moba territory), one in Pweto, three in Kirungu and one in Moba port. I believe that many more of my students were selected but haven’t yet informed me for some reasons. One of them said  “Je ne croyez pas que la connaissance que j’avait acquiert dans le centre informatique de Kala avait une valeur quelconque, jusqu’a ce que je pouvais défendre votre travail pendant le teste, je connais maintenant que j’ai un colis intellectuel important dans moi; merci a FORGE et son staff”, meaning “I didn’t know whether the knowledge and skills I acquired from Kala Computing Center had any value until I managed to defend your work at the test. I know now that I have an important intellectual property in me, thanks to FORGE and its staff”.


This is a sign that FORGE was not wasting time and resources in its projects but was actually investing in people. The good seeds that FORGE was sowing are now producing.


May FORGE live longer 

 Antoine NGELEKA
Bachelor Of Science in Computing 
Cavendish University Zambia

Comments: 0

Jul 28, 2009

Gimme a Break

Burnout and the Social Entrepreneur

 

Back in 2005, I had the honor of keynoting a conference alongside a man who would become one of my foremost inspirations: Van Jones. During the course of his speech, I heard things said from a real-life change-maker that I had never heard spoken before. Van spoke of how when he started his organization The Ella Baker Center for Human Right in 1996, he fell hard into the sacrifice mentality – depriving himself of pleasure, sleep, relationships, and spiritual sustenance out of an attempt to prove his commitment or strength as an activist. He spoke of an activist culture treated how few hours of sleep got as a badge of honor, and subtly competed for the title of ‘who-enjoys-life-least.’ Van spoke about how the often-adversarial and unhealthy lifestyle wore on his physical and emotional health, ultimately brining him to his breaking point. In 2000, facing complete burn out and experiencing an ‘emotional breakdown’, he began examining a new approach to life and service. After experimenting with holistic lifestyles that allowed for time for personal renewal, Van reinvented his approach to his career. Today, he is one of America’s foremost social change leaders – leading America’s Green Jobs movement and recently accepting a position as Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise, and Innovation.
 At the time of hearing Van’s speech, I was just 21. While his words on the ‘sleep-deprivation competition’ hit close to home, the concept of burnout was still far beyond me. I remember thinking to myself, “that will never happen to me”, and perhaps even subconsciously judging Van for his weakness. I was young and energetic, with my head still in the clouds. I had yet to experience FORGE’s first death, or to receive my first nasty email, or to take out my first loan to meet payroll. I hadn’t yet faced fiscal crisis or major programming setbacks or the weight of major family issues while running an organization. I hadn’t even had to fire anyone go yet. To put in shortly, I still had a lot of adrenaline left in me.
Four and a half years later, I have a different appreciation for Van’s humble and courageous story. The past year has been an abnormally trying one – from FORGE’s financial woes in late 2008 to family matters that rocked my core. While struggles and problems are an inevitable part of growing an organization, in early 2009 I felt myself less able to summon my internal resources to meet them.   I was no longer bouncing out of bed in the morning, and started feeling more chronically tired. My back and neck in particular were giving me a lot of problems – sitting at my desk all day was positively painful. Despite the growing signs, I tried to tough it out. I saw a chiropractor, tried to get to bed a bit earlier, and hoped that as issues in my family improved, so would my health. Unfortunately, things just seemed to get worse.
I’ve heard a lot of speeches in my life, so it’s a strange thing that Van’s speech would stay so salient in my mind after so many years. As it turned out, it wasn’t just me. One day at the end of June, after thinking about what seemed to me to be my declining productivity, I said to my mother over the phone, “Hey Mom, do you remember that speech by a guy named Van Jones back in 2005?” She responded immediately, saying she had been thinking about him recently as well. And then, as if reading my mind (as mothers do), she said, “You need a break, don’t you?”
“I think so…” came my response. 
And so I’ve taken one. As it turned out, my September and October were much more booked than my July was. After meeting with FORGE’s management team, who were completely receptive and understanding, we plotted how I could take a total of 4 weeks unpaid leave over the course of July and August. So far, I’ve taken 3 of them. I spent the first one at home, taking care of life’s little details that I had put on the backburner: I got my car serviced, I took my dogs to the vet, I organized my closet, and I had my first medical checkup in ages. I still worked a few hours each day, but I only went into the office a couple times. The next week, I went on a ‘real vacation’ to Belize and Mexico for a total of 11 days. For the first time in life, I didn’t make sure that I saw all the sights and read all the background information. Instead of rushing to do all that could be done, I just…chilled. I read by the pool and the beach, I exercised, and watched movies at night. I only worked on FORGE for 1-3 hours a day, mostly just answering emails. It was glorious. 
Right now, I’m back at work and have resumed a pretty intense travel schedule. I hope to take another week in August if time and money permits. Having taken my first real vacation in years, I feel much better. I’m better rested and much healthier. While in an ideal world I would be able to take more time to make sure that I fully recover from all signs of burnout, I am proud of the steps I’ve taken so far. Feeling worn out is an embarrassing thing to admit, let alone discuss publicly. I’d much prefer to fit the mold of the infallible hero with endless reserves of energy to spend. However, I can’t help but think back to how much Van Jones’ words stuck with me through the years, and how he ultimately helped me permit myself to take action before the damage grew worse. I’m amazed to realize how many people read this blog. If my story can help anyone else to allow themselves the time they need to self-sustain, or to open their eyes to the ways a culture of competitive sacrifice can damage their long-term efficacy, then here it is!
- Kjerstin

www.FORGEnow.org

Comments: 1

Jun 02, 2009

Things I Suck At

 

In some weird, self-diagnostic way, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last 5 years thinking about the things that I suck at. No cause for alarm – this blog isn’t some not-so-subtle cry for help, or some kind of reverse-psychology call for approval. Rather, the need to identify one’s own strengths and weaknesses is one that I find ever more pressing in today’s leadership world. And I firmly believe that there is no better way to realize your own weaknesses than by doing something that requires all of your strengths.

 

In many ways, by taking on so much so young through FORGE, I’ve been forced to become intimate with my own shortcomings, limitations and failures in ways that I may never have if I followed a more traditional path. I figured it may be helpful to inventory some of them here in case it helps other entrepreneurs to identify some of their own weaknesses, or if it can contribute to breaking down a bit of the culture of perfectionism that penetrates our world. So I picked five of the things I suck at most to share with you today:


1) Multitasking

One of the first things that anyone who knows me well comes to learn is that I CANNOT, for the life of me, do two things at once. If I’m working on a document, I won’t hear someone call my name. If I’m in a conversation, I won’t notice an elephant walk through the room. A fire could start in my building and I’d obliviously keep working until someone grabbed me by the arm and pulled me away. While this means I can be very good at noticing the details of what I’m currently enthralled with, I miss out on a lot of things going on around me unless I intentionally focus on being aware of them. Since I even have a hard time being responsive to my surroundings when I’m thinking about something, I worry that I can come off as rude and aloof.

 

2) Managing People Who Need A Lot of Structure

I pretty much just suck at this. While I work well with people who are naturally entrepreneurial and good at executing and self-directing, I have a hard time giving people who need more direction the necessary attention and oversight to bring out their best. Because I thrive under having a lot of space in which to be creative and self-determined, I seem to lack the perspective necessary to see when and where someone needs more direction, less control, and more feedback. It may partly relate to my lack of ability to multitask – when I’m focused on one of the items or projects on my list, it’s hard for me to stay aware and on top of what my colleagues are doing at the moment. Not one to look over someone else’s shoulder, and generally underestimating how much direction the average person needs, I can easily under-manage (and thus see under-performance from) people who aren’t naturally entrepreneurial and self-starters.

 

3) Taking Care of Life’s Little Details

Whether it’s a flat tire that needs fixing, bills that need paying, toilet paper that needs refilling, or a cell phone that needs recharging, I plain old suck at taking care of the basic building blocks of a functioning life. I forget, put off, and minimize. I focus on other things until I’m in trouble because I have no clean laundry left to wear. It’s a habit that I’ve tried desperately to fix, and only to some success. In order to not drop the ball, I need Mint reminders to pay my credit card bill, Accuchex to auto-deduct our payroll, and someone else to process our mail. I also need multiple cell phone chargers (office, bedroom, and car), Google Calendar constantly open, and colleagues who remind me when I fail to do something I was supposed to. And still, I’ll probably forget to take my vitamins before leaving the house in the morning…

 

4) Balancing Email & ‘Real’ Work

Professionally, this is one I’m constantly struggling with. It seems that every time I get really on top of my email, I fall behind on important projects or ‘real’ work. And every time I get a lot of ‘real’ work done, I end up dozens of important emails behind in my inbox. Right now, I’ve got 246 starred emails awaiting response, but I also have an Annual Report to finish, financials to manage, a dozen Training Sessions to update, and several grants to edit. How can you stay on top of both? I’ve learned to severely shorten my replies to bare minimums (that’s often originally uncomfortable for females who like to be ‘nice’), but I find that I tend to put off responding to emails that require longer, more nuanced, or more in-depth answers. This, of course, just leaves work unfinished on the table.

 

5) Moving on After Letting Someone Down

More than anything, this is perhaps one of my greatest weaknesses. Like everyone, I hate, hate HATE letting other people down. It’s like in sports – I never cried over losing a game, I only cried over not winning a game for my teammates. As a leader of an organization, I feel like I’m letting people down every day. Whether it’s by saying no to a summer intern, by not approving a budget increase, by not finishing something when I said I would, or by not responding to an email within 24 hours - I’m seemingly inevitably disappointing people or not meeting my own ideal standards. This is pretty normal, right? The problem is that I have a hard time letting go and just moving on. If I’m late on a deadline, I feel embarrassed to the point that I don’t want to submit the thing at all. If I know I let someone down performance-wise, my instinct is to avoid them because they probably are upset with me and I don’t want to bring that to the surface. Of all the things I’ve mentioned here, this is the behavior I’m most ashamed of. It’s avoidance in its most self-defeating of manifestations. It’s something I’m working to improve, but it still qualifies as something I suck at.

 

While by no means an exhaustive list, recognizing the things I suck at above has been an extremely important part of both my and FORGE’s development. I could probably write a whole nother blog on how I’ve learned to cope with these things, the way in which my colleagues are instrumental in balancing my weaknesses, and the steps that I still need to take. But I’ve written enough for now. I’ve got emails 246 starred emails to respond to!

 
 

 

Comments: 4

Apr 21, 2009

Money & Me

 
I was glad to hear that this week’s topic will focus on Money & the Social Entrepreneur. While we are often loathe to discuss them, personal finances are among the top points of concern for most embarking entrepreneurs. To make ends meet, we often have to make significant sacrifices, rely on the generosity of others, and get really good at buying and selling on eBay and Craigslist. We become masters of getting a lot out of a little.
 
My personal journey has evolved significantly over the past 5+ years. In the first 2.5 years, I lived in a warehouse (no windows or rooms), a Dead House (don’t ask) and friends’ houses, got free food through my friends who were still in college, and never, ever booked a hotel room when travelling. I also spent more than half of the year in Africa, where I could get away with spending virtually nothing. In FORGE’s third year, I met my boyfriend Nick Talarico, who, after his first trip to see our work, decided to quit his job, sell his house and car, and move out to California to help me build FORGE full-time. For the next two years, we lived off his savings as we slaved away from our apartment (which at one point, was 220 square feet total). It wasn’t luxurious, but we were doing what we were passionate about. Eventually, the savings dried up and we were both forced to start working part-time while continuing to run FORGE full-time (by that point, we had a staff of 100 people on-the-ground).
 
Four years in, FORGE hired its first domestic salaried staff person – a grantwriter that had volunteered with us for the previous 2 years. Despite a Harvard degree and previous experience, she worked for the equivalent of $30,000 a year (eventually bumped up to $36,000). At that point, I was able to support myself with my other job and continue my role in FORGE, so it made more sense to bring someone else on before me because I was going to continue working regardless. It wasn’t until February of 2008, 4 and a half years in, that I took the plunge and began being paid by FORGE for the first time (also at the rate of $36,000 a year). It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. For the first time, I could both afford to pay for the kinds of conveniences that you never pay for when you starting up - like a hotel room when you travel (Hotwire) or a meal on delivery – and I could devote the entirety of my energies to FORGE without any other distractions.
 
It’s been more than a year now since I made that transition, and the results have been wonderful. Nick continues to work in Silicon Valley, while still devoting about 20 hours a week to FORGE. Between our salaries, we are able to live a comfortable life. We choose to live in Oakland rather than San Francisco or Silicon Valley because the rent prices are so much lower (for both housing and FORGE’s office), and that allows us the freedom to do other things. FORGE now has two more domestic employees, Abby and Vaughn, who also make pennies relative to their experience and talent but are still able to live enjoyable lives.
 
If there is lesson here, it’s that things eventually get better. At the outset, and for the first few years, resources will necessarily be limited – that’s all part of the game. It’s a test of our passion and our will. But it won’t be like that forever. While you may never live a life of luxury or true financial freedom (very few people ever do), I think you can eventually live a life of reasonable (and intelligent) comfort. 
 
If there is a message I could pass on, it would be to avoid getting falling into the sacrifice mentality of social entrepreneurship. I’ve seen our sector get caught up in the ‘who-lives- a-dirtier-harder-and-more-sleepless-life’ battle, and it can be very tempting to try to prove our dedication to our cause through a lack of dedication to ourselves. But this is an unsustainable and self-defeating cycle. If we want to make the world a healthier place, we need to bring the same level of compassion to ourselves that we bring to our work.
 
- Kjerstin Erickson
 
PS – It’s worth noting that even the kind of penny-pinching bootstrapping I described above requires a degree of social capital that makes it more difficult for those less fortunate to stay afloat. For example, I was blessed with the availability and generosity of friends and family, I attended a school that had oodles of free food and allowed me use of their computer lab and printing even when I was no longer a student, and Nick had already built a degree of professional success that we were able to capitalize on.  Had we been less fortunate in our support networks, FORGE’s launching would have been even more difficult. Nathaniel Wittemore wrote about the importance of this kind of capital and how it’s related to the current fiscal environment in the post Overclass: The Problem with the Bootstrap Era.

Comments: 2

Mar 26, 2009

Belonging and Bullheadedness: Skoll World Forum 2009

 
I’ve been here in Oxford for the Skoll World Forum for 2 days now. I didn’t quite know where to start with this post, so I just finished reading through the great list of eloquent blogs that have been written from the conference so far.   I could add on to their great insights, but I feel like one thing needs to be said first….HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY AS TO BE HERE!?!?
 
I’m battling the feelings of someone not yet part of the club: I feel concurrently blessed and entitled, grateful and indignant. Most of me feels so overwhelmed by the quality of thinking, skills, and achievements in this group – I am in the presence of giants, and I feel small in comparison. I look around at all the people I’ve admired and been inspired by, and I feel like a kid in a candy shop. By the end of the day yesterday, my whole forehead ached from being so wide-eyed for so many hours. I don’t yet know how I fit in, and I worry that they made a mistake when giving me a badge.
 
And yet under it all, there is a voice from inside that tells me that I do in fact belong. FORGE may be younger or smaller in scale, but in the depth of my being I know that our innovations, operations, values-based processes, strategy of change, integrity, and impact are world class. We have a message to bring, we have a story to share, and we can be a contributor to this necessary global conversation.
 
Of course, I ask myself daily whether I’m delusional – is my conviction in FORGE just some myopic, self-centric psychological weakness that blinds me from seeing it’s relative insignificance? Could I be that idealistic, hubristic young person who is drunk off their own illusions? Sadly, I may never know. And thus I must go with the powerful directive within me that arises whenever I close my eyes and take a deep breath. The internal instinct that speaks so clearly whenever I connect to our common humanity tells me that FORGE is onto something special, and I must help it flourish. Period.
 
And so I remain here in Oxford in flux – awed, humbled, and floored, yet simultaneously convicted, confident, and driven. I recognize the beautiful opportunity presented to me, and I recognize that the challenges I’ve overcome to be part of this fortunate group of 800 individuals pale in comparison to the challenges overcome daily by Africa’s cadre of emerging social entrepreneurs. And yet, here I am. Doing the best to acknowledge and compensate for my own weaknesses and selfishness, and still take full  advantage of the opportunity for FORGE.
 
-Kjerstin Erickson

Comments: 1

Mar 23, 2009

Preparing for the Skoll World Forum

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So this is my first Skoll World Forum, and I'm feeling very blessed.  I arrived in London this afternoon and will be heading to Oxford in the morning for the pre-conference events hosted by the wonderful people behind Ashoka’s University Program.

Given the incredible opportunity presented by having so many inspiring and experienced people in one place, I want to take best advantage of the forum for FORGE.  I have a four main objectives:

  1. Connecting with potential investors and funders interested in FORGE’s model of supporting social entrepreneurship in African refugee camps 
  2. Connecting with other organizations facilitating community-driven solutions to the cycle of poverty and conflict
  3. Adding FORGE’s voice and perspective on social change to the conversation on global solutions, and spreading understanding and awareness of our model for locally-devised solutions
  4. Building my own perspective, skills, and understanding of how to maximize FORGE’s efforts for social change

 

Yes, that’s a big agenda, and yes, I’m nervous.  In order to prepare, I’ve been ‘pre-networking’ by scouring the awesome Connection Finder built for the forum by Asset Map (a project of the prolific Mr. Nathaniel Whittemore).  From this cross-searchable directory of all Forum attendees, I’ve composed a list of the top 65 people I’d like to meet.  I figure I’ll be lucky if I actually meet 20 of them, but it’s better to be prepared, right?

I'll be posting updates and coverage of the forum via twitter (@Kjer), and will be blogging as time permits.  You can follow what's going on in realtime with the twitter hastag #swf09, or just click here for a good list of people tweeting from the Forum.  And wish me luck!

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

 

Comments: 0

Mar 12, 2009

Lesson Eight: To gain traction, transparency must provide value

This is the eight in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. You can read the rest of the posts in the series below.

Lately, I’ve had a lot of people asking me for tips on blogging. I’m no expert, but the one thing I have to recommend is this: take time thinking about what attracts you to the blogs that you read most regularly (and your favorite posts within them). Then ask yourself, how can you provide similar value?

I’ve done this for my favorite blogs, and realized that I can generally fit the value they provide into 4 main categories:

  • 1) Informative: news, updates, statistics, gossip, etc, preferably with a bit of evaluation or commentary (for me, the Daily Entrepreneur series on Change.org’s Social Entrepreneurship blog, the link round-ups on PhilanTopic, and admittedly, even PerezHilton)

 

  • 2) Practical: provides useful tips & recommendations (Beth Kanter for social media, or Zen Habits for simple productivity)

 

 


Of course, the best blogs (including all that I’ve mentioned) have content that span several of these categories. And occasionally you have a blog like Seth Godin’s, which expertly covers them all (maybe least of all informative, but that’s also the easiest to value produce).

My last post talked about the importance of building an audience and meeting people where they are. The point of this post is to say that if we want our transparency to gain any traction, it has to come in a form that others find valuable. Unless you are a celebrity, just talking about won’t be enough to get most people to listen. Rather, we all must learn to talk about ourselves in a way that others find to be informative, practical, thought-provoking, or sector-progressing. That’s where transparency stands to create the most value – for everyone.

- Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org

 
 

 

Comments: 0

Mar 06, 2009

Lesson Seven: For transparency to be effective, you must build an audience that cares

This post is the seventh in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. The rest of the series can be read below.

You know those people that open a wordpress or blogspot blog and post everyday, while only receiving a few visitors? That’s great for personal expression, but when it comes to the time tradeoff decisions of running a corporation, it’s a worthless endeavor. As I said before, transparency without action is just another form of egocentrism. Similarly, transparency without an audience is just another form of navel gazing. For it to be useful for your endeavor and for your field, you must build an engaged audience that participates in the conversation.
 
For the first two years of running this blog on SocialEdge, I put almost no energy into promoting it. Looking back, it could have been one of my greatest communication tools. Fortunately enough, being a part of the fantastic SocialEdge network, I had some built-in promotion that drew (at least some) eyes to the site. But we never spent a moment on Twitter, Facebook, other blogs, etc. trying to bring people into the conversations.
 
It wasn’t until Sean Stannard-Stockton of Tactical Philanthropy took note of my blog that things started to take off and my audience started to grow. I’ve since discovered that the blogosphere is a crazy, incestuous world where once you’ve gained a foothold, your voice can be multiplied exponentially. And its not until you get people engaged that the benefits can start accruing, for yourself and for the sector.
 
But you can’t wait for people to come to you – you have to meet them where they are. I’m almost embarrassed about how (relatively) long it took us to get on Twitter**, to start using our Google Readers effectively, and to start establishing ourselves as a voice in the field. Unless you already have a large audience that’s easily engaged, plan to spend (or have someone on your team spend) at least as much time building an audience as you do “practicing transparency” through your blog or other measures. 

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

 

**Necessary shameless plug for our management team's twitter accounts: @Abby_Speight (Programming Director), @FORGE_Vaughn (Outreach Director), @Kjer (myself).

Comments: 2

Feb 24, 2009

Lesson Six: Transparency Is About Painting a Holistic Picture

After a month-long blogging break, the following is the sixth in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency

 

 
Because we naturally expect organizations to talk about their successes, we tend to only hear the word “transparency” applied to situations in which organizations talk about their challenges or failures. But it would be a huge mistake to equate transparency with the sharing of negative information. Transparency does not mean being willing to be open about problems - it means being willing to be open about anything.   
 
If you are to take “transparency” to mean “a willingness to show your warts” you are going to end up with an audience that thinks that you are a pretty ugly duckling. And if you only use your voice to talk about the things that go wrong, you will soon become the boy (girl?) who cried wolf.
 
To me, transparency means “a willingness to show who you are, warts and all”, which is very different. Nonprofits wouldn’t be doing what they do if they didn’t have a lot of very positive things to communicate. This work is hard, it is full of ups and downs, but at the end of the day, we have a wealth of things to be positive about. The good comes along with the struggle and the uncertainty – it's all part of the package.  For transparency to be real, it’s critical to paint a holistic picture.
 
The best part? What you say about your successes will be viewed much less skeptically in light of your challenges. No one trusts perfection – just ask Angelina Jolie.

 

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

Comments: 0

Jan 23, 2009

Lesson Five: Without Action, Transparency is Just Another Form of Egocentrism.

This blog is the fifth in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. You can view the previous lessons below.

With all the recent moves of the new Obama administration, transparency has been front and center this past week.  With all the positive press lauding the practice of transparency, I think it's important to remind ourselves that transparency is a means, not an end.   Rather than a goal in itself, transparency is a leadership and collaboration tool.  It's a way of doing business that I believe can help companies and organizations to communicate and achieve their desired goals.  But talking, no matter how openly, is worthless without action. 
 
It should be painfully obvious: walk the walk before you talk the talk.  But these days, with the countless ways to broadcast ourselves, it is perfectly possible for social entrepreneurs to spend all their time marketing themselves online (whether or not people are actually listening).  As such, it must be said that taking action to maximize the effectiveness of that organization, product or service MUST come before talking about it. 
 
Especially in the early stages of an organization or venture, you need to be spending the vast majority of your time actually doing what you are working on rather than talking about it.  As an organization evolves and has more substance to report on, public communication becomes more and more important because it has an actual impact.  By that time, you may have built a management structure and have more of your time freed up for public relations.  But when I see someone who purports to be starting a nonprofit venture spending their entire day blogging, digging, and tweeting, I'm gonna get suspicious about your motivations.  Organizations are built through action.  If you aren't spending 90% of your time implementing, you shouldn't have that much to talk about. 
 
So as the hype factor around transparency grows, we all need to remind ourselves that transparency is a complement to our actions, but never a priority over it.
 
- Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org

Comments: 0

Jan 21, 2009

Lesson Four: Transparency Can Lead to Efficiency Gains

This blog is the fourth in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. You can view the previous lessons below.

  
In many ways, practicing transparency is a time-consuming process. You have to build an information repository, update it consistently, be available to engage in dialogue and respond to questions and concerns, and make sure that your data is in a form that is publicly accessible. Depending on how naturally on-top of data collection and reporting an organization is, this takes a varying degree of time. And as we all know, time is not free.
 
However, I’d argue that when done well, transparency can actually lead to significant efficiency gains that more than offset the extra time the organization spends on implementing the processes. 
 
Think about all of the individual stakeholders, donors and grant-makers with whom every organization has to go through basically the same vetting process time after time. These stakeholders or potential stakeholders want to know your current plans, financial situation, the processes and results of your monitoring and evaluation, your current project successes and failures, etc. It takes significant amounts of time and energy to answer these questions individually.
 
But what if all that information made public and easily accessible? Stakeholders and potential stakeholders would be able to find all the answers they were looking for (and more) without needing to directly engage the nonprofit’s time. Instead, they could use more of their time with stakeholders to plan and actualize their shared goals and activities.
 
In FORGE, we’ve already started to reap the returns to transparency through greater shared understandings. Conversations with stakeholders that would typically begin with significant background discussions and Q & A now progress much faster into substance and action. As a result of our stakeholders having a greater basic awareness of where FORGE stands (based on this blog and the constant project reporting on our website), we are able to both save each other precious time and cut to the chase of achieving our shared goals.
 
I would urge other organizations to think about whether their fear of the time required to actively practice transparency might just be offset by these same type of efficiency gains. We all know what it’s like to answer the same questions…over and over and over again.  Imagine if most of this basic background was publicly available, and stakeholders only needed to come to you with specific substantive follow-ups? That doesn’t just save time, it saves sanity!

- Kjerstin Erickson

www.FORGEnow.org

Comments: 2

Jan 19, 2009

Lesson Three: Transparency invites scrutiny, and more scrutiny can only be good for the nonprofit sector

This blog is the third in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency. You can view the previous lessons below.

When you tell the world about your imperfections, you are naturally going to open yourself up to all sorts of questions, critiques, and feedback. When people see a problem, they want to get to the root of it. With FORGE, we had people pouring over our website, evaluating the quality of our board, and asking a lot of tough questions (Why did they change their funding model? Are they spending too much on salaries? Is there too much emphasis on the founder? What could they be doing better? And so on).

FORGE had to be ready to respond to and engage in such scrutiny calmly, even when it seemed totally off-base. We had to provide the details of how and why we made decisions. And when the comment hit a nerve of something that we needed to improve, we had to say so. Even the feedback that seemed completely inaccurate was valuable, because it pointed us to the ways in which we weren’t adequately communicating our structure, philosophy, or strengths.
 
I think that this kind of engaged scrutiny and feedback loop is extremely helpful for the nonprofit sector. In the same way that students will naturally spend more time on an assignment that will be graded than one that won’t be, the increased scrutiny that comes with transparency creates a higher expectation and incentive for performance in the nonprofit sphere. In order to be comfortable with intense scrutiny, the organization must be confident that they have been responsible in decision-making and can adequately explain themselves to their constituency.
 
If transparency became the norm, I believe that nonprofits would feel more compelled and incentivized to ensure that all of their proverbial ducks are in a row and that they can justify all of their actions and expenses along a clear metric of change. Not everyone will agree with every step they take, but a mutual respect and understanding can be built and a meaningful dialogue can be opened. Isn’t this a huge step in the right direction?
 
 - Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org

 

 

Comments: 0

Jan 15, 2009

Lesson Two: Transparency is not a simple solution to a crisis...but it can help

This blog is the second in a series of the Top 10 Things I've Learned about Transparency - which I take to mean being open, honest and receptive to feedback about the challenges, successes, failures, and mistakes that all organizations encounter. I came to these lessons through the attention that my blog received for being a model of nonprofit "radical transparency." I hope they prove useful for others thinking about transparency as a concept and as a tool.

 

*********

Fact: FORGE was transparent about its financial situation and the reasons behind it


Fact: FORGE subsequently closed its funding gap

*********

 

The correlation between these two facts has been the subject of substantial speculation.  Here are the three main hypotheses:

 

The Cause & Effect Hypothesis: FORGE’s transparency allowed it to close the funding gap

The First-Mover Hypothesis: The ‘buzz factor’ surrounding FORGE being a first-mover in transparency, rather than the transparency itself, allowed FORGE to close the funding gap

The Non-Correlation Hypothesis: FORGE’s closed the funding gap for reasons other than its transparency

 

My opinion? All of the above.


While we’d all like to believe that there is a simple magic bullet to be found in FORGE’s story, our experience speaks to there being several confounding reasons that ultimately allowed us to emerge from our crisis.


Firstly, a large part of our influx of funding did come from simple ‘cause and effect’ – the transparency allowed us to raise money that wouldn’t have otherwise come in. One of the primary benefits of transparency is that people find out what you need and can ask themselves if there is anything they can do to help. It created a sense of urgency that got many supporters to go above and beyond what they would have done for us if we were cruising along as usual. If you aren’t upfront about your shortcomings, problems, and needs, people will assume that you’ve got it all under control. Furthermore, transparency builds trust and investment. Many of our past supporters actually gained more confidence and faith in us because they learned more about FORGE and our values in the process, which probably led to larger gifts than they would otherwise give.


Now, FORGE also benefited from being a ‘first-mover’ in radical transparency, and thus received attention for the novelty of an organization coming out publicly and discussing its weaknesses. To be clear, what people found ‘radical’ about FORGE’s story was not the simple fact that we said we were in financial straits, but rather that we were willing to discuss the reasons and weaknesses behind it and what we were doing to change those things. For demonstrating this new kind of paradigm, we attracted attention of people who wanted to support greater transparency in the nonprofit sector, even if they had never before considered giving to African refugees. If transparency someday became the norm, a transparent approach may not get the same kind of transparency-focused press that FORGE has recently received, but it will likely get people to step forward and help out or advise that wouldn’t have otherwise.


And finally, its important to note that FORGE also received substantial support from people who either didn’t know or didn’t care about what was going on online, but simply wanted to contribute to us. In my experience, it’s always dangerous to try and attribute one direct cause and effect to any outcome. Yet, I do believe that transparency was an important aspect of how quickly FORGE was able to raise the necessary funds this time around. But it wasn't the only aspect. AND, the story isn’t over - it should be interesting to see how our fundraising results keep up in the next few months. Now that our crisis is staved, is it going to be that much harder to keep going?
 

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Jan 13, 2009

Top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency

Over the past few months, my blog has gotten attention as a model of nonprofit "radical transparency" - which I take to mean being open, honest and receptive to feedback about the challenges, successes, failures, and mistakes that all organizations encounter. This had led me to do a lot of thinking about transparency as a concept and as a tool: where it can do good, where it can go wrong, and how it can be best used to advance the sector. I've decided to compile a list of the top 10 Things I've Learned About Transparency, which I'll be putting up throughout the next 2 weeks.

 
As readers of my blog know, FORGE successfully emerged from the financial crunch that had us all preparing for the worst. We are far from done worrying about what will happen to us in 2009, but the immediate threat of closing down in February is at least conquered. In the end, about 40% of the donations that helped us close that gap came from donors who had learned of FORGE through the "transparency" buzz surrounding my blog. The rest came from the generosity of our existing donor base who reached deeper into their pockets to help us in a time of need.

Because of this short-term 'success' at closing our funding gap, I've had several people and organizations approach me to ask how they might be able to replicate the transparency strategy. And yet, FORGE’s transparency does not mean that any nonprofit can go out, be transparent, and expect to have services thrown at them. Transparency is not a magic bullet. That’s not to say, however, that transparency isn’t a helpful value to adopt - both for the organization and for the sector at large.

Over the next two weeks, I'm going to share with you the Top 10 Thoughts on Transparency that have coalesced for me in the past 3 months. Here goes with the first one:


Lesson 1: Transparency is a Value, not a Strategy
  
The first thing I've told people who've asked me how they can apply transparency to benefits their own ventures is that you can’t just ‘choose’ transparency as a response strategy to a certain situation - people will see right through that. In order to be trusted and to have your message resonate, you need to build and maintain a track record of openness & honesty in all different situations.

In order for people to respond on a visceral basis to an organization's "transparency", they must be able to trust the messenger. In order for them to trust the messenger, the messenger must have a track record of being transparent and authentic in cases where it was less urgent or potentially adventageous to be so. Therefore, an organization cannot just turn to 'transparency' as a strategy to help them get out of a crisis - they must first show that it is a value throughout the organization.

The public's inherent distrust of strategies came up repeatedly during the past few months as FORGE generated attention for its "radical transparency". Many people who were not familiar with our background expressed the concern that FORGE coming out publicly in response to a crisis situation did not represent true transparency. In order to be able to respond to that legitimate fear, it's been really important to be able to show the ways in which transparency has been a value that we've demonstrated throughout our history. We may not have had a crisis like this before, and our transparency may not have generated this kind of attention before, but we’ve always been straightforward about both our successes and our failures. For example, we post each project's Monthly Progress Report in full on our website without removing the parts about the project's problems, issues, or concerns. In my own blog, I've talked about issues we've faced and difficult decisions we've had to make. And when people ask questions or express concerns, we are there to answer them frankly and publicly.

While we never actually called it transparency until recently (it is a bit of a buzzword), the value of being open and honest about our successes, failures, mistakes and lessons is one that has shaped every aspect of FORGE and its evolution. Five years in, it ended up helping us get out of a crisis in a wholly unexpected way. And yet, I hold that transparency is not a tactic that can be turned to when times get tough. Because in the end, people are rightly suspicious of being taken advantage of. They must trust you to invest in you. And trust can only be built through consistent action over time.

- Kjerstin Erickson
www.FORGEnow.org

 

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