Document Actions
Small can be beautiful
Businesses in the for-profit sector need to grow continuously in order to increase profits—profit being the one undeniable measure of business success. Activists are not in the business of making money, yet we often use the same gauge of success, constant growth, as the commercial sector. Many board members are successful businesspeople. They bring their business lenses with them and assume that increasing the size of the staff and the budget is the same as improving an organization’s impact and effectiveness.
Add the quixotic and short attention span of many funders, who want to support only “new and innovative” programs, and the natural reaction is for activist organizations to push every year to increase the budget and to add new programs and staff. We must change our habits before our habits sink us.
Organizations need to ask themselves whether they should or need to or even want to grow in size. Not everything needs to be supersized, franchised, and replicated. Small can be beautiful. Some for-profit businesses can successfully grow while being closed and secretive because they have the capital to run many focus groups, which simulate real conversations. U.S. automobile companies have for decades been shifting their marketing into overdrive while the quality and desirability of their cars continue to decline. Underresourced activist organizations cannot grow and succeed this way. If for no other reason, the lack of capital available to activist organizations makes massive, ongoing marketing efforts unworkable.
Self-determination will be a beacon not a repellant for funds. It is easy for someone to say that who doesn’t have to make payroll and pay rent. Being told that everything will be all right when your neck is on the line is particularly painful for activists working in communities with few resources or for organizations that may have few opportunities to create fee-based revenue streams. But the Connected Age is a double win for these activists because less money has to be raised, and raising money is less expensive.
Fundraising online doesn’t require sending out mailings or hosting special events. Smaller, broader, smarter—those are the fundraising mantras of the future. Throw away the direct-mail manual. You will be successful raising money online when you are building a broad base of networked participants.
Small can be beautiful ??
I'd like to suggest an alternative view to the premise that "Small can be beautiful." As long as people are dying, hungry, undeducated, suffering, etc., there's a moral imperative to grow the scale of your impact. Please note that I said grow the scale of your impact, not just budget or staffing.
The paradox of Mr. Teresa
She advocated doing small things with great love... and yet.. doing those very small things.. led her to build a network of orders around the world. She didn't advocate growing the scale.. and yet, nevertheless it grew.. and it had an impact.
Paradox!
You know.. she's not that different from something one of the co-founders of Expedia told me long ago.. a brilliant and honest software developer with deep integrity. He pretty much said the same thing to me... pay attention to the small details and each relationship... and the rest will take care of itself.
Tell that to my previous employer!
Under the auspices of "sustainability", my previous employer has beenpushing to grow by leaps and bounds in the past three years. It aquired one for-profit entity, and made a botched attempt to merge another tiny non-profit into itself.
It has been consistently building it's infrastructure. Money has been poured into adding levels of middle-management and expanding the finance department while, at the same time, cutting back on services to the very people it is supposed to support.
I ended up so disillusioned that I decided to leave and make my way on my own as a writer. I have set up a web site with a blog that I am trying to use as a platform to re-ignite the Disabilities Rights movement and take this vehicle for social change back from the beaurocrats that are killing it. http://ablewriter.com/blog2/
Small is beautiful!
I agree 100%. Too many organizations and movements have been destroyed in the attempt to grow too large, too fast.
I don't think that this necessarily means that the scope of the organization's mission should be limited, but rather the organization should always be asking "will this jeopardize our ability to deliver our product effectively".
Our organization is small, and we have every intention of keeping it that way because our size fits our competencies. Changing our structure would mean changing the way we deliver our product - making decisions centrally, developing restrictive policies, focusing more on infrastructure than the product. Doing those things would alter the nature of who we are.
There's no reason that a small organization can have global impact. Ideas can be disseminated, problems can be investigated, etc. with very low overhead. The headaches arise when that natural tendency to "protect your investment" surfaces. As a result, the world-changing idea is withheld because someone else's organization could run with it and take the credit. In order to have truly effective world reach, we must remember that we are providing something to change the world, not to change the world's opinion of us.
Our operating model: a small team, web-based communication, individual brainstorming and problem solving, guerilla marketing - is all founded upon having a lean, responsive management structure. Small can definitely be beautiful!
raising money online - statistics
It might be worth noting that only an estimated 1.5% to 2% of donations from individuals are currently made online. Robert Tolmach