Just wondering….

This email is an example of everything that is wrong with grassroots organizing today:

To NARP Members, August 9, 2006–

The budget battles of recent years make it clear that Amtrak’s critics are out to get rid of all long distance trains. We can stop them by making noise and demonstrating strong public support for these trains.

NARP is organizing a campaign to form “route teams” to support each long distance route. If you can do even such simple things as talk, walk, phone, and pass out leaflets we need you to join this important campaign that will strengthen and grow these important trains. Organizing ourselves at the local, grass roots level is the way to do this. It is an essential component in our ongoing campaign to preserve and improve the long distance system.

The model for these groups would be the very successful Texas Eagle Marketing and Performance Organization, or Tempo. It has been in existence for nine years and has proven to be an effective voice and advocate for the Texas Eagle, and spurred the formation of a similar group for the Heartland Flyer. Grass roots organizing is what saved the Texas Eagle and its how we’re going to prevail in our fight to protect other routes.

We need volunteers in every area where Amtrak has a station—including cities and towns that have Thruway bus connections. Anyone and everyone who has a little time can make a difference. Some of our ideas for what we would like to see these groups do:

–establish relationships with local businesses, chambers of commerce, and newspaper editorial boards; engage them to promote their train service and also make them aware of the threats outlined above

–reach out to local elected officials and make sure they are aware of the train and the continual threats to Amtrak’s long distance system from Washington

–pass out literature at stations

–get merchants to put posters in store windows

–attend meeting with your Representative and Senator when they have town hall meetings

–raise the general visibility of the train in your community and region.

This is by no means a complete list. Groups may take on other tasks they deem appropriate. In some cases, the teams’ work will strengthen and expand on efforts already under way by Amtrak ticket agents and other people acting individually.

If you would like to volunteer along the Amtrak long distance route you live near, please contact NARP. Include all of your contact information: name, address, phone number and E-mail.

Since a key element of the groups will be interaction with local officials, we would prefer those that live along a specific route become involved with that route. However, Thruway Bus connections count as well (e.g. Duluth, MN for the Empire Builder). And, yes, we would love to have participation for the long distance trains that serve stations on the Northeast Corridor!

There are many tasks to do. The first step is to volunteer. We will get back to those who are interested once we gauge overall interest in the program, identify leaders, and begin the effort to organize each route.

It is just one example of many emails that I regularly get. It shows how behind organizations are when it comes to really utilizing the power of the web and social networking tools.

In the email notice these issues:

• A general need to organize people for action at the local level initiated by a national-based organization.
• This email (eventually 16 months late) reached me as someone who is not a member of
  the NARP.
• gives me no ability to take the content of this email and use it to become a local leader in the organization effort; I need NARP to decide I am a leader
• No clear “call to action” - i.e. nothing specific that needs immediate action therefore no urgency for me as individual to respond
• No way to hook existing organization together with NARP’s effort in this area.
• Presumption that NARP will be the “leader” of this effort (and therefore deferred to).
• NARP is attempting to create local organizations without regards to any existing organizations.
• Burden is on NARP staff and volunteers to do top-down organizing (they “decide” who the leaders are)
• “Don’t call us, we will call you” mentality.
• No mechanism for local groups to organize and communicate with each other. All communication funnels through the national NARP organization.

One important implication is the assumption that NARP will be driving the agenda of these local groups because NARP is creating them.

NARP should be really looking for existing organizations with which to connect together. However, existing organizations are not willing to let an external organization such as NARP dictate the message and position. This is true no matter the size of the organization, but is especially true if the other organization is as large or larger than NARP — for example the Sierra Club. But it is precisely because those organizations are established and and influential within their communities that NARP should be including them in their organizational efforts - not trying to create yet another organization.

Exclude existing organizations and their established infrastructure, name recognition and resources results in wasted resources and duplicated efforts.

NARP is not alone in this area. There are many other organizations that repeatedly reorganizing individuals for their agenda. As a result, an socially-involved person may be asked to join 3, 4, or more different organizations. Each new organization requires additional time and energy from the volunteer. Additionally, creating a new organization requires time and energy from NARP before the local organization will be effective.

This is really frustrating when the groups are close to each other in purpose. For example a “clean water” organization and a “clean rivers” organization will have heavy membership overlap.

I am focusing on NARP’s blindspot of only connecting with individuals and not organizations. But it isn’t really their fault. Rather it is the fault of the technology constraints that NARP is forced to use.

All communication technology is focused on connecting individuals to individuals. Furthermore, communication technology is almost exclusively focused on transmission of a message to a destination. Often the initial recipient of a communication is not the final recipient. Existing technology does a poor job of allowing a message to be dynamically transmitted.

Guy Kawasaki’s “Art of the Start” talk says that you need a mantra not a mission statement for a company. Here is my cut at it:

Helping you save the world without sacrificing your family.

What do you think?

Buildcap is focusing on the non-profit space. This results in reading a bunch of blogs about non-profits, including this one about passion:

We need passion for the cause, passion for delivering real benefits to stakeholders.

Charity employees (and volunteers) need to be outward-looking, rather than inward-looking.

This is so true. We are currently searching for people who are passionate about saving the world or working with non-profits. This is our target market. To have someone onboard who is not passionate about making a difference is a complete waste. They are going to be a deadweight around our necks.

I don’t need them to be passionate about the company, I need for them to be passionate about saving the world. That passion will be aligned with our customers’ passions, our customers will see that and it will help BuildCap be successful as a wonderful side-effect.

We have had to pass on a number of qualified people simple because the passion was not there.

The backing blog entry is this

Yeah! We are going into early alpha for the new buildcap.com for non-profits and political organizations. More news later. (right now the alpha site is a little secret )

I have been working on this for about 3 weeks scattered time with kids and other activities taking up time.

I am really appreciating more and more the XP methodology for building code. On an earlier version, I spent time with data models, hibernate, etc. first not the UI. This go-around I decided to follow the more XP model of doing things and build the demo UI first and then fill in the backend.

One positive thing so far is that it is easier to focus on what is most important — it is simply what is required for the next demo!

Feature complete list so far:

1. Basic Message display handling and insertion.
2. Basic MessageHandling code complete but test suite will need to be written next.
3. Primitive message entry (almost)

so I have this idea that is getting strong positive response amongst the people I ask. But how do I tell if these people are representative of a wider sea of customers or just the biggest fish in a very small pond?

Non-profits are very different than businesses. Business exist to generate capital for their owners where as non-profits exist to generate social environmental change that their members agree is desirable. At the end of the day all non-profits are political. Churches try to change members’ world view which will influence elections and their dealings with public officials. Breast cancer foundations will try to influence government research dollar allocations. Chambers of Commerce change laws.

Non-profits can be categorized based on three dimensions:

• Goal Scope
• Resource Scope
• Influence Scope

Goal Scope

Goal Scope should not be confused with Influence Scope. Goal Scope is concerned with how the nonprofit defines victory. This dimension has 3 values:

• Single Issue, defined end
• Single Issue, indeterminate end
• General Area of Concern

Examples:

• “Vote No on A” – Single Issue, Defined End
  Once the election is over, the group disbands.
• “Cure Breast Cancer” – Single Issue Indeterminate End
  No one knows when breast cancer will be cured.
• “Global Warming” – General Area
  Because this issue involves everything from transportation to appliance energy efficiency this is general area of concern.
• “Free Nelson Mandela” – Single Issue, Defined End
  Once he was released, the goal was been achieved.

Notice that in the case of Mandela, the Influence Scope brought to bear was international, even though the goal was very local in nature.

Resource Scope

This measures the resources in time and money available to the non-profit. Resources directly affect a non-profit’s Influence Scope.

In most cases, money can buy time but the reverse is not true. Money will allow paid staff to be hired and physical resources to be purchased. However, volunteer time can be used as a replacement for paid staff, but cannot be used to “buy” postage for a mass-mailing.

Resources are used to achieve the goal or to help the organization survive.

Important resources to achieve goals:

• Money to communicate with sympathetic individuals known to have interest (internal newsletters).
• Money for mass-mailings to voters to influence an election.
• Time to monitor public meetings and public officials.
• Time for Lawyers (if pro bono, otherwise money).
• Time to mobilize large numbers of people.

Important resources to insure organization’s continuity and survival:

• Fundraising seed money for appeals for money (mailings asking for donations).
• Time to acquire new members.
• Time to educate new volunteers (or staff).

I purposely left membership size out of this section. Unless the money or time exists to monetize that membership or to inspire or communicate to those members, a large body of non-donating, non-volunteering “members” is not significant.

Influence Scope

This is a measure of the non-profit’s ability to mobilize and concentrate resources.

Some metrics:

• Access: how quickly and how high up into government can an organization get a decision-maker to take a meeting or phone call.
• Geographic Membership Density: what percentage of the population in a given locale are members of this group.
• Membership size: overall world-wide membership.

Notice the difference between “Membership Density” and “Membership Size”.

Membership Density determines the likelihood that the organization can influence an election or the allocation of government resources without the expenditure of large sums of cash.

Membership Size determines how large a pool of potential donors is available to draw on for money (usually) or time.