Did You Know CH.O from CanadaHelps on Vimeo.

Here  is how Imagine Canada describe it’s cross country mission.

First, in its role as convener of a national dialogue on how to strengthen the collective voice of the sector and develop a common agenda for action, Imagine Canada will use this draft framework to facilitate a nation-wide conversation about what is driving change in the sector and what actions must be taken to maximize the contributions of the sector to Canada and the world over the next decade.

I haven’t being following Imagine Canada’s work but after reading Mark’s post, and the Framework for Action document, I’m going to delve deeper into their resources and cross Canada campaign.

Over the past few months I’ve become more aware of the huge gulf that separates the non profit sector from the business sector in the eyes of the general public, government and media sectors.

As I read the Framework For Action paper that Imagine Canada was using to engage audience’s across Canada, I felt some optimism that Canada was taking a major step to address the misconceptions about the non profit sector.

In its draft “framework for action” Imagine Canada identifies 7 drivers of change, which are:

Driver 1: The increasing importance and influence of social innovation in Canada

Driver 2: Structural shifts in the revenue base which supports the work of charitable and nonprofit organizations

Driver 3: Shortage of talent to strengthen and lead charitable and nonprofit organizations

Driver 4: Lack of growth in the number of volunteers to govern, support and promote civic and community organizations

Driver 5: Heightened demand for transparency, accountability and communication of impact

Driver 6: Growing need for transformative partnerships among charities and nonprofits and with other sectors

Driver 7: Increased use of social media and new technologies for community engagement, outreach to youth and networking

While I recognize these Drivers are important considerations, I think that it would be a useful exercise to frame them as strategic directions for organizations (large or small)  instead of prioritized (numbered) drivers of change. Mark makes a similar point in his post and I support his notion that prioritizing these drivers in terms of their importance isn’t exactly a constructive exercise.

If each driver was framed as a strategy, here’s how these strategies would look like from my perspective.

Strategic Directions: Each organization can address any one or all of these strategies to the degree they are ready and capable.

1. Foster social innovation as a cornerstone value and practice in your organization’s programing

2. Identify potential new funding opportunities that are emerging as a result of the cultural shifts in the revenue base which supports the work of charitable and nonprofit organizations.

3. Create new incentives to recruit and retain leaders that will strengthen and lead charitable and nonprofit organizations

4. Develop new models of volunteer engagement that will address the unique expectations of the emerging cohort of people interested in contributing to social causes.

5. Use social technologies to in creative ways to respond to the heightened demand for transparency, accountability and communication of impact

6. Seek out opportunities to form transformative partnerships among charities and nonprofits and with other sectors

7. With each of the above strategies, increase use of social media and new technologies for community engagement, outreach to service users, youth and networking

I like my new list of strategies because these statements can give an organization a lens to look into the future and encourage them to plot activities that will meet these current challenges.

It’s a bit like looking at the glass and seeing it half full or half empty. Or, is your organization at risk or is it at promise.

In closing I echo Mark’s comment about the need for everyday citizens to shift their understanding of the non profit (social benefit sector).

It’s not enough that organizations undergo a shift in understanding and practice about their work. All citizen’s involved in creating the future we want are needed to do re-think the role of non profit organizations.

]]> http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/06/21/imagine-canada-framework-for-action-community-consultations/feed/ 0 http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/03/29/youth-work-online-social-networks/ http://www.socialmediatools.ca/2010/03/29/youth-work-online-social-networks/#comments Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:58:47 +0000 Brent http://www.socialmediatools.ca/?p=3090 This is an excellent video (slideshare below) from Tim Davis, a consultant in Britain. He is one of the founders of UK Youth Workers Online site. It is a bit long (20 min.) but very worthwhile. I think the video is quite useful for youth workers who are struggling with how to address risk issues of youth participating in online social networking sites. Download the fullYouth-Work-and-Social-Networking-Final-Report

Lately I’ve being immersed in a variety of community restoration and change groups. The focus for many of these efforts seem to default to righting inequities and fixing long standing communication and power issues. People like Margaret Wheatley and Peter Block offer alternative strategies for community change. I am suggesting that we use or integrate elements of these community engagement strategies however the shift to that thinking is pretty hard to make.

Despicte these challenges, I’m enjoying the planning sessions and I especially like contributing my experience in online communication strategies and tools to support these change processes. I hope you find some great questions in watching these videos. As Peter Block says, the right questions can be more transformative than answers.

In an environment where cynicism prevails, the challenge of tapping into new and creative actions seems daunting at best. To me, the driving questions at this point revolves around “how do we create a stronger sense of belonging, marked by authentic engagement (in its many forms), in our community”.

When we talk about community, belonging, engagement, systemic barriers, authentic dialogue, inclusive processes etc.. we are talking complexity. How do we have a meaningful and sense making discussion when we are constantly wearing our silo centred, agency representative hat? It’s a bit like seeing the fairy dancing on the head of the pin. You know that fairy is there but you just have to hold the pin in the right way to see him/her.

I think that one of the ways to see that fairy is to somehow suspend or put on the shelf for the moment our agency representation hat and just wear our community citizen hat. When we do that, we can engage with each other and talk about what community means, where does belonging fit into community and what might our community look like if we waved our magic wand and on and on. I think there would be wonderful lessons in that discussion that we can build on and potentially influence policy makers in our organizations. Even more importantly, those lessons can impact us on individual (personal) levels as community citizens, potentially creating a ripple effect in our relationships within our spheres of belonging.

This video by Mark Schenk from Anecdote expands the explanation of the Cynefin model. I like this model as a tool that can help us understand what we are getting into with our community roundtable planning discussions. I think there are some great tips in the Cynefin framework that we can incorporate in our planning for of the roundtable. I especially like the simplicity of the Cynefin framework and how it points to the importance of looking at patterns and building on patterns that show promise.

“A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs”.

I found this article, titled “The Non Profit Starvation Cycle” – Sanford Social Innovation Review on the Ontario Non Profit Network Site.

What an eye opening and revealing paper. The research report is called, Nonprofit Overhead Cost Study, a five year research project conducted by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The article provoked quite a reaction in me. I’ve worked as a senior manager in the non profit sector for quite a few years and felt those starvation pangs on a regular basis.

In my role as a consultant, I help organizations with their online communication and web site strategies. The impact of this starvation cycly phenomenon still affects me as I’m discovering that for many local non profits, finding budgets for creating an effective web site that engages their stakeholders is luxury they can’t afford.

In this U.S. based report,  I recognize many correlations to my experience in Canada. The article describes the elephant in the room. Another name for the elephant is funder expectations. The article contends that this elephant is the leading contributor to the non profit starvation cycle. The advice to grantees was especially useful as this portion of the report pointed the way out of this “low pay, make do, and do without” culture.

The non profit starvation cycle has being around so long, I think it’s become the norm. It seems to me that non profits have quietly accepted the way things work in the funding process. Their conditioned approach is to continue juggling the mix of different funders, squeezing a portion of overhead from each one and keep on organizing special funding drives or in kind donations to cover admin shortfalls. I’ve seen this year in, year out cycle wear out very talented managers, direct service staff and volunteers. It’s no wonder that it is getting more difficult each year to find candidates willing to step into the shoes of departing staff.

I would like to believe that there is a rising tide both in the non profit and funding sector that is turning this dysfunctional Titanic called “funder expectations” around. The rate of change is going much to slow for my liking. When non profit groups across the country are reporting record increases (often over 25%) in service usage (that’s food, beds, crisis services etc.). More than ever, the non profit sector is asked to meet these challenges. I feel that we can’t afford to continue perpetuating this dysfunctional practice.

The Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) is a network of networks that helps to build communication and coordination amongst nonprofit organizations working for the public benefit in Ontario. They are doing some outstanding work across Ontario. It was nice to see the Twitter tab but I couldn’t find an RSS feed anywhere.

I’m interested in hearing what my colleagues and fellow collaborators in York Region feel about this study. Did it provoke you as much as it did me.

Harm reduction is a big word covering a lot of ground. For me it’s about seeing and being with the person, not the harm. It’s also about fostering a compassionate, caring, inclusive community were we don’t lock up people or stigmatize people for their struggles as a human being.The Harm Reduction Coalition is hosting a series of learning and awareness building events that bring new and hopefully greater acceptance of harm reduction policies and practices into our York Region services. Last week we held our first “building awareness event” and we had 3 guest speakers. Tom Rigehr, survivor, writer, founder of CAST Canada, Cathy Middleton, Director of Women’s Services from YWCA Kitchener-Waterloo and David Collins, President and founder of the the Toronto Harm Reduction Task Force. Through this event and others like we are working towards making York Region a more caring inclusive community.

In this video, Dave Collins gives a great overview of the evolution of harm reduction practices and policies in Toronto. I have video of Tom and Cathy but the quality just isn’t as good as they moved around quite a bit and I didn’t have an audio feed to work with.

Related Posts:

Strengthening Practice: Building Resiliency with Learning Networks

Extend Your Messenge & Include the Messengers

You can learn more about this major event by visiting the registration page. Please note that this conference is a feature event during Net Change, a week long event embracing social tech training and social change makers. Dates for this event are: June 10 – 12, 2009.Last summer, I attended the first Social Tech Training Conference (STT) and the experience changed my life. I’ve attended many learning events over the past twenty years but none like this.

The STT 2008 conference brought together so many talented and creative people from all over North America to share knowledge and strategies for using web 2.0 tools for social change. From that experience, I decided to invest my energies and creativity into working with organizations as a social media consultant.

I’m so pleased to have participated in this training. The community that evolved from STT 2008 continues to be a source of inspiration and guidance as I work with local York Region organizations seeking more effective ways to engage their constituents.

Here is a short advomentary that highlights the STT 2008 Conference.

Social Tech Training Advomentary from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

Related Posts

Social Tech Training 2008

I love this book “The Groundswell” , winning in a world transformed by social technologies written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  Here is how they introduce their approach to writing the book. We have taken “a broader view of this phenomenon(social networks, media, tools, web 2.0 etc), one that encompasses not just today’s technologies but the fundamental change in behaviour now happening online. The groundswell is: A social trend in which people use technologies to get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (non profits corporations as well).

This book has rounded out my thinking and made clear why it’s so important for non profit organizations and businesses to learn how to survive and thrive in the groundswell.  The next excerpt from the Groundswell book is a bit long, but for me it so accurately captures the the depth, breadth and permanence of the seachange in how we relate and do business with each other in our neighbourhoods, countries and world.

The groundswell is broad, ever shifting, and ever growing. It encompasses blogs and wikis; podcasts and YouTube; and consumers who rate products, buy and sell from each other, write their own news, and find their own deals. It’s global. It’s unstoppable. It af­fects every industry—those that sell to consumers and those that sell to businesses—in media, retail, financial services, technology, and health care. And it’s utterly foreign to the powerful companies and institu­tions—and their leaderships—that run things now. Simply put, the groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other instead of from companies. If you’re in a company, this is a challenge.

The groundswell phenomenon is not a flash in the pan. The tech­nologies that make it work are evolving at an ever-increasing pace, but the phenomenon itself is based on people acting on their eternal desire to connect. It has created a permanent, long-lasting shift in the way the world works. This book exists to help companies deal with the trend, regardless of how the individual technology pieces change. We call this ground-swell thinking.

Having worked in the non profit sector for many years, I know well the challenges of surviving as an organization, let alone having and maintaining a web presence that represents the Mission, staff and operations of the organization. The groundswell for non profits and businesses simply means that they need to learn how to connect more effectively with the ever growing numbers of individuals (73% in the USA) who are active online users.

In the non profit sector, street youth, newcomers, to Canada, the unemployed, seniors wanting to reach out to distant relatives or people struggling with health issues are using online tools to connect with others and access resources. Ignoring the way these people are communicating and using online tools is not an option when your in the capacity building, social change and community betterment business. For social change agents and community organizations, it’s time to listen and learn how to participate within the groundswell.

Non profit organizations like any other business, are now faced with delivering services to a consumers who have access on the social web to knowledge, options and tools that aids them in their everyday living needs. They expect service organizations and staff at the minimum, to be knowledgeable of navigating the web and capable of connecting them with the right information and resources. They no longer wish or expect to passively wait for service. These non profit organizations, by their charter and by their funding requirements strive to adhere to standards of transparency, inclusiveness, equity. Giving people pithy statements about what wonderful services and worthy purposes that your organization promises to deliver isn’t good enough in todays networked world.

So where does creating an online strategy fit in to this picture? Well, the good news is that with good old fashioned planning and a sincere desire to understand what your audience is doing and talking about, you can initiate an organizational change that brings you into dialogue with your constituents, within the groundswell. My next post will focus on the framework for creating your online strategy.

This video is a tongue in cheek take on the new realities of marketing whereby consumers are exercising their independence from slick advertisement practices. I love it as a great example of social media explaining the impact of web 2.0 tools on the buyer – seller relationship. The arrogance of the marketing executive is over the top but overall I believe the video reflects the “head in the sand” mentality of many executives in the business, non profit and educational sectors.