With so many incredible videos submitted to this year’s contest it was no easy task, but judges in the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards have narrowed down the field of entries to 16 finalists. Now, the YouTube community has the opportunity to get involved and cast their vote for the best nonprofit videos of the past year.

The 16 finalist videos can be watched on the Contest homepage. Participation is easy: just select your favorite video or videos in each category. You can vote once per day. Don’t forget to tell your friends and social media buddies to do the same.

>> Vote on the 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards!

Winners will be announced on April 5, at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco. It’s a great finale to the whole awards program and we anticipate a really exciting finish. Contest Sponsor Cisco, will be awarding $3,500 in prizes and up to $3,500 in products to the winner of each category, and the Case Foundation is awarding one $2,500 grants to the four organizations with the most fearless videos submitted to this year’s contest. In addition, the winners of each category will receive free registration to next year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference. Oh, and each winning organization will have their video featured on the YouTube homepage on April 5th!

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that understand this and are going the extra mile to create media that moves important causes forward.

The excitement is moving to a finish! Check out the finalists and lend your vote to the video that moves you.

Are you a nonprofit? Did your organization create impactful videos in 2011? Do you want your organization to be recognized for making great videos and maybe win some incredible prizes? Perfect.

The 6th Annual DoGooder Nonprofit Video Contest is taking submissions starting February 1st. The contest is presented by YouTube and See3 Communications and generously sponsored by Cisco and us, NTEN. We’re seeking out and celebrating the best videos that nonprofit organizations have created to advance their missions using this powerful medium to create meaningful change for the better.

So what do the winning nonprofits get for participating?

The four best videos will each receive:

• $3,500 in prize donations
• An additional gift of up $3,500 (US) worth of Cisco products to help each winning org harness the power of human and technology networks to multiply their impact on the people and communities they serve.
• Free registration to the 2013 Nonprofit Technology Conference, provided by NTEN.

This year’s contest features a special category for all orgs, regardless of size: “Best Video Storytelling” will celebrate videos that employ narrative and tell the real, human stories of people, organizations, and issues.

The winning videos will be announced at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference and featured on YouTube’s homepage on Thursday, April 5th.

You read that right: the winning videos will be featured on the YouTube homepage.

At the end of last year’s contest, the winning videos received almost 1 million new views after being featured there for just one day.

For nonprofits, video is a great way to share your mission, get out a message, and tell the stories of the people and issues you support. The medium educates, inspires, and moves people to action. The DoGooder Awards recognizes nonprofits that see the importance of this. This contest is meant to show nonprofits of all sizes they can win by making video part of their communications strategy.

Organizations are more video savvy than ever. Last year’s contest had nearly 1,400 entries from 821 organizations in 4 countries. There were 24,000 votes cast by the public and a surge of views on YouTube for the entrants. That’s encouraging, but 2012 is a new year and the contest organizers want to make sure as many amazing nonprofits enter as possible.

Here are some details to get you started:

• Submissions for Best Small, Medium, and Large nonprofit organization as well as Best Video Storytelling must be videos made between January 1st 2011 and February 29th 2012 . Each nonprofit can submit as many videos as they would like, but the contest encourages only the best work from each organization.
• Entries cannot exceed 10 minutes in length and are limited to nonprofits from the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. See contest rules here.
• All nonprofits are welcome to enter their video. There are no specific types of missions we are looking for. The contest is about recognizing nonprofit organizations for outstanding use of video to create meaningful positive change.
• You can submit your videos from February 1st until February 29th. Tell your friends at other orgs to submit as well!
• Starting March 14th, voting is open to the public, so be sure to share the word (Email, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, carrier pigeon, smoke signals, etc.).
• Important: Your organization MUST be a member of the YouTube Nonprofit Program. If you’re not already,make sure that’s the next thing you do after you read this post (it’s quick, easy and free to eligible orgs). If you’re picked as a semifinalist in the contest, YouTube will make sure your organization’s application for membership is approved in time to be eligible for public voting.

Start thinking about which creative, compelling, and interesting video your nonprofit wants to submit, then plan to rally your supporters to vote in March. Good luck!

This message is cross-posted from the NTEN blog.

This year, winners will again have the chance to win one of four $2500 grants generously provided by the Case Foundation, awesome video cameras from Flip Video, a free registration to next year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference provided by NTEN and more. For small nonprofits that have small funds in the video department, we have a new category for the best “thrifty” videos produced for under $500. And… wait for it: the winning videos will be announced at this year’s Nonprofit Technology Conference hosted by NTEN and featured on YouTube’s homepage in March. (The YouTube part is sort of like having your nonprofit video seen during the Super Bowl.)

Learn more about the contest guidelines and how to submit your video!

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Over on the NetSquared platform right now we are in the midst of the 2010 FACT Social Justice Challenge. NetSquared supports the community at the intersection of technology and social impact in a few ways, including open innovation competitions. We are very invested in sharing our experiences and learning as we go, including opportunities to put thoughts together formally like the whitepaper on collaboration we published last year.  I serve as the Community Development Manager for TechSoup Global’s CDI (Community-Driven Innovation) program, which includes managing community and content strategy for NetSquared.org.  In this role, and through opportunities to spur innovation and collaboration in local communities, with government groups, and with other nonprofits, I’ve learned a lot – and am excited to share 5 tips I’ve found to be valuable in creating successful competitions.

Tip #1: Set the stage

The more information you can provide before you open your competition up for submissions, the better! This doesn’t mean you need to be promoting the competition as much as it means you have ample resources already on your website, blog, group, or wherever you’re hosting the challenge, so that people looking to learn more can do so without emailing you! Things to consider include:

• About: Landing page that provides important dates, basic overview of the concept and purpose, and mentions prizes, partners and so on.
• FAQ: page with as many questions and answers as possible; when you’re creating this page, get a friend or family member (preferably someone not intimately aware of your work) to review the landing page and what you have on the FAQ to provide you with more ideas or questions to cover.
• How to Participate: this page should be written specifically for the target audience and provide as much information as possible about who should and how to participate. Remember to also provide opportunities for people to promote or support your competition like links to your social media outlets and ready-to-use messages.

Tip #2: Pay attention

Are people having trouble participating? Are people talking about the competition (negatively or positively)? Are people participating or not? Does it seem to be reaching the community you hoped?

These are just a few of the questions to consider in real time. Listening and paying attention will help you adjust quickly – whether it’s adding more information on the FAQ page, understanding difficult aspects of participation and finding ways to improve them, or simply understanding what those outside your organization think of your efforts.

Tip #3: Operate in public

The idea of “operating in public” is a concept I recommend often, especially when talking about community building and community “management.” The idea is that to build trust, reinforce dedication, and show authentic engagement, you need to operate in public using the same tools that your community has access to. Here are a few ways to do this, for example:

• Respond to questions and comments publicly whenever possible
• If members ask a question on Twitter, respond on Twitter, and so on
• If members have access to a community blog, use the same space for your announcements
• Be honest and public about changes or modifications to the site, programs, or services before the changes are made

Tip #4: Be prepared to change

You can never get everything right, no matter how hard you try. Expect that you’ll find bugs or problems, or even things that aren’t bad but just ways to be even better, only after you’ve invited your community in. And then expect that they will be the ones to point out the issues and things to change. Take the finger-pointing as opportunities to fix things in real time! If people are consistently having trouble finding the FAQ page, for example, look for additional places to post the link (maybe you have it in the footer but you could try listing it at the top of the page, too).  Ensure that you have staff capacity ready to jump in and fix things as they emerge – it’ll show that you’re listening and paying attention, as well as dedicated to making the user experience as positive as possible.

Tip #5: Keep things in perspective

I grew up being reminded that even if I ran as fast as I could and got first place in a track meet, that someone else, maybe at another school or in another city, was faster than me. It may sound harsh and negative, but it wasn’t. It was keeping things in perspective that I can always get better. That all of us can always get better.

So, whether things are going really well, or not as well as you had hoped: remember that you have the opportunity to improve next time! No matter what you do, someone will complain. And no matter how poorly you think things are going, there will be someone who says thank you. You won’t position yourself or your organization very well for growth if you don’t stay positive and keep things in perspective. We’re all learning as we go!

Seeing it in action:

For an example of all 5 of these tips in action, I posted on the NetSquared Community Blog earlier this week with a list of some of the feedback (mostly bad) that we had received from users taking part in the Community Vote phase of the FACT Challenge. I provided responses or explanation, as well as notes about how we had used the feedback to improve the voting process right away. We saw a marked decrease in the number of emails after publishing on the blog because we provided a way for users to see responses to their questions before writing us, and showed that we really were listening and in it together with the community.

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What do you think?

Has your organization run a competition online or offline? What tips would you share from your experience? Have you found any of the tips above to be helpful in your work? We’d love to hear your examples!

[Photo Credit: Flickr tableatny]

And now they are up to something again: MMT is looking for a million dollar idea to support!

More information is in the press release below – you can contact Marie with additional questions.

The foundation will collect the ideas from Oregonians on a forum on the web at ideas4oregon.org to commemorate MMT reaching $500 million in money distributed to tax exempt organizations, primarily in Oregon.

“Half a billion dollars in 28 years from the personal estate of one of Oregon’s leading entrepreneurs leaves a powerful legacy,” said MMT Board Chair Orcilia Forbes. “Our funds have helped make Oregonians healthier and better educated, provided greater access to social services and the arts and culture, strengthened the nonprofit sector and improved the environment for all who live and visit here.”

Meyer Memorial Trust is the largest private foundation in Oregon, established from Fred G. Meyer’s personal estate. It began operating in 1982 and anticipated awarding $5-$6 million a year. In fact, over the past five years, MMT distributed an average $28 million per year in grants and program-related investment loans, surpassing $500 million with its most recent awards. At the same time, its assets have grown from $120 million to about $600 million, after giving away $500 million.

“To mark this occasion, we prefer to look ahead, not back,” MMT CEO Doug Stamm said. “We’d like all Oregonians to join us in kicking off the next $500 million. We think that’s where Fred Meyer would want us to look.”

Stamm noted that the million dollar idea challenge supplements MMT’s existing grant programs and initiatives, rather than supplanting any ongoing funding.

This is the first time the foundation has asked for broad and direct public input in its grants process. “We’ve set a goal to make MMT a national model of a regional foundation,” Stamm said. “Foundations are beginning to open themselves up as never before, and we want to be a leader in that movement.”

Forbes said the onslaught of bad news that Oregonians have heard in recent months contributed to MMT’s public approach.

In November 2009, Oregon was identified as one of the 10 states in most fiscal peril by the Pew Center on the States. Unemployment remains among the highest levels in the nation, with many more underemployed and in dire financial straits. Recent revenue forecasts were $577 million below what was projected just a few months ago. The global reach of the recession hurts exporting states like Oregon more than other states. Sharp declines in construction severely affected Oregon’s wood products industry and the state experienced high tech manufacturing job losses in the recession.

In response to the economic crisis, during 2009 MMT expanded its grantmaking strategies to help nonprofit organizations survive the economic downturn by helping with core and general operating expenses. In addition, MMT made significant grants for emergency food, utilities, rent and foreclosure assistance, and increasing access to the Earned Income Tax Credit. Through these awards, along with its ongoing grants programs, the amount MMT distributed remained constant, despite a significant decline in the foundation’s own assets.

“While we know foundation resources alone are by no means sufficient to solve our region’s significant challenges, we believe that opportunities exist for MMT to jumpstart actions that will lead us to a brighter future,” Forbes said. “We are looking for ways to provide meaningful leverage that help create conditions that will lead Oregon to its next best place.”

“Oregon used to be a hotbed of energetic innovation,” Stamm said, “but we are at risk of begin caught up in contagious pessimism. Do we really want to keep pointing to the bottle bill as our last great shining moment?”

“We hope this idea forum will help change the conversation in the state from how bad things are to what can we do to make them better,” Forbes said. “Meyer Memorial Trust can’t solve Oregon’s problems, but we’re willing to step up and try to jumpstart us in a better direction.”

The forum asks visitors to identify what they think is the most pressing issue facing Oregon and to share their best ideas to address it.

Stamm hopes the web forum will attract ideas from all Oregonians, not just nonprofits.

“Oregon’s issues go far beyond what nonprofits do,” he said. “We need to move beyond our customary categorical thinking and invite everybody – business, government, communities, organizations, individuals – to work together to address the issues we face before it’s too late.”

“This is not a time for faint-hearted suggestions, it’s a time to think big,” Stamm said. “We want bold and innovative, entrepreneurial ideas… the kind Fred Meyer might have had.”

All content of the forum will be public, with comments and feedback on ideas welcomed, Forbes said. “We want Oregonians to get engaged with us.”

While idea challenges and social media contests are increasingly used by corporations, governments and in philanthropy, ideas4Oregon.org has a far larger potential fiscal reward than most.

Ideas can be submitted and commented on until July 13, 2010. After all ideas are in, MMT will use them to craft a Request for Proposals, inviting applications to make a case for funding from the $1 million.

“If we get more than one outstanding idea, we’ll consider making multiple awards,” Stamm said. “Because we’ve never tried this public format before, we can’t predict just how it will go, and need to be flexible enough to make the most of this opportunity.”

Meyer Memorial Trust is a private independent foundation resulting from Fred G. Meyer’s personal philanthropy and is not affiliated with Fred Meyer Inc., the retail enterprise.

If you’re here in Austin, do join us!  If not, you can follow the conversation in real time on Twitter with the hashtag #crowdx.  (We’ll put up more notes after the session, too!)

Here are some of my thoughts going into the conversation and slides if you prefer engaging that way:

Crowdsourcing for Social Change

The competition we conducted as part of this panel surfaced a collection of case studies of organizations using social media in their program delivery.  You can see the full collection, and how they were voted on by the community here: http://nten.org/vote-sxswi-panel

The Value-add of Crowdsourcing: For me, the two biggest reasons to include crowdsourcing in your strategic design of community building or contests are:

1. Crowdsourcing invites diversity by encouraging anyone with an idea or interest to participate
2. Crowdsourcing levels the playing field so it isn’t just your “favorites” or those you already know that get to play

For the most part, I agree with the way the crowds voted – but, given that people were able to submit and vote at the same time, it means some groups only submitted on the very last day, not leaving much time for votes. There are also two major issues that groups need to consider when using the wisdom of the crowd voting approach:

1. Crowds are susceptible to encouragement/asks/campaigning – meaning, a group that enters and has LOTS of followers or active community members can send out an appeal for people to vote and get a big response; some say this is just playing the game.
2. Criteria is really important to consider: the crowds voting = who do you want to win this; the hosts/judges/experts voting = quality, value, innovation or alignment with competition/organizational goals

I think the most important part of designing a competition that leverages crowdsourcing is to strike a balance between too many voices, and too few.  I think you create balance by focusing the competition on the stages of:

1. Open door policy for contributing/submitting
2. Public voting process
3. Public’s favorites put to expert judges for final selection

A process like this can ensure that lots of different ideas are included but that the competition can stay true to it’s purpose or the goals of the sponsoring organization.  For example, if the crowd voted in huge numbers on a submission that didn’t necessarily fit the criteria, it doesn’t mean it should win.

The most important way to use social media in a crowdsourced process is to allow the community to use social media anyway they want! Using tools that allow reposting, sharing, emailing and so on will give anyone the options they want to push your content around the web for you.

Convincing your executive team to use crowdsourcing shouldn’t take bribery.  There are lots of examples of projects that use crowdsourcing, even this one! Their hesitancy may come from not knowing what crowdsourcing means or how it works: so show them examples, but also show how the project you are working on could benefit from crowdsourcing and how the elements of crowdsourcing align with your project goals.

Sometimes what you want to do and the tools at your disposal just don’t match. Sometimes that means crowdsourcing. It isn’t right for every project or process.  Especially when you need things to be very specific or follow tight criteria, you are working very quickly or flexibly where communication with the crowd could be difficult or time consuming (or even confusing), and when you already know what you want (be honest).

Social Media in Program Delivery

The Seattle Free School is a really interesting case study for a number of reasons:

• Social media is integral to the success of the program because it is online but it is also the mechanism for growth and community building
• Collaboration via social media has enabled the program to come together and launch
• Social media tools allowed for distribution of roles/responsibilities across the community (including garnering press coverage)

There are many ways to include social media in your work. But within the scope of crowdsourcing, there is still a range for how you can use the elements of crowdsourcing and social media tools. Three specific examples that are very different include:

• Connectipedia: a wiki-based platform that allows anyone interested in philanthropy or social impact in the Pacific Northwest (or beyond) to share research, resources, information, or data about people, places and topics.  The value of the tool grows as people value the tool and add more content.  The crowd decides and creates everything that it is.
• Ushahidi: most recently, Ushahidi adpated it’s platform for use in Haiti and Chili to let the crowd both in Haiti/Chili and outside share information and data in real time via mobiles or a web browser.
• Nature Conservancy’s photo contests: The crowd, in this case it’s one that loves nature photos, shares the pictures they love about nature and in the process grow their community.  The contest attracts lots of participants and generates great content for the organization – but more importantly provides an engaging space for the community.

Measuring success of social media in your work can be a tricky thing to do, especially as we all explore and experiment with the tools every day and many tools and processes are still very new.  Here’s 5 key steps to mapping your work towards metrics:

1. Problem: Be as specific as possible, focus on the problems you will be addressing directly (not just changing the world)
2. Strategy: Highlight the strategies that specifically address the problems (this assumes you’ve already used a process to identify your audience and goals and chosen the corresponding/appropriate tools to match)
3. Benefit: These are both tangible and intangible, and can also include things that you don’t see or expect at the beginning but develop later
4. Value: These emerge from the Strategy choices and Benefits
5. Metrics: You can identify the corresponding metrics of your tools and your actions based on what has emerged above; again some of these are basic numbers/data and others will have to be qualitative

How do you keep supporters engaged in creating change over the long haul? This is something that the 350.org campaign has done really well.  The basics include:

• Show impact in real time
• Create opportunities for iterations and involvement by community
• Embrace storytelling

Crowd vs Community

When creating a competition or open call, or any other programming/process, designed to use crowdsourcing I think the biggest issue to explore in the designing/strategy and the implementation stages is the idea of community or crowd.

A community shares values, experiences, goals, or interests in a long-term way; the crowd may share those same things but usually for only a specific time period or around a specific event.  Introducing a crowdsourcing opportunity to a community means the call to participate, the value of participation and the way participation works all need to match the modes of operation or goals of the community already in place.  When creating a crowdsourcing event for the crowd, you match the elements of the event to only your own goals, hoping/expecting that the participants will self-select out of the crowd (and probably opt-out again after the event is over).

That sounds like it is easier to creating a crowdsourcing event or call for the crowd instead of a community; and maybe it it.  But, I think there can be higher expectations and more predictable value exchange when crowdsourcing happens within an already established community.  Why? For a few reasons:

• the community has a shared context or starting place, there’s less to explain upfront
• the value and practice of contributing back to the community is probably already in place
• the community leaders or influencers have already emerged and can contribute to the crowdsourcing project’s success
• the crowdsourcing event or project can add to the value and collaboration of the community’s growth and long-term goals

I’m really interested in the dynamics for both crowdsourcing and campaigning between communities and crowds.  Looking forward to exploring all these topics in the session today and in future blog posts!

What do you think?

Social Media for Social Good

Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But at NTEN and NetSquared, we know that social media is good for a lot more than raising money. We know that social media can be used to change the world. That’s why we’re launching the Social Media for Social Good case study collection!

Whether you’ve run a successful advocacy campaign, integrated social technologies into your education programs or have found innovative ways to use social media to further your mission in any other way, we want to hear about it.  There is still time to submit your case study – but hurry!

Why participate?

We know that one of the best ways to learn is to hear how others have succeeded before. Submitting your case study means you can share your story with others looking to learn and explore the social media for social good space.  It also means that you’ll be entered into our competition:  We will choose 3 case studies to be featured in our session with Beth Kanter at SXSWi this March!

Vote!

Over the past month, organizations have already submitted their case studies and now it’s time for you to cast your vote! Rank your favorites to help decide which case studies are featured at SXSWi.  (Don’t worry, if you haven’t submitted yet, you can still do that, too!)

Deadline for submissions and voting is February 26th!

• Review the submissions and cast your vote today!
• Learn more and submit your case study now!

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world? I think there are too many to count, really.  For example, simply review the hundreds of ideas listed in NetSquared‘s Project Gallery and you’ll quickly see that people from around the world are hard at work leveraging all kinds of technologies to create positive change for communities tackling many different issues.

One example that I’ve blogged about before is the annual project from EpicChange: Tweetsgiving.  During the US Thanksgiving holiday, Tweetsgiving asked people around the world to use Twitter to share something they were grateful for and include the link to the Tweetsgiving site (where people could donate to help build a library, classroom and more for the benefiting school in Tanzania).  This year, the Tweetsgiving campaign also asked people to gather in person, offline and have gratitude parties, where people could also donate in person to the project.  You can see the numbers (from tweets, to dollars, to videos and more) on the EpicChange blog here.

Enter the Contest

As part of HP’s Create Change initiative, they want to initiate a dialogue on how technology and individuals create social change – and to do that, they have partnered with bloggers like me that think we know a few folks with ideas on that subject! (Looking at all of you readers, hint hint!)

HP is giving away a new computer and printer bundle to the winner selected in the contest – and we all have the added bonus of learning about ways others have leveraged technology and finding case studies that can help us in our work.  I’m really looking forward to hearing about the projects you find inspiring!

To participate in the contest, follow these easy steps:

1. Answer the same question that I discussed above:

What’s your favorite example of technology helping people create positive change in the world?

2.  Provide your answer in the comments below (if you’d like to blog your answer on your own site, simply leave a comment here with a link to your site to be sure it’s included)

3. You have until February 28th to submit a response to the question

On March 1, I will select a winner at random (all commenters who answer the question will be put into a hat and I’ll draw one at random).  The winner will be announced here in an update at the bottom of the blog post that day.

So, get your submission in and be in the running for a new computer and printer!

(To find out more about HP’s Create Change initiative, visit their website or Facebook page.)

UPDATE: Winner Announced

As promised, I took all those who commented on this post and chose one at random. Actually, I wrote everyone’s name on a slip of paper, put them in a measuring cup, and my husband chose the winner at random. I even took a picture!

So, congratulations to Ryan Long!  You’ve won the contest for a new computer and printer bundle from HP, and will be connected to process your winnings.  Thanks again for sharing your favorite example of technology for social impact: LiveMocha.com, a website where people can learn and teach languages from around the world.

Thanks to all those who submitting comments with your favorite examples of technology for change! I’ve learned about more projects and seen some of my favorites mentioned. I hope you all find more organizations or tools to use, learn from or support, too!

Social Innovation Camp: the story so far.  Started with an idea two years ago that the web is important because it helps people organize for themselves and impacts how we make things work; but in order to make that happen you have to bring people together who are interested in making it real.  We are all about moving ideas into something that might work and do so by running competitions and weekend-long prototyping events.  Think about 5 things: what’s the problem, what technology you’ll use, design sustainability, how will people come to use it and how will you distribute it.  Award a prize to those that show most potential.  Have run 3 competitions so far with over 300 ideas submitted.

Note: the “I” in the following is my capture of Anna speaking.

What We’ve Learnt

1. From cliques to talent scouts

A great idea is nothing unless you have people to get it off the ground, and those people may be anyone with certain attributes:

• people who can bring an insight
• practical optimists, can see things being different in the future (have to go find them)

We need to move away from “social entrepreneurs” and “socail innovation” towards “solve problems” and “make stuff” so that it’s more accessible.  It took us a while to learn this!  The first competition we had a slick website and everything else and had barely any submissions.  So, we went to talk people about it.  We brought people together around the same kind of idea and the buzz in the room was incredible, people realized they didn’t have to just complain about something but about making things the way you want.  So, we learned from that and now are conversation driven.  Our competitions are talent scouted: we go out and talk to as many people as possible, run workshops and trainings and get people to think about what they might solve and then submit.  I think we pay a lot of lip service to “user centered design” and so on, but sometimes we are talking about many different worlds colliding and a number of them are very problem focused and then solution focused groups.  So, when you have top-down definition of what you’re interested in and then bottom up creation it doesn’t work.  Create a “tentacle-based” approach.

2. From paperwork to relationships

That’s a lot of work. Is it worth it to go talk to all of those people and so on?  What we are doing when we talent scout isn’t just about creating a pool of projects but about starting relationships.  Normal application processes are very good for people who are good at writing or following a system.  But, are proposal based approaches good for finding people who are going to start new things?  Instead, you start to build relationships with individuals – find interesting people and working with them in incremental ways and build trust. And then find people to support and fund; particularly important when funding entirely new things.  It’s hard for those people to say what their impact will be when it’s something so new, so it’s hard as a support organization to believe in the project.  But, as a support organization that knows you are an interesting implementer of good stuff, it’s easier to make the decision to support them.  We do this through scouting and in the weekends as they are high pressure and fund and collaborative so you can really, really see how people work.  I think the world works like this anyway, we just don’t admit it.  What we should be doing is appreciating that and design systems that take into consideration the ways humans work.  This is how the investment world works: based on relationships and trust.

3. From advisors to connectors

What’s next?  What do you need other than money?  We asked our prototype projects what else they need. The answer was they need advice.  Organizations that are trying to support people to do new things know this.  What I’m suggesting is 2 things: first, giving all the advice yourself is not efficient or entirely valuable, so you should grow a community around the ideas where they connect; and second, the advice you need as a radically new group/project is very different as there aren’t models or examples, so the only way these projects will work is by changing behavior… How comfortable we are with meeting people offline we only know online, how we share personal data, etc.  These changes will have to happen in order for these projects to work.  Rather than having standard business advice but a place where they can experiment.  The way we move from advisors to connectors is that at the weekends where we get the great ideas, we go out and try to find people who can help them and bring them there.  Building an audience around the 6 ideas for the weekend.  If you come to a weekend, you come out with a training experience.

4. From grants to venturing

How do we change the different ways we distribute money?  Not about finding people to give it to or the decision process, but the different financial instruments we could use.  Early stage ideas need early stage risk capital and there’s a gap in providing that.  Something to show that a really good radical idea has a good chance.  We also have to find new sustainable ways to fund projects. Fundraise, grant, spend – it’s not efficient.  Finally, a lot of new ideas, the newness is the business model.  It needs a different way to be funded.  Need finance that’s responsive to business models that aren’t charities or companies.

What might that look like?

What if we ran a larger SICamp process that formed small teams around packaged ideas and take teams of 2-3 people and choose 10 groups and each a 15,000 stipend wherein they come and work in a shared space for 3 months.  Set targets and help to accelerate project development and build community.  At the end of the 3 months we have a demo day with possible funders and we we take a finders fee and also pay-back for the 15,000 starter grant.  Potentially creating a sustainable way of starting projects and recycling your capital.  It already exists in projects like Y Combinator.  We think it would be interesting to start a Y Combinator for social projects here in the UK.

I don’t think that’s the answer to everything.  You have to design your support process around the people you are working with.  What can we do with groups like Kiva?  What if we used that system to find projects to fund?  Or what about KickStarter’s model with pledging/small contributions/crowdsourcing?  What if we applied that to the NHS?  4ip is already doing some of this stuff, too, and it’s really interesting.

This talk was inspired by lots of conversations with people who are looking for support for an idea AND interesting people and organizations looking for projects to support.  There has to be an opportunity there!