William Buist

The success of any charitable organisation depends on its ability to engage its supporters and create a shared passion for the cause with them. Charities must look to find common collaborative ways of working that maximise the impact of donations and ensure that they have delivered the right things with the limited resources at their disposal. William Buist, director of Abelard Management Services explores how charities can capitalise on the growth of social networking and collaborative working by using tools now commonly found on the internet.

The social networking revolution

Over the past four or five years a significant change in the way that most people interact with their friends, colleagues and others in their wider networks has taken place.

The growth of sites like Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Myspace (www.myspace.com) along with business networking sites like Ecademy (www.ecademy.com) has revolutionised the communication style of many people, allowing individuals to source knowledge and information from others – who are experts in their field. Is this relevant to charities?, Should they be engaging in the conversation?

I am not going to spend too much time here exploring the social networking revolution but its important to recognise that, increasingly, groups of people with a common interest are discussing aspects of business, social life, hobbies, and indeed, the work of charities. Engaging in those conversations allows a dialog to develop, helping with the understanding of perceptions as well as allowing communication flows to open up. Passionate people with a deep understanding tend to be the biggest advocates, with the widest reach.

Immediately after the Tsunami that affected a number of towns and villages including a significant part of Sri Lanka one of the networks which I belonged to was notified, extremely quickly, of the situation on the ground in Sri Lanka. A group of people who knew each other well and knew colleagues and friends living in Sri Lanka were able to provide targeted specific help to a particular community in a particular place affected by a tragedy that was very broad, and was able to do so both quickly and effectively.

Through a combination of conversations and feedback from those on the ground at the sites affected it was possible to ensure that communities did have access to resources sooner than those of the organised and governmental interventions that took place albeit only a few days later.

This is not to say that the work of the charities that followed on was less effective or less valuable, far from it,

I tell the story merely to highlight the speed and impact that social networking sites now have in crisis situations. The ability to be engaged in a conversation with people who have the knowledge and skills – who are experienced and experts in the issues faced, enable more effective and more targeted application of effort with limited resources.

Of course, for many charities, “crisis” is not the issue that they resolve, nor will it ever be. Does that mean that those charities do not need to engage in conversation with a wider audience? My sense is that whilst they do not have a requirement to do it, they could significantly benefit from doing so. Why? Because it enables each charity to really understand the passion of its supporters and ensures that they communicate the information their audience wants in a personal way. It builds knowledge and passion, and locks in shared experience to all.

The Charities Commission

The Charities Commission mission includes the following key phrases:

• enabling charities to maximise their impact
• encouraging innovation and effectiveness
• championing the public interest in charity.

The Charities Commission vision is for charities to work at the heart of society.

It is my belief that the heart of society is best reached through a mutually rewarding conversation between equals. Achieving that is where I believe the new tools create an opportunity that should not be missed.

Creating a shared passion

Many people engage with charities from the passion that they have for the things that the charity is involved with. They often provide funds and assistance in other forms over many months and years. For some their chosen charity is a lifelong companion and, like a marriage, the relationship needs nurture and reinforcement to grow. It happens because of a (shared) passionate belief in the work that the charity is undertaking.

Historically, the opportunity to engage in personal conversation (but with everyone) was both costly and time consuming. Today’s internet based world enables those conversations to be both self sustaining, cheap to initiate, and wide ranging in their extent. Conversations between large groups of people are taking place and the issues and passions of the individuals are gravitating to groups of like minded individuals, Charities have much to gain from being at the heart of those conversations, at the heart of (the on-line) society.

The provision and distribution of information about the work of the charity, their plans for the future, the impact of their work on others and on societies as a whole can all help to build the shared passion of both those involved with delivering the charities work and of those providing the resources for them to do so. Shared passion in itself may not create a dramatic change in the behaviour of those involved with the charity, but by increasing the level of knowledge and information, and increasing the effectiveness of those communications, enables others to assist in spreading the word.

Collaborative working

In many social networks, groups of individuals are now coming together under a shared banner, a common interest, a desire to collectively work to achieve a specific end.

Often those collaborative groups come together without a formal agreement or the need for contracts or principals of engagement. They come together simply to share their knowledge and experience and to help each other develop a stronger more robust result. Charities who engage with the groups of people who are interested in their work, be they people who donate, or those who implement the work of the charity, or those who are affected by the implementation of that work, enable a collaborative solution to be found that may be significantly better than that determined by one or other group in isolation.

Collective and collaborative working provides the opportunity for the experience of many to be applied to the problems of the few.

Money well spent?

When those who are donating to a charity consider the impact of the donation, they often seek a reassurance that their money will be well spent. Conversations, discussions and collaborative working with the supporters of the charity can help to ensure that the prioritisation of monies given and the applications of those monies is well considered and robust. In making choices about the use of resources within a charity (and that includes resources other than financial resources) it’s important for a wide range of possibilities to be considered.

There is a danger that charities (and indeed any organisation – be that a business or even an individual) will spend lots of time (and money) considering multiple options. The cost of indecision may even be higher than the cost of a poor decision, and in my experience it usually is. Making better decisions through accessing better information, quickly and at low cost is one key benefit of greater engagement.

The opportunity with social networking (and with the changes in the way that people are now working within them) is that expertise can be accessed on a voluntary basis and extremely quickly to enable a greater depth of understanding of the information and data that is available. Greater analysis of the opportunities and a greater collective decision making prowess can be developed at very little, or even no, cost.

Collectively we are more likely to do the right things with limited resources than we would do without that consultation.

Creating the environment

One concern that is often levied is that the requirements of new technology to build communities (to engage with many) will just use up significant resources and require a significant ongoing investment. That would be hard to justify against the aims and values of the charity itself.

Until quite recently I think that this would be seen as a fair concern, but over the last two or three years a number of platforms have emerged which enable collaborative working to develop in a more open and a much cheaper environment.

Wikipedia – A collaborative runaway.

Perhaps one of the biggest examples of collaborative working is Wikipedia which has grown from small beginnings to a massive collaborative document encompassing much of the knowledge of the entire human race. In fact, it is now developing in multiple languages and across an ever wider sphere of subject.

It demonstrates how documentation can be developed collaboratively and with accuracy that tends to improve continually over time. Don Tapstock in a book called Wikinomics describes the development of Wikipedia and other similar mass collaboration efforts using the internet and concludes that we are in an “age of participation”. I agree with him.

Extending this analogy to charities enables us to consider whether the analysis of their operation and the application of the resources in a similar manner by volunteers with a shared passion would enable charities to improve their efficiency and effectiveness faster than by any other means.

Conclusion

The ability to exchange knowledge has created an environment in which collaboration with a mass audience is becoming the norm. Charities, by the nature of their operation, are likely to engage in this arena, sooner or later, the question is whether they should engage in now, or whether, for those who have not yet done so, it is already happening in the social networks without their knowledge.

Having been involved with social networking for a number of years I have learnt that it is inherently the power of the people in the network, enabled by the technology, to collaborate in new and efficient ways that has freed individuals to both give and receive of their knowledge in a way that lifts all of them. By engaging with all of the stakeholders of the charity, the passions, beliefs, vision and mission of those charities will ultimately reach many more people on a much deeper level than was ever possible before.

Ends

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