Not flier-worthy

October 21, 2009October 19, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I was walking down the street today and passed a guy handing out fliers. He handed them to the guy in front of me, looked me up and down (blazer, slacks and all) and didn’t give me a flier.

Good for him.

The flier probably doesn’t cost more than two cents. So he’s not saving money. But he’s decided who his customer is – who he wants to attend the opening or who he wants to buy whatever he’s selling – and he’s decided it isn’t me.

I don’t know if his criteria are right, but at least he knows that some people are in and some are out.

Are you making these kinds of choices, or do you just hand the flier to everyone out of desperation?

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The junk drawer experiment

October 20, 2009October 19, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

My house has a junk drawer, somewhere for keys and phone chargers and pens and post-its…and whatever other random things seem like they should be around but don’t have an obvious home.

For the last two years, it’s been almost impossible to close the drawer.

For a while I’d grudgingly clean it every few months, painstakingly sorting through what should stay and what I wanted to throw out. Invariably, two weeks later it would be overflowing again.

Three months ago I tried something different with the drawer. I took a plastic bag and dropped everything I didn’t absolutely need from the drawer into the bag. But I didn’t throw the bag out – I just put it aside. This way I was comfortable putting a lot more stuff in the bag, instead of leaving things in the drawer that I wasn’t ready to throw out. I was curious to see how long it took for me to look for something in that bag.

Surprise, surprise: I’m at three months and counting, and I have yet to go look for the bag. Pretty soon, I’m going to have to admit that I’m ready to throw it and the former contents of the drawer out.

I wonder if there’s any application here to philanthropy – to help us all as givers in our own practice of aparigraha, or non-hoarding? (which is something I talked more about here). Could you create a vehicle for people (everyday people, not just ultra-high net worth individuals who for lots of reasons create private foundations) to set aside money to see how it feels to live without the money for a while? Some sort of escrow account that’s practice for giving more, where people could put the money aside with a plan to give but the option to get it back?

How would you structure it? What would the mechanics be? Who would you want to have involved – financial institutions, 401(k) providers, non-profits, online giving marketplaces? What would you name it? How would you spread the word?

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Connection, not Deception

October 15, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Continuing on the Kiva thread, I wanted to pick up on my previous post where I argue that what Kiva is doing is nothing new, and put a sharper point on my argument.

(But first I have to applaud Kiva for already making prominent changes to its website in explaining how they operate: old vs. new; and old vs. new.)

Saundra Schimmelpfennig of Good Intentions Are Not Enough describes my take on this as “Sasha Ditcher argues in his blog that to get people to donate aid agencies have to use half-truths.”

This isn’t what I think at all. Lots of nonprofits get lots of people to donate in lots of ways, and it’s simply empirically incorrect to say that they “have to use half-truths.” Most don’t; some do. I firmly believe that transparency and accountability will win; that, especially now, any organization that makes claims that it cannot support will lose (faith, trust, brand, credibility, donors) in the end.

What I’m saying is that “give to help this person” pitch is both true enough and compelling enough that it’s not going anywhere, no matter what we wish for.

Why is it so compelling?

A parable: imagine you’re walking in the woods on a crisp fall day, the leaves have just begun to turn, and you can see your breath as you crunch down the still trail. You come upon a clearing and see mist rising above a flat, wide lake, and across the lake and close to the opposite shore you see a single rowboat. As you approach, you notice the boat is rocking and you catch a glimpse of the boater’s face, agitated. She whips her head around to see you, and starts waving frantically. “O my gosh!!!” she gasps. “Thank goodness!! Please help me!! My boat has a leak and I don’t know how to swim! I’m going to drown! Please help me!”

You will swim into the water and help. Nearly everyone will.

Now change the story. The lake is in a park, and fifty people are around. What are the odds you’re going to help? Low. And in fact the odds that nobody helps are better than you’d think.

Need proof? According to newspaper accounts, in 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death by a serial rapist and murderer. The killing took place over the course of nearly half an hour, and 38 people witnessed the attack and did nothing – they didn’t even call the police. This wasn’t an isolated incident. It is easily replicated by social psychologists, enough that it’s been coined the “bystander effect.”

As Saundra points out, there are lots of reasons to bystand when faced with people in need half a world away: maybe someone else will give; maybe the money I give won’t get there; maybe it will be mismanaged. The reasons not to give are so compelling that it reminds us that each time someone does give it is an act of generosity, of faith, and of trust.

How do you counteract the natural tendency to do nothing? Kiva gives us at least one very compelling answer. Create an experience for a potential donor that’s as similar to walking by a lake alone with one person in danger. How does Kiva do it? They present this potential donor with:

A specific borrower
With a real story with strong emotional content
Needing a specific amount of money
With a deadline
And the ability to see what happened to that person
And they present this all to a web-savvy, 21^st century consumer who has lots of experience clicking on things online and having real things happen (e.g. when they use Amazon)

The ask is concrete, tangible, direct, has emotional content, a feedback loop, and it’s presented to someone who is used to using online tools. It’s brilliant, and it’s well-executed.

And let’s remember: these are real people who are getting real loans from real microfinance organizations and really paying them back. And Heifer International really is buying livestock that goes to real people in the developing world.

It does seem like Kiva is already making some adjustments, and my guess is that they will lead the pack given their commitment to transparency. But just last month I received an email from another international NGO titled “Help millions of women like me” with a personal letter from one woman whose story was alternately heart-wrenching and triumphant. It’s a true story, it’s compelling, and it’s not going anywhere.

To summarize:

Do I think that giving to individual people in need is ever going to get to the root of the problems of poverty in the world? No.

Do I think that there’s some blurring of the lines of what exactly is happening versus the appearance of what is happening when a nonprofit says “help someone like me”? Probably.

Do I think that fundraising in this way ultimately serves to undermine the hugely important role the nonprofit itself plays, inevitably leading to the spurious conclusion that all “overhead” should be minimized so nearly all of the dollar given goes to the person in need? Yes.

Do I think that we desperately need both nonprofits and donors to lead with a different story that has strong emotional content and connection AND that helps us build real, large-scale solutions that work to solve these problems in a fundamental way? Absolutely.

And do I think that the “help this one person” ask is going away, ever? No chance.

The good news is, conversations like the one that just flared up around Kiva will keep the system in balance, and there are more tools than ever to create this kind of accountability.

But the real challenge is for all nonprofits to look at the Kiva playbook and really understand why their ask is so effective. We need better stories to donors that explain all the nuance, challenge, importance and complexity of this work, but these stories will only serve their purpose if they have all the concrete, tangible, direct, and emotional content that Kiva creates for hundreds of thousands of people every day.

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Kiva Community Conference Call

October 15, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

The Kiva conversation continues vigorously online, including nice summaries by Sean (Donors Choose v. Kiva and Philanthropy Daily Digest) and Nathanial which are definitely worth reading. For those interested in a live conversation, dial in to Kiva’s next community conference call on October 20th at 3pm U.S. Pacific time.

Dial in US: 866-740-1260 Access Code: 6415483

Dial in (Outside US): +1 303-248-0285 Access Code: 6415483

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Kiva Customers Don’t Receive the Loans you Give

October 13, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 39 Comments

If I wanted to get your attention, that’s the headline I’d write. Strictly speaking, it’s true. And when you only have a minute to grab someone’s attention, isn’t it your job to grab their attention?

That in essence is what’s at the core of the conversation that’s swelled up over the last two weeks about Kiva. David Roodman’s “Kiva Is Not Quite What It Seems” post kicked things off; Tim Ogden took things further in his post on the Philanthropy Action blog, and Sean Stannard-Stockton provided the definitive summary of the conversation, with his take on it, on the Tactical Philanthropy blog in a post titled “Is Kiva Misleading the Publc?”

Here’s the low-down: you can log on to Kiva, find a microfinance client in the developing world who needs a loan, and fund that person. The catch is that that person has already received their loan. In fact all the clients on the Kiva website have already received their loans. The microfinance organizations that gets money from Kiva does receive those funds, but the funds don’t go to that individual client. The GiveWell blog provides the picture that’s worth a thousand words by showing what the Kiva donor is told (graphically) and what the microfinance organization is told.

The thing is, what Kiva’s doing is nothing new. Heifer International raises tens of millions of dollars a year by sending out millions of catalogs that are every bit as sophisticated as the LL Bean or J Crew catalogs, only instead of buying rugby shirts you buy a chicken or a cow for a family in the developing world. But you’re not really buying that chicken or that cow. On the bottom of every page for every cow or chicken or trio of rabbits you “give” to someone, there’s a small-print disclaimer:

Gifts made through this catalog represent a gift to the entire mission. To help the most number of families move toward self-reliance, Heifer does not use its limited resources to track gift animals from donation to distribution. We use your gifts where they can do the most good by pooling them with the gifts of others to help transform entire communities. And, because you are helping Heifer fight hunger and poverty, your gift is tax deductible.

So the gift of a cow isn’t buying a cow, just like the Kiva loan isn’t going to that actual Kiva borrower.

Before we get on our philanthropic high horse, let’s be clear about what is and isn’t true here. To keep it as simple as possible, imagine you run a nonprofit that provides food aid to people struck by natural disaster. The simplest story goes:

People are suffering as a result of this natural disaster
One can buy food for one person who is hungry for one week for $10
We’re in the business of buying this food
So give us $10 and we’ll buy the food.

And when you’re writing a catchy headline to get a high open rate for your emails, you’ll lead with “A $10 gift will buy someone food for a week.” This is, strictly speaking, true.

So the question here isn’t really about truth, it’s about how big a sin of omission each nonprofit can and should commit as they play this game. Is it the responsibility of the nonprofit sector and donors alike to break down the myth that each gift does or doesn’t buy a specific thing? And will those who take the high road ever win out in the marketplace of ideas? It’s an empirical fact that people give more to help one person than to help many (check out this excerpt from Made to Stick for the startling experimental data), and this is wired deep into our brains, it’s not something that was created by the nonprofit sector.

Which is why I think Nathanial Whitttemore has it right when he says that this “problem” is here to stay, namely that nonprofits will, by and large, tell almost-truths to their donors – focusing on a specific connection between their dollars and a given outcome – and that a major shift for the majority of the giving population won’t happen any time soon (if ever), even though as professionals our aspiration might be to change the narrative to investing in nonprofit organizations, as Sean suggests. It’s a good aspiration, and we should keep at it, but it will never be the bread and butter for most nonprofits or for most donors.

It is true that philanthropists who makes major giving decisions and give considerable time and energy to these decisions have the opportunity to break this cycle; and the supporting infrastructure of philanthropic advising has an opportunity to push this conversation forward, aided by nonprofits who are willing and able to tell a different story. But let’s not pretend that we will someday divide the world into two, with the masses being duped into emotional decisions that get them to dig into their wallets while major donors dig in deep analytically and primarily make educated, highly rational, institutional-building investments. If it doesn’t happen in the stock market, why will it happen here?

All givers are essentially the same, essentially human, making rational and emotional decision based on the information they have and the amount of time they have to give to their giving decisions. The emotional connection is the starting (and often ending) point for everyone, and what matters is the ability of every individual donor (whether they give $20 or $20 million) to insert themselves into the narrative of a particular nonprofit organization, the problem they’re addressing, and the role that the philanthropist and their gift have in addressing that problem.

The “your money buys this” message isn’t going anywhere soon. If anything, what Kiva and Charity:Water and DonorsChoose have shown is that there’s a way to take this approach and adapt it to 21^st century tools – so that you can see an online photo of the microloan recipient or the well that was dug or the classroom that was helped — if not directly by your money, at least by that same amount of money as the amount you gave. It’s interesting that making this association more visible and tangible is calling into question the veracity of these claims (no one’s writing about Heifer, right?), when in fact all Kiva et al are doing is strengthening a tried-and-true narrative. The mechanics of gift -> organization -> recipient haven’t changed one bit.

If you think about it, it’s nearly impossible to change these mechanics and run an efficient, global nonprofit. So why are we all acting so surprised?

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The real role of mentors and coaches

October 13, 2009October 12, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” goes the old one-liner.

“Practice.”

But practice what? Diligence and hard work aren’t enough – you have to know where to place your energy.

At first, the roadmap can seem pretty clear. You want to get good grades? The teachers will tell you what to study. Want to be a good analyst at your first job? Your boss and peers will tell you what to do, and it’s up to you to do it.

Most of this is about someone else setting up the rules of the game and you trying to win against that set of rules. And as you progress in your career, you decide which the skills and behaviors you want to master and you work to improve them.

For example, here’s the illustrative chart for how you get better at public speaking:

Skills 2

So if you want to become a public speaker (Aptitude), there’s a set of identifiable Skills (e.g. projecting confidence, engaging the audience, having a good and varied speaking voice, being a storyteller, etc.) that matter, and you might be good (filled in circle) or not-so-good (empty circle) at these skills and at the behaviors that support these skills. Simple enough, if you put in the effort.

And if you do put in this effort, if you’re a “sawgot” (someone who gets things done), you will over the years systematically pick off the skills and behaviors you need to work on to improve on the aptitudes you’d like to master.

This is likely a lifelong endeavor, and while it’s part of the answer it isn’t the whole story. At a certain point you need to get underneath all of this and find new points for leverage.

The “underneath it all” are your attitude and assumptions – both about other people and about yourself.

Skills 3

I think of the top three levels (Aptitudes / Skills / Behaviors) as “What I do and How I Act” and Attitudes/Assumptions as “Who I am and How I See the Word.” It’s Attitudes and Assumptions that are the the bigger leverage points if you can get to them; and these becomes increasingly important over the course of your life (since you’ve already come a long way at mastering behaviors and skills, right?).

More specifically, you’re carrying around a set of assumptions that colors your own sense of where you do and don’t excel, along with a story that explains why. So for example you might have decided long ago “I’m not a good public speaker because I’m not a creative storyteller.”

For both parts of this sentence (“I’m not a good public speaker” and “because I’m not a creative storyteller.”) you could be 100% right or 100% wrong (or somewhere in between). For example, maybe you’re only an OK public speaker but it has nothing to do with how well you tell stories (do people laugh at your jokes?). The assumption about why will color where you put in effort, and you might be completely misdiagnosing what’s going on. So you might be putting in lots of effort into “storytelling skills” when what actually happened is that you’re carrying around the wrong mental model of what makes for a good presentation (stand up and present a bunch of boring slides). It ain’t that you’re a below-average storyteller.

And this is where I think coaches and mentors come in. I used to think that mentors were mostly for “what am I going to do with my life” conversations, but I’ve found out that that most people, other than you, are very poorly placed to answer that question (the best they can do is give you information about the different paths out there).

But if you can build relationships of trust and honesty with people who know and respect you and who know more than you about (at least) some things; and if over time you can develop a shared sense of who you want to become; then you have the opportunity to dig in to this conversation at the level of assumptions – the story you carry around about yourself that informs all the time and effort you’re putting in to your own development.

What this requires of you is cultivating these relationships of trust plus a willingness to go all the way to your assumptions about yourself when talking to these people. This can be hard, because these stories, these assumptions we carry around, our personal narratives…these usually run straight to the core.

But imagine the impact if, in one conversation, someone is able to reflect back to you that just one assumption you’ve been carrying around for your whole life is plain wrong. If someone were, in a single comment, able to show you that the circles you thought were empty were in fact filled in, and vice-versa…that it’s the story you’ve been telling yourself that needs adjusting, not the things you do (which are just tactics, after all).

If I were a betting man, I’d say the wrong assumptions you’re carrying around are about something you think you’re not good at…when in fact you already pretty good or even great.

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1/100th the cost

October 8, 2009October 7, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Faithful readers will recall that two months ago I gave in to years of craving and ditched my BlackBerry for an iPhone. What I’ve discovered since then is that the iPhone is a Trojan Horse, an uber-device pretending to be a phone. This is why the “there’s an app for that” campaign makes so much sense. With a big screen, a fast processor, and a 3G network, this device can perform some amazing tricks.

While I’m not a big app user, I can’t help but crow about an app I just found, called MotionX-GPS Drive. Quite simply, it delivers the full functionality of a portable GPS device – with turn-by-turn directions, a voice telling you when to make the turn, a map that updates your location in real time, etc. – and you can do all this while still listening to music on your iPod. For my needs, this does essentially the same thing as a $350 Tom Tom for $2.99. That’s right, two dollars and ninety nine cents. It costs 1/100th of the price of the product it aims to displace (plus $2.99/month subscription.).

Outside of being excited that I have an additional $347.01 in my pocket, this got me thinking about disruptive innovations in the nonprofit sector. CK Prahalad introduced the concept of radically lower costs structures as necessary for creating solutions for the poor that will have massive potential for scale and impact — citing among other things the Jaipur foot, an artificial limb which costs $40 and sets an amputee walking again. But is there really a world of “1/100th the cost” innovations out there, waiting to be discovered, or are the real gems the 1/2 or 1/3 or 1/6th the cost interventions that, if discovered across multiple sectors – healthcare, housing, water, energy, agriculture, even education – together hold the potential for a radical shift in the livelihoods of millions?

Put another way, is “1/100th” the cost just about the economics of Moore’s law and software development, or would we find many more of these if the right economic incentives were in place?

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Over a bowl yogurt and granola

October 6, 2009October 5, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Here’s a conversation I had this morning with my five-year old son over breakfast.

Him:     Daddy, we’re eating the same breakfast today.

Me:      Yes we are. It’s delicious, isn’t it? The yogurt is creamy and the granola is crunchy and a little sweet.

Him:     Yes. It’s delicious…..Daddy, do you like everything for breakfast?

Me:      Well, I like a lot of things for breakfast, but I’m not sure if I like everything

Him:     Does anybody like everything for breakfast?

Me:      I don’t know. I’m sure somebody does.

(Thoughtful pause)

Him:     Does God like everything for breakfast? Because God loves everything? He loves trees and flowers and he wants people to be happy?

(Side note for context: ours is neither an exceptionally religious nor exceptionally un-religious household.)

I couldn’t help but wonder – when in life do we lose our sense of the profound, our sense that every moment is just a turn of phrase away from beauty? Is it a natural progression, or something we’re taught in school or in life – the victory of logic and cleverness and cynicism over wonder and imagination?

And how do we get it back?

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Become an Acumen Fund Fellow

October 1, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Today, the application went live for the class of 2011 Acumen Fund Fellows. If you know exceptional individuals from around the world who should be part of the 2010-2011 class, please encourage them to apply.

Acumen Fund Fellows are young people (typically 25-40 years old, but anything goes) who want to get their hands dirty working alongside some of the most dedicated, visionary entrepreneurs who are fighting poverty in India, Pakistan and East Africa. In the first year of the program, more than 600 people from 59 people applied.

When I sit with these Fellows – past, present, future – I’m consistently humbled by their experiences, humility, passion, and practical skills in making change. These are people who could be doing anything with their lives, and who choose to do this. Jawad Aslam is one of the alumni of the Fellows Program, and he has now dedicated his life to building low-income housing in Pakistan. Here’s his story. And the class of 2009-2010 Fellows just arrived in New York to start their one-year Fellowship.

Applications for the class of 2011 will be accepted online until 11:59pm EST on Thursday, November 5, 2009. Detailed information about the program and application process can be found on the Acumen Fund website.

If you want to apply, or know someone who should apply, send them this link.

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10 ways to save conference panels

September 30, 2009September 30, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

It’s really astounding how poor most conference panels are. The biggest problem is the expectation that if you get four smart, interesting people together on stage to have a conversation, that they’ll automatically have an interesting conversation. Most of the time, they won’t.

Great conversations grow out of shared norms and trust between the actors – in this case, the panelists, the moderator and the audience. Trust is often hard to build, so let’s start with norms. Here’s what we can do right, every time:

Start with a great moderator. Moderation is a skill, and it requires asking tough questions and a willingness to cut people off. The moderator also has to know the subject area to be able to direct the conversation effectively.
Empower the moderator. No matter who’s the best-known person on stage, it’s the moderator’s show. The moderator is the master of ceremonies, not a sideshow or “nice to have.”
Don’t have panelists from wildly diverse fields. No matter how impressive the names you can pull together, most of the time you’re trying to have a conversation focused on a (bounded) topic. A civil rights lawyer, a CEO, a cabinet member and a movie star talking about “women’s issues” are going to have a very hard time getting past generalities.
Prepare the group. Have the moderator talk to the panelists before the presentation, and set the ground-rules: no responses greater than 60 seconds, I will cut you off. You can’t have a great panel if everyone shows up the day of the panel without having talked first, by phone or email (but preferably by phone). Having a few of the panelists know each other is a big plus.
Set goals. Your panelists are likely not improve artists, so don’t expect spontaneous insights without some map of where you’re going. Decide in advance, and share with your panelists, points you’re going to make sure you hit in the discussion. You can do this in a way that keeps the conversation organic, but gives a sense of milestones and a destination.
No powerpoint presentations. Self explanatory.
Short introductory remarks. Tell panelists they have 2-3 minutes. They’ll still take 5, but probably won’t take 20.
(in the Q&A) People must ask questions. Questions from the audience are great. Speeches from the audience are not. Insist that questions be one sentence long, and be willing to redirect, restate, or take a pass on a question that’s off topic.
One question, one response. The norm should be that only one panelist responds to each question – and then make an occasional exception. With a lax moderator, each panelist feels like they’re supposed to pipe in, and this can be deadly. If each question gets 4 responses, and each response is 1-2 minutes, that’s 5-8 minutes per question asked. Yawn.
Go deeper, not broader. Whoever is asking the question (moderator or audience), the moderator should be ready with follow-ups that start with “What did you mean by….” “I didn’t follow you when you said…” “Doesn’t that contradict…” The goal is to uncover things that are surprising and delightful, which only happens when you break through the stock answers.

Until we get this right, the main function of panelists will be as names on a program to attract conference attendance, and as validation of the stature of the panelists themselves. This is fine as far as it goes, but it takes so little to do a whole lot better.

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Sasha Dichter's Blog

Not flier-worthy

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The junk drawer experiment

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Connection, not Deception

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Kiva Community Conference Call

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Kiva Customers Don’t Receive the Loans you Give

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The real role of mentors and coaches

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1/100th the cost

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Over a bowl yogurt and granola

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Become an Acumen Fund Fellow

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10 ways to save conference panels

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