Wonderful to see this follow up research done for the “long tail” of the nonprofit sector.
We have found a hybrid challenge of being small but national. We have five offices around the country but only 40 total staff. It presents all the resource constraints of being small and in many ways is harder as we need to spend so much energy to build a single culture, communicate across offices and build national infrastructure. But we aren’t local and many of the benefits Leslie and Heather describe local organizations simply don’t apply.
What would Forces for Good thinking suggest about this segment of the nonprofit sector? Small but across geographies?
I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975-2011 and fully support the ideas of shared leadership and evangelism you’ve suggested. I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to encourage networking among different programs in Chicago and to build visibility for the entire sector, rather than any single organization. Thus I value the ideas you’re sharing here.
However, most of the organizations providing volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring in Chicago have budgets well under $500,000. My own organization never had that much in 20 years of operations. Thus the demand on a few leaders to do “everything” leads to high turnover, which in turn reduces the accumulation of strong ties to other organizations and accumulated knowledge and experience about what works and how to effectively recruit, delegate, follow up and lead volunteers in an organization. It also reduces the time staff at all levels in the organization have for “learning” and “networking” with peers, which is essential to benchmarking and innovation. I see this in the lower numbers of people participating in conferences I host as well as in the low numbers of tutor/mentor program leaders I find in learning efforts such as the Education Technology and Media MOOC (http://www.etmooc.org) that is taking place now (Jan-Mar 2013)
I think we need to innovate a new form of involvement, which involved third party volunteers, leaders and organizations who take on intermediary roles, like the corporate office of a big company, to support the operations and constant improvement of the entire universe of non profits in a geographical area who are focusing on the same goals. Thus, the more than 200 youth serving organizations in Chicago could have volunteers from big companies doing the story-telling and raising money to support youth programs in every part of the city, not just the few high profile programs most people know about.
Using maps and on-line libraries of information anyone in a city can be engaged in learning about different issues. They can share the vision and goals of programs. They can take on roles that support one, or many, programs in different neighborhoods on an on-going basis. And they can share what they are learning in conferences and on-line forums so that others learn from them, and they learn from others.
Such groups can also apply the lessons from your book, and thus strengthen what they do to help the entire universe of organizations focusing on specific needs in a community get the on-going talent, ideas and operating resources that are needed continually for many years in order for complex problems to be solved, or for youth born in poverty today to be starting jobs and careers out of poverty in 25-30 years.
COMMENTS
BY Aaron Hurst, Taproot Foundation
ON June 20, 2012 08:44 AM
Wonderful to see this follow up research done for the “long tail” of the nonprofit sector.
We have found a hybrid challenge of being small but national. We have five offices around the country but only 40 total staff. It presents all the resource constraints of being small and in many ways is harder as we need to spend so much energy to build a single culture, communicate across offices and build national infrastructure. But we aren’t local and many of the benefits Leslie and Heather describe local organizations simply don’t apply.
What would Forces for Good thinking suggest about this segment of the nonprofit sector? Small but across geographies?
BY Daniel Bassill, Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC
ON March 4, 2013 01:16 PM
I led a volunteer-based tutor/mentor program in Chicago from 1975-2011 and fully support the ideas of shared leadership and evangelism you’ve suggested. I created the Tutor/Mentor Connection in 1993 to encourage networking among different programs in Chicago and to build visibility for the entire sector, rather than any single organization. Thus I value the ideas you’re sharing here.
However, most of the organizations providing volunteer-based tutoring/mentoring in Chicago have budgets well under $500,000. My own organization never had that much in 20 years of operations. Thus the demand on a few leaders to do “everything” leads to high turnover, which in turn reduces the accumulation of strong ties to other organizations and accumulated knowledge and experience about what works and how to effectively recruit, delegate, follow up and lead volunteers in an organization. It also reduces the time staff at all levels in the organization have for “learning” and “networking” with peers, which is essential to benchmarking and innovation. I see this in the lower numbers of people participating in conferences I host as well as in the low numbers of tutor/mentor program leaders I find in learning efforts such as the Education Technology and Media MOOC (http://www.etmooc.org) that is taking place now (Jan-Mar 2013)
I think we need to innovate a new form of involvement, which involved third party volunteers, leaders and organizations who take on intermediary roles, like the corporate office of a big company, to support the operations and constant improvement of the entire universe of non profits in a geographical area who are focusing on the same goals. Thus, the more than 200 youth serving organizations in Chicago could have volunteers from big companies doing the story-telling and raising money to support youth programs in every part of the city, not just the few high profile programs most people know about.
Using maps and on-line libraries of information anyone in a city can be engaged in learning about different issues. They can share the vision and goals of programs. They can take on roles that support one, or many, programs in different neighborhoods on an on-going basis. And they can share what they are learning in conferences and on-line forums so that others learn from them, and they learn from others.
Such groups can also apply the lessons from your book, and thus strengthen what they do to help the entire universe of organizations focusing on specific needs in a community get the on-going talent, ideas and operating resources that are needed continually for many years in order for complex problems to be solved, or for youth born in poverty today to be starting jobs and careers out of poverty in 25-30 years.