Networked Nonprofits: Working Through Connections

Most nonprofits grow by adding staff, offices and programs. A networked nonprofit tries something else: it builds relationships with supporters, partners and other groups, and lets work happen through them. The idea got wide attention in 2010 with the book The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine (Jossey-Bass). Its premise is that social tools let an organization operate in a connected way, with its links to other people used to raise impact, instead of running everything from the inside.

One example in numbers

A well-known case is KaBOOM!, a U.S. nonprofit focused on play spaces for children. Monitor Institute wrote a 2010 case study of it (authors Heather McLeod Grant and Katherine Fulton). The study reports that KaBOOM! built about 1,700 playgrounds itself over 15 years. It then shifted to giving communities online tools to organize their own builds: a social networking site, online training, do-it-yourself content and a Google map mashup. According to the study, more than 6,000 communities built playgrounds using those resources within a few years. It also says that in 2009 a dollar spent on the online tools reached ten times as many neighborhoods as a dollar spent on playground equipment.

These are the study’s figures, reported by its authors, and they describe one organization at one point in time. They are still a clear picture of the difference between doing the work and equipping others to do it.

Five benefits

A 2010 article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “Working Wikily” by Diana Scearce, Gabriel Kasper and Heather McLeod Grant, lists five things a networked approach can do:

1. Weave community, so people who share a cause find each other.
2. Reach a wider range of perspectives.
3. Build shared knowledge.
4. Mobilize people.
5. Coordinate resources.

The article draws on examples such as the Environmental Defense Fund’s Innovation Exchange and the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. It is also open about the costs. Deciding when central control is still the right call is hard, and too much incoming information can swamp a team.

Lessons the authors offer

The article closes with five lessons. Three of them are easy to act on:

• Balance oversight from the top with participation from the bottom.
• Keep relationships authentic.
• Start from the problem you are solving, not from the technology.

A practical starting point

For a small organization the first step does not need new software. List the people who already help you: volunteers, partners, past donors, nearby groups. Ask what each of them could do if you gave them a clear task and the right information. Then pick one tool that fits that task. The KaBOOM! example suggests that the tools matter less than the decision to hand real work to the people on the other end.

This approach is not right for everything. Work that needs tight control, private data or fast single-point decisions may suit a conventional structure better, and the authors of the SSIR piece say as much.

Sources

• Beth Kanter and Allison Fine, The Networked Nonprofit: Connecting with Social Media to Drive Change (Jossey-Bass, 2010). Publisher page: https://www.wiley.com/en-ca/The+Networked+Nonprofit:+Connecting+with+Social+Media+to+Drive+Change-p-x000512993
• Heather McLeod Grant and Katherine Fulton, Monitor Institute, KaBOOM! case study (2010), as presented at: https://bethkanter.org/kaboom-case-study-monito/
• Diana Scearce, Gabriel Kasper and Heather McLeod Grant, “Working Wikily,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2010: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/working_wikily