Chasing Dual Paths

It’s been a while since I posted, so I thought it was time to provide an update. As many of you know, I’m finishing up my last few days at Bridge Worldwide. My official last day will be Friday, June 27th. We’re still working out my role with the agency post-departure, but I’ll be sitting on our Advisory Board for the time being. There might be a better way to stay involved, but for now, participating as an Advisory Board member seems to make the most sense.

In terms of what’s next for me, I believe I’ve settled on two complementary paths.

The first is to start my own organization aimed at supporting not-for-profits. It will be a consultancy aimed initially at program measurement and evaluation, but it might expand into some other strength areas of mine over time. Measurement and Evaluation is becoming critically important at most non-profits – they are the evidence that programs are delivering or failing. That evidence helps create the case to continue or kill programs. And from my read of the existing literature it looks as though too much energy is placed on the quantity and comprehensiveness of M&E data and not enough on what that data really means. That’s my opportunity. For the business itself, I’m still determining whether this will be a solo venture to start out or if I’ll begin with a partner. I’m working that out over the next several weeks and at the same time, beginning to dig into the hard work of creating a real business plan.

The second path is to work for a small non-profit with an international/developing world focus. I’m envisioning this to be a part-time role that lets me gain deep and direct access to the aid programs I find most interesting (economic development, education and health). I believe that this will really inform the work that I want to do on my own business (and add lots of credibility too). I’d still put Concern Worldwide at the top of my short list (and I’m still working with them to explore opportunities – it takes time), but my criteria are broad enough that I can make any of a large number of organizations fit my needs/desires on this front.

From previous posts, I’m sure you can see the transition in my interests from larger organizations to smaller organizations. You can also see the consistent desire for entrepreneurship. That bug bit me a long time ago and I doubt I’ll ever be able to shake it. This dual path strategy that I’ve mapped out has me feeling really excited and energized. And of course, it also has me quite terrified. This next year will be the most challenging one I’ve faced in a loooong time and that feels really, really good.

Maybe Smaller is Better

My last several posts have focused on my entrepreneurial interests. I'm very excited by the opportunities there and I'm sure that I will continue down that path. 

But I continue to be interested in working with an established organization too. I want to learn how non-profits work from the inside. And in particular, I want to learn how to support international aid efforts. My previous work experience hasn't really given me much international exposure and I believe that I need that to really deliver on the commitment that I've made to myself -- the one that has gotten me started in this career-switch to begin with. In other words, I believe I'd be happiest if I could pursue something entrepreneurial AND something more formal that already exists.

What I think I'm learning is that I'd be better off trying to work for a smaller, international organization.  I got some good insight into this via a recent phone interview that I did with a development economist focused on Eastern Africa. She's done work with many of the larger organizations (including the World Bank) on issues like gender violence, rural development and human capital investments (education, health, nutrition). As I described my situation, she cited three reasons why larger organizations and the World Bank in particular, might not be a good fit for me. First, she described a mind-numbing level of bureaucracy -- something that would be very difficult for me to deal with. Second, I'm an American, and its just not easy to get into the World Bank, the UN or its related organizations as an American. Its not impossible, but its a drawback. And third, my lack of direct experience in the non-profit world will make it very difficult for me to break into these organizations.

So, perhaps a smaller organization would be the more sensible way to try and break in. She suggested that I might actually need to consider taking on pro bono work or doing an internship to help me build my creds. I'm very open to this idea and in fact, this might be exactly the right way to explore a brand new industry.

Recall my post on the Congo a few weeks back. Concern Worldwide is a smaller international organization (about $10-12 million operating budget). Perhaps this could be a good place to explore. I reached out to them recently and connected with their Director of Operations.  I'm hoping for a call soon from their HR folks to explore opportunities with them -- perhaps in the area of Monitoring and Evaluation (e.g., measuring program success). Another step I'm now taking is to identify a list of prospective companies with international focus but that have relatively small operating budgets.

Nudges in Action

I noticed that I’ve started a number of streams in previous entries and haven’t provided any follow ups. I’ll try to do a better job of reaching back and touching those threads from now on. Recall my “nudges” post from a few weeks back. I continue to be really interested in this idea and I’ve been trying to figure out ways to use nudges for good causes. My friend Willie and I have been playing around with two different ideas.

The first is to leverage affiliate marketing programs. Affiliate marketing (per Wikipedia) is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. So, in other words, if you put a link for Amazon on your blog and people click on it to make a purchase of something, you can get a small cut of that back from Amazon for the referral.

Many organizations are including affiliate marketing programs to raise money for charity. Wikipedia makes a brief reference to this practice in their entry on Cause Marketing -- Affiliate marketing is becoming increasingly popular with online retailers many of whom use affiliate marketing to pass donations on to charities, supporters of the charities shop through affiliate links in order to gain commission for the charity. One prominent example of this is The Royal British Legion using a webshop shopping portal to raise funds whilst passing on sales to retailers.

So, building on this idea, I want to build a shopping portal for a charity and include occasional nudges to spur more activity (and hence more commissions) for the charitable organization. I found a willing partner to conduct some initial experiments in the League for Animal Welfare (http://www.lfaw.org/). Our agency has done pro-bono work for them in the past and they are a really good organization (LFAW is locally based, no-kill shelter that places a premium on making good matches between the animals in their care and prospective new pet “parents”.) Willie and I (and hopefully some more folks at our agency) will be creating a beta site for them soon as an inital step. Think of the site as a LFAW-branded shopping portal that would become your homepage when you initially get online. So each time you logged on, you might see a little reminder about the good that the League does and how your use of the portal is doing good for so many dogs and cats that need homes. Those nudges should in turn lead to increased purchases and a small but growing revenue stream for the League. I’ll be sure to post the link when its ready.

The second idea is to build a widget that helps people track their donations online. I tend to make lots of small online donations throughout the year, but during tax season I never seem to be able to track down all those little donations to itemize on my return. The widget (or gadget) behind this idea would be a little desktop tool that you would keep active and then update after each online donation. I’ve created a clickable prototype version of that widget here (definitely just the 1.0 version). I’m not sure if this idea has got legs or not. But if it does, I can imagine a scenario where people download the widget and get occasional nudges that would spur them to even greater philanthropic action. The truth is that most of us are motivated to do good, but its not always top-of-mind to find opportunities to do good. This widget is intended to keep those opportunities top-of-mind (and hopefully solve a meaningful consumer problem at the same time). Feel free to click around on this prototype and let me know if you think there’s an idea here.

A Loving Tribute?

My friends at Bridge Worldwide have apparently been planning my departure for some time. During a recent all-company event, two of our "house" bands battled it out for Bridge Worldwide supremacy.  The group Mystery Head performed the following "tribute" song (Steve Wolf) much to my amusement (and embarrassment). 

It feels good to know you are loved and it makes me even more determined to make the most of the opportunity I'm pursuing. Thanks Mystery Head -- you're the best!

You can take the boy out of the startup…

But you can’t take the startup out of the boy. Over the last several weeks, I can see my interests shifting away from super-large institutions and back towards startup-style organizations. I suspect that this may be a reaction to my fear of losing personal control if I join a larger organization. I don’t want to run the risk of seeing good ideas from me (or my fictional team) getting killed for reasons I’m not privy to. And I like the energy of small, entrepreneurial organizations. I like being part of a nimble organization that can adjust course quickly when conditions change.

At the same time, this brings to light the problem I’ve been working against my whole life. When you’re in a big organization, you have the resources you need but the organization typically lacks the focus and agility needed to act quickly and with full effect. When you’re in a small organization, you can easily get everyone aligned and working as hard as possible towards the goal, but you lack the resources to deliver at the level of scale needed to make a major impact.

One of the places where this seems to be leading me is to think about the venture capital model – the VC model instructs you to create a robust platform, prove out your model and then rapidly scale. I find myself consistently attracted to these kinds of small, but scalable opportunities. Here’s a recent example. My friend Scott shared a link with me from a recent PBS episode dealing with the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (its long so if you choose to watch it, know what you're getting into). As you might know, the DRC (formerly Zaire) has been going through a civil war for several years but is currently experiencing a period of relative peace. Two aid organizations (Concern and Doctors without Borders) are actively trying to push as much aid as possible into the more remote regions of the DRC during this quiet period. Their problem is that they can’t get the provisions in using trucks because the roads are so bad. Their solution: bicycles. Using a bank of about 70 bikes they can move in about 7 tons of supplies in a few weeks. This is far short of the 40 tons of supplies that they would like to distribute, but it’s a step in the right direction. And beyond the positive impact of getting the supplies in, there is also the additional benefit of job creation -- each bicycle courier is paid to deliver the aid which introduces additional capital into the local economy. Scott’s thought – how can we scale the bicycle solution?

This feels like a great local problem/solution pair with some pretty significant scale opportunities. The bikes can transport enough food/supplies to sustain thousands of people. What happens if we add more bikes? And/or what happens if we port this solution to the next country that needs aid and has terrible logistics infrastructure. What if I offered to start this program for Concern or Doctors without Borders? This would be an opportunity to still have significant control, but also have the opportunity to have a large impact.

I’m not convinced that this bicycle idea is THE idea for me by any stretch, but this is the KIND of idea that I’m finding more interesting than just plugging myself into an existing organization and letting them tell me what they want me to do. I’m not sure if I’m being smart or egotistical (probably both). I’m not swearing off the idea of working for a large organization, but this shift in my thinking feels somewhat concrete. There’s something satisfying about that.

Nudging the World Towards Improvement

For the last five days, all I can think about are nudges. A nudge is a subtle influencer, a quiet reminder. Its a cue, a signal to gently push you towards an action. My wife, Megan, sent me a great article about nudges from the New York Times this week. The article talked about the kinds of nudges that can improve our lives in small ways. For example, the cafeteria that puts fruit at eye level and moves candy to a low traffic area nudges you to eat healthier. The company that pays you bi-weekly instead of twice a month nudges you towards saving more money (it turns out that people paid bi-weekly save more because they get two “extra” checks a year -- 26 pay periods versus 24 pay periods).

In a new book called Nudge (which I am currently devouring), Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler describe how nudges work. Essentially, nudges are about creating a meaningful “choice architecture” -- the context in which people make decisions. In other words, setting up the conditions for the individual to make the “proper” choice. Of course, the use of the word “proper” immediately raises concerns. Its easy to imagine people or organizations designing choice conditions that are not in the best interests of the end-user. But that’s not really what Sunstein and Thaler have in mind when they talk about nudges.

In many cases, nudges are simply intended to move us from “automatic” processing mode, to “reflective” processing mode. Returning to the cafeteria example above, the intention of the nudge is to get the lunch-time visitor to at least consider the apple over the Snickers bar (for those who know my personal nutrition habits, I’m sure you’re chuckling as you read this). What I love about nudges is their subtlety. I love incentives too -- incentives are like nudges but they’re just more obvious. Part of the reason incentives work is that we make them plainly known so that people can take advantage of them. Nudges operate quietly, eliciting desired behaviors without having to pay for it.

For the last five days, I’ve been thinking about nudges and seeing them everywhere. If you went online Saturday (March 29th), you likely saw Google’s “black” homepage -- a nudge about Earth Hour and the need for energy conservation (they are actually getting what I would consider to be silly backlash about their efforts). This is a perfect example of how I believe we can use nudges to improve the world every day. Google updates their homepage all the time -- why not take advantage of that fact by adding in a nudge that reminds people about the need for conservation. The experience planners behind Google’s homepage understand their role as choice architects and they are leveraging their fortunate position in a responsible way (consistent with Sunstein and Thaler’s vision).

The new challenge I take from this nudge-mindset is to find ways to consistently apply it. What are the ways that I can incorporate positive nudges into the experiences that I have a hand in designing? And I urge you (or nudge you if you prefer) to look for the opportunities to design positive nudges into the work that you do.

If you have thoughts about nudges or other examples of nudges, please share them. In my mind, nudges are small ideas with potentially big impacts.

Exploring Social Entrepreneurship

A few weeks ago, I wrote briefly about Muhammad Yunus (a former Vandy alum) and his micro-lending work with the Grameen Bank. Micro-lending is just one example of the new genre of philanthropy called social entrepreneurship. Social entrepreneurship begins with the recognition of a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. It allows on-the-ground entrepreneurs in the developing world to gain access to the capital markets. This appeals to me because I believe that lasting change comes when those closest to the problem lift up both themselves and one another. Local businesses run by locals are uniquely positioned to leverage the strength and interdependence of the members of a community.

My friend Michael has been helping me learn more about social entrepreneurship. Michael is an extraordinarily bright guy whom I’ve gotten to know since he joined our agency about a year ago. He has an amusing penchant for transforming nouns into verbs. In Michael’s world, we don’t schedule appointments, we “calendar” them. He’s well connected in the venture capital world and there are in fact, a number of venture firms that have philanthropic arms that invest in social entrepreneurs. One of these philanthropic venture groups is run by Vinod Khosla, Sun founder and an early partner at Kleiner Perkins. Khosla Ventures is actively supporting social entrepreneurship in the areas of micro-finance, education, alternative energy, and global health (among others). This is one of the places that Michael is trying to help me make a connection.

Getting involved with a group like this might be an attractive alternative to the large aid organizations. I like the additional accountability that comes with these business-focused (yet still philanthropically motivated) organizations. I know that my personal strength is in evaluating business opportunities and leading results-driven organizations. I worry that I won’t be able to find like-minded people in the large aid organizations (or at least not enough of them).

To test out social entrepreneurship in action, I’ve recently invested in a small African company that provides eco-friendly safari tours in Kenya. As you likely know, Kenya has recently experienced signficant upheaval following its December elections. Kenyan politics tend to fall along tribal lines with no tribe comprising a majority of the population. The current President (Kibaki) is a member of the Kikuyu tribe. He “won” in the December election against Raila Odinga of the Luo tribe, but international election oversight groups cited significant irregularities in the election and did not endorse its result as democratically legitimate. The contentious relationship between Kibaki and Odinga (who used to be part of Kibaki’s cabinet) boiled over into violence for most of the month of January (approximately 1000 Kenyans were killed and numerous citizens were forcibly displaced from the Rift Valley). Kofi Annan has sinced stepped in and brokered a power-sharing arrangement between Kibaki and Odinga and tensions have eased over the last several weeks (Canada has just lifted its travel restrictions to Kenya -- as of this writing, the U.S. still has not).

Naturally, the violence and tumult has driven a dramatic downturn in the travel and tourism industry in Kenya and many businesses are suffering as a result. The eco-safari business that I’m supporting is simply one of the innocent bystanders in the situation. I’m still learning about this company and this industry so I’ll save a more thorough discussion of this investment for a future post, but I’m excited by the opportunity to get a first-hand look at social entrepreneurship in action.