Hey, I've got a gig!

I'm taking an important step in gaining some credibility in the non-profit space. I've just started working with SOTENI, a non-profit organization aimed at fighting AIDS in rural Kenya. As most of you know, my interests are focused on international organizations with a focus on either health or economic development. There are so few of those types of organizations in Cincinnati, but I feel really lucky to have discovered SOTENI. 

The organization was founded by Victoria Wulsin, whom you might know by her recent Congressional bid against Jean Schmidt. Victoria is actually an epidemiologist by formal training, and that knowledge led her to create SOTENI, an organization aimed at using education to help stem the spread of AIDS in rural Kenya.

I met earlier this month with their Executive Director, Randie Marsh and a member of their Board, Chuck Hollis. Its clear that SOTENI is led by passionate people who are committed to seeing it succeed and grow its mission.

The opportunity I laid out for them is to provide Monitoring and Evaluation help. By helping them better measure the effectiveness of their programs, I hope to help them parlay that knowledge into improved operations, and a better ability to secure additional funding. As I've noticed in my review of the non-profit space, M&E is routinely cited as a critical need but one that is difficult to meet. Its just so hard for leadership to get their hands around WHAT to measure, and HOW to measure it. And the problem is exacerbated by the knowledge that funds spent against M&E today will take away money from current field operations -- your classic vicious cycle. Lack of money makes it hard to fund M&E which makes it hard to justify future funding for the program which further reduces the ability to fund M&E (and on and on).

By providing my services to SOTENI, I hope to create that initial bridge that helps me transform my program evaluation skills into the non-profit arena. My effort here should be unfolding over the next 3-6 months and I'll use some of my future posts to keep a running dialog of what I'm learning as I go along.

Another good step on the journey.

Prodigal Son or Portugal Sun?

I know its been way too long since my last post, but I’m back now (the prodigal son returns). I should have warned all of my friends that I was going on vacation(s) for a couple of months. People apparently thought that I might have died. For the record, I did not die.  

Most recently, Megan and I spent a couple of weeks in Europe. We loved Portugal especially, the beaches there are amazing! The whole trip was really quite wonderful, but the dollar/Euro conversion makes every purchase (from coffee to clothes) a bit of a hard swallow.

And I might as well fess up that I actually have one more trip scheduled for next week, but for all intents and purposes, the partying is over and I’m ready to get back to work.

When I last posted, I felt pretty clear that I was planning to pursue dual paths – starting my own consulting company and working for an established organization. I’m still firm on that general plan, but I’ve gotten a bit more interested in working on the governmental side of things versus the non-governmental world.

During my most recent trip, we spent some time in Portugal with our friends Beth and Marv. These are the folks who actually introduced me to Megan so they have been an important part of my life for quite a while. It was great to see them, and in fact, our visit got me thinking about the possibilities of engaging my passion a bit differently.

Marvin is a consultant with NATO and he and I spent some time talking about NATO’s mission post cold war – its really quite fascinating. What you have is an organization that has been evolving its role and shifting its deployment strategy to better support nation stabilization as well as disaster relief and recovery. Its an organization that still manages considerable assets although many folks (myself included) have viewed them as a somewhat antiquated structure, born from a need that no longer exists. NATO is now a first-in organization in many disaster relief situations and when asked (as is increasingly the case), they are available to provide ongoing recovery support. As a next step, Marvin has offered to help me connect with an EU economist and ambassador to help me learn more about what’s possible here. While I’m not interested in the more military aspects of how NATO provides support, I am interested in their humanitarian efforts as directed/requested by the UN.

Beth also provided me with some food for thought. She encouraged me to connect on the straight-up political side of things. Her rolodex connections include former congressman Tony Hall who has been a longtime supporter of hunger relief efforts in Africa and Asia and who is currently working on Middle East issues. The idea of supporting within the political realm is a little hard for me to imagine for myself, but that could just be the bias of someone who has made a judgment from the outside without really understanding what’s going on. Without a doubt, there are more broad-based ways of helping out if pursued through the political arena. I’m still mulling this one over, but I’ll admit that there is some allure here…

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.