Weblog
May 11, 04:10 pm: Creating Bridges to Change
Intel’s Perry Gruber has a good post up at CSR@Intel about how people can come together, with and without traditional NGOs and development organizations, to work on the tough problems of the world. Perry writes:
But when you consider the upstarts and the results they’re producing, it’s plausible that in the not-too-distant future “development” and “aid” will be more directly dispensed by “we the people” instead of being bureaucratically administered on our behalf by international, bilateral and large aid agencies.
I may be wrong. Perhaps there’s room for everyone at the table. Afterall, the problems these agencies are working are big. But with the growing effectiveness of these new entrants, I think the game’s been changed.
I think he’s right about the change. The fact that individuals are increasingly able to come together to create solutions without the help of traditional nonprofits. I also think that this kind of bringing together is what is required to truly make change. I also think that NGOs need to change to take advantage of these tools.
I don’t think that it’s fair to say that the sector is broken. I think that there is a lot broken and there is a lot that is hard to make work right. It’s tough to work on long term problems when you customers, the people who need your services, by definition cannot afford them. You are always trying to mix and match things in productive ways and that is more or less possible depending on the size of your organization and your relationship with funders.
Fundamentally, though I think the questions he’s asking are the right ones and I think the organizations he points to are on the forefront of creating the kinds of bridges that are necessary to make that change.
I also think that this is part of what we are working on at NetSquared. We are working on, if I can use a phrase that pops up in our funding proposals, the human capital part of this problem, right now. How can we unlock the brainpower of hundreds of thousands of smart people to help create platforms and projects that can result in greater exposure of data. That’s what I think mashups are about, by the way. Ways to combine and expose data so that individuals can interact with the information in ways that allow them to change their behaviors, contribute where it matters or most, or just generally understand something in ways that they hadn’t before.
Perry Gruber put his questions to his colleagues in CSR-land. And they assume that NGOs aren’t a part of the solution but that business can come in and make the change that is required to either bypass the sector or get the sector on track. But let me reframe his questions: How are you working with corporations? How do you think the sector can work with corporations? How are you working together to bring together groups to create change? Do you think it’s even possible?
(credits: hat tip to vsef for the post pointer; the photo is mine)
