Music to Change the World By

(I am indulging my inner do-gooder in this post. Please don't pay it any attention.)

In college, when some fellow students and I were creating what would become the Social Entrepreneurs of Grinnell, I would always joke about an "SEG Mix" of songs that we could listen to for our occasional pub nights. Because SEG is a microfinance organization, I couldn't come up with many songs that spoke to our mission and work of providing small loans to entrepreneurs around the world. The only two I came up with were Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" and "We Are the World."

But, with a few years of perspective and a broader sense of social justice, I'd thought I'd revisit my goal to find the perfect social change playlist. And as a holiday present to you all, dear readers, I'd like to share what I've come up with.  It is by no means exhaustive, so please let me know what you would add, or remove. Some of them are pretty obvious (like the Michael Jackson tracks), but some are more personal and obscure. Listen to it when you are feeling inspired; listen to it when you are felling discouraged. Music has always helped me celebrate the good parts in my life and work through the hard times, and I hope these songs can do the same.

You can listen to the playlist on Grooveshark here. 

Here's the list of songs, in no particular order:

For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield
Chicago, Crosby Stills Nash and Young
If I Had a Hammer, Peter Paul and Mary
Heal The World, Michael Jackson
We are the World, USA for Africa
Man in the Mirror, Michael Jackson
Get By, Talib Kweli
The Message, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five
Sound is Vibration, Atmosphere
What's Goin On, Marvin Gaye
Inner City Blues, Marvin Gaye
Ball of Confusion, the Temptations
Lean on Me, Bill Withers
Chimes of Freedom, Bruce Springsteen
The Times They Are A-Changin', Bob Dylan
One Fine Day, David Byrne
If You Want to Sing Out, Cat Stevens
Peace Train, Cat Stevens
Changes IV, Cat Stevens
A Change is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke

And here's some other songs I would have added if Grooveshark would have let me:

Imagine, John Lennon
Give Peace A Chance, John Lennon
We Shall Overcome, the Freedom Singers

What should I add? What should I remove?

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

The Inefficiency of Cost-Benefit Analysis

I've been learning a lot about social impact measurement and metrics recently, and I've realized something: I don't care about cost-benefit analyses.

My economics professors would be so disappointed in me, I know. But it's true. Out of all the different methods for deciding why to donate to a certain nonprofit, or for why an organization should pursue a particular program, I think a cost-benefit analysis is the least effective way to determine what to do.

I'm not in charge of a large foundation (yet!), so I can't speak much to the different justifications for funding a particular nonprofit, or a particular program. But I do try to be informed and intentional about my charitable donations, so I can (try to) speak to the justifications behind individual donations.

The organization I decided to support is the Village Enterprise Fund. I did not make this decision based on any sort of cost-benefit ratio. That is, I did not look at where my money would, in a strict numbers and results sense, make the most difference, but rather, where I thought the most important work was being done. I care about opportunity access, and I determined that VEF--which provides start-up business grants to entrepreneurs in East Africa--was the most effective organization working on this issue.

If I was strictly looking at a cost-benefit ratio, I would have given to Village Reach, GiveWell's top-rated charity, which has an "excellent" cost-effectiveness rating. GiveWell says that Village Reach, which strengthens health systems infrastructure in rural areas of developing countries, averts a child's death for ever $545 it spends. By contrast, VEF, while still recommended by GiveWell as a charity to donate to, has only a "moderate" cost-effectiveness rating, the lowest of all the top-recommended charities.

I'm not trying to claim that giving to VEF over Village Reach is inherently better because economic empowerment is more important than health infrastructure, but that is a personal conclusion I've made. I've made that decision mostly for emotional reasons that most others probably don't share with me. And because of that decision, I am comfortable knowing that my money is not going as far as it could if I gave it to another organization.

I am very uncomfortable saying that one problem is more important to fix than another, and I don't think cost-effectiveness measurements claiming that one program is more cost-effective than other changes my opinion about that. It does get tricky to support this position when I consider that we have limited resources, and we want to maximize the most good with what we have, but I am comfortable living with that conflict, for now.

I think the reason I am drawn to the nonprofit sector is because a nonprofit's bottom line is not based on a cost ratio, but on its mission. All problems need solutions, no matter how much money it takes. Improving the lives of the poor in the US is as important as improving the lives of the poor abroad, it just takes different resources and different solutions. Because nonprofit work is about more than money, looking at a monetary bottom-line to determine where we should contribute our own resources will always miss out on something. And missing something is always inefficient.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Shameless Self Promotion: December Edition

It's that time of month again! VPPNews came out today. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Highlights:

• VPP Chairman Mario Morino's reflections on the last ten years of VPP's work
• A profile of one of our investors, Jack Davies

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Politics and the Nonprofit Language

"As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse."

- George Orwell, "Politics and the English language," 1946

I think it's widely accepted in the nonprofit field that there is no common set of terms to describe the work we are doing. I recently read Melinda Tuan's "Measuring and/or Estimating Social Value Creation," about the different ways to measure social impact, which comes with a helpful glossary of terms at the end. She says that she created this glossary because: "The organizations we profiled in this paper often use different words to describe the same thing or use the same word to describe different things. This can be very confusing and obfuscate the true methodologies or results behind the various approaches."

I came up with my own Glossary of Useful Terms a few months ago, but these were much less helpful than Tuan's, by design. Defining things in the most abstract sense (Social Return on Investment: Helping people with your money; Social Enterprise: The thing that you do when you do things) was supposed to be humorous, but also tried to get the point across that the words that we use when describing what we are doing have no real meaning outside of the contexts they are used in.

The use of language has been important to me since I read George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" in high school. If you are a writer (and if you are a blogger, you are a writer), I strongly recommend you read this piece.

In it, Orwell discusses what he sees as the denigration of the English language by lazy writers, which influences the way people think and the way people behave. He says that hiding in the abstract, rather than explaining the concrete, reduces the need of critical thought and critical dialogue, which can create a level of complacency with the status quo in society. If a writer describes the bombing of a village during wartime, he says, as "pacification," the images of the reality of that violence will never spring into the reader's mind, and therefore, no one will question the action. (If you've read his most-famous work, "1984," this theme isn't anything new.)

Now, I'm not trying to argue that the nonprofit sector is guilty of misconstruing language to the point that war crimes are glossed over. But I do think we are guilty of what Orwell described in the quote that started off this post. We quickly fall into the abstract, either in writing or in talking, which can lead to the confusion between organizations that Tuan describes. If one person thinks of social enterprise as strictly a for-profit venture, but another thinks of it as anything that is working to create social change, whether it be for-profit or non, that can create issues as both of them try to work out the concrete details needed to get anything done.

I think the most obvious example of this is the word "nonprofit" itself. We throw around the phrase nonprofit for anything with 501 (c) 3 status, which is technically accurate, but fundamentally devoid of any real meaning. A nonprofit can be a grantmaking organization, a community-based health center, or a gun lobbyist organization. Making statements about the "nonprofit sector" are general and broad, and therefore, most certainly inaccurate. I've read studies or blog posts with authors who describe trends for community-based organizations, or funders, or educational institutions, or high-net worth philanthropists, but instead of keeping their conclusions concrete and specific, they rely on the word "nonprofit" to make general conclusions. The lack of specificity confuses and is counter-productive.

There are many reasons for this reliance on the abstract, and most of the are reasonable. The nonprofit sector (see, even I do it!) has only recently, compared to the business sector, been accepted as a "sector," with best practices, a capital stream, professional development, etc. The difficulty with measurement of social returns, as described in Tuan's article, makes it difficult to come up with a standard set of reporting language, which I think influences general language use regarding nonprofits. These are real issues, but they need to be addressed. Collaborations among nonprofits are becoming more and more essential, and standardized and specific language use is necessary to create successful collaborations. If we can't talk to each other in the same terms, it'll be a lot harder to get things done, and we will just keep shooting in the dark when we talk to each other about our work.


                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

We can only do so much

I've been oscillating between being a vegetarian and eating meat for around three years now. There are some times when I'm able to go weeks or months without eating meat, and other times when I don't go for more than a day or two. I've tried to limit myself in different ways (no meat on weekdays, no meat on weekends, don't cook meat, don't eat meat when going out), but nothing has seem to stick.

I know and believe all the intellectual arguments for not eating meat. I know the overall social costs do not outweigh the individual benefits for me. But I always tend to slip back into eating meat in one way or another. Mostly, my degree of meat consumption depends on my life circumstances at the time. Right now, I'm eating more than I have in the past, probably because I'm making decent money for the first time in my life. My emotional state of excitement over a (sort of) new lifestyle outweighs the overarching intellectual arguments in the back of my mind. It probably shouldn't, but it does.

I lay this out because I think it's important to recognize that at different points in our lives, we are able to do different things. I write a lot about working for social change through nonprofits on this blog, but, in reality, we do not all have the privilege to do that at all points of our life. Brigid Slipka commented on one of my posts awhile back saying that she would like to work in a nonprofit, but the low-salary might not be able to meet the needs of her or her children.

This is a point well taken. I am able to work in a nonprofit for (relatively) low pay because I have no dependents, no debt and not many needs. I also scored a sweet deal on cheap housing. The nuances of nonprofit and social change work I and other bloggers discuss isn't an option for the majority of the population. I, and many of my fellow nonprofit employees, have the privilege to be able to give back, instead of having to focus on what is best for us or our dependents. (Not that we are all completely selfless. Like I said, I'm making decent money for the first time in my life and spending accordingly.)

I think we always need to keep this in mind when we consider the actions of others. Not only limited to the decision to work for social change or not, but also when considering what people doing with their positions at certain times. People cannot always give everything to their job. Creating change can't always be the most important thing to people. We shouldn't feel guilty about that. We can only do so much, and we should recognize that in the actions of others.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

Embedded Giving, Redux

It's that time of year again! Soon we will be walking through the aisles, stumbling from product to product to try to figure out just what all those special people in our lives want this year. And after we leave the check-out counter, it's important for us to not forget our favorite nonprofits, who also need gifts from us during this season of giving.

Luckily for all of us American consumers, we can do our shopping and give to charity at the same time. The gracious and good-willed corporations of the world are making it easier for you to give to your favorite charity in these times of small-budgets, while also buying that perfume your sister wants. Several companies have started partnerships to give a portion of their profits to the well-deserving charities, so you don't have to make those hard choices.

This is the phenomenon of embedded giving, the act of tying a charitable donation along with a purchase. I've written about this before, so I will try to not go much into what I've already said. You can also read all about it from people much smarter than me on Philanthropy 2173, GiveWell, Tactical Philanthropy, and, most recently, Good Intentions are Not Enough and AidWatch. What I'd like to go into a little more with this post is Lucy Bernholz notion of "charitywashing,"  which is related, but not limited to embedded giving.

Bernholz defines charitywashing in this way:

Charitywashing. Verb. Gaining the trust, good faith, or simply the business of customers by aligning your product with a charity. Often takes the form of statements that claim "...x% of sales of this object will be given to charity." 

I think I would push this a little further and say that this is not only about aligning a product to a  specific charity, but to the notion of working for social change in general. As Nathaniel Whittemore observed, doing shit is the "new cool" thing. It's cool to be trying to make a difference in the world, and corporations are catching on. There are countless charity-corporation partnerships that are branding corporations as "socially-conscious" in the hopes to sway consumers in their direction. Most recently, GAP released a new ad (which Whittemore discusses in the post linked above) that highlights the charity work of several very attractive people, wearing attractive GAP clothing. (Side note, Tim Ogden has been working on a system to rate these partnerships. Check it out, it's pretty cool.)

I tend to not have a problem with these charitywashing partnerships, as long as they do not increase consumption, and instead just shift it towards more socially-responsible choices. But the one area that I am concerned about is the complacency that it might create. I think this was best summed-up in a recent episode of 30 Rock, where the main character, Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey, buys jeans from a socially-conscious store and says wearing them makes her "not feel bad for all those long, hot showers I took because I was bored." (In the end, it turns out the jeans were made by Halliburton.)

When engaging in these purchases, we always need to constantly analyze our behavior to determine our motivations behind our actions. Are we doing it to feel good? Are we considering this our good deed for the day? Or are we just making a logical and rational decision that if you have the choice between a product that helps a nonprofit or one that doesn't, clearly you should buy the one that does. I'm concerned that most people engage in embedded philanthropy to be a part of the social-change lifestyle without having to do much work.

I'm reminded of a lyric from an Immortal Technique song, "Beef and Broccoli," (warning, strong language in that one):

"Being a vegetarian should never be associated with being a revolutionary or being open-minded. That's a dietary choice."

Buying something should never be associated with being revolutionary. It's a consumption choice. There's nothing wrong with consumption, but don't pretend it's anything more than that. I think there is a lot of potential to try to change consumption habits in revolutionary ways: For example, there are some group coupon companies that focus solely on bringing people to social enterprises. That's cool, and it's trying to shift our consumption patterns, which is necessary if we want to accomplish systematic social change. But there are also group coupon companies that simply give some of their proceeds to charity. That's cool too, but it isn't as revolutionary as upsetting consumption habits. And we shouldn't think of it in that way.

So, as you walk through those aisles, make sure you are aware of the motivations behind your giving at the checkout counter. If you want to give, then do it. But don't pretend that it's anything more than what it is. And if you want to be a part of the "new cool" like those attractive people in the GAP ad, remember, you can't buy your way into that club.

                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners

A Communications Associate Speaks Out Against His Profession

I love my job. I really do. I love working in communications, promoting my organization's work, talking to people about it and trying to raise our profile within the sector. I've loved doing that at other organizations I've worked for. But there is a by-product of my profession that makes me uncomfortable.

As communications professionals, we try to make everyone else see why our organization is the best thing out there. I do genuinely believe that my employer is doing some of the most important work in the field and doing it in an innovative way; that's why I work for them. But not every organization can be the most important thing to every individual, or doing the most important work in every field and sub-field. The image that is created when looking at the sum of communications from all nonprofits--foundations, community organizations, research institutions, etc.--would make it seem like each alone has the all answers to social problems. The contributions of others is recognized in person, through presentations or informal contributions, but rarely do I see the prominent display of another organization's work on websites or promotional materials.

Now, this isn't the worst thing in the world. Most people accept messaging with a certain level of skepticism, just like they do not believe everything a corporation's advertisement tells them. But what makes me uncomfortable is the level of competition and isolation it creates amongst nonprofits. (In management speak, this is called "building silos.") We want to prove that our work is better than our peers, which limits how much credit we can give them in their work. Because communications is always linked to fundraising, a constrained and restrained capital market intensifies this competition.

I think this phenomena is most pronounced, and most problematic, between grantmakers and the nonprofits they support. This relationship is inherently collaborative, but I feel like neither parties typically tend to acknowledge the contribution of the other as much as they should. At conferences for grantmakers, the focus is almost always on the strategies of the foundations, not the innovations on the ground coming the community organizations.  At meetings of nonprofit community organizations, funders are seen as bureaucratic overseers, rather than partners. Looking over grantmakers' websites, there is always some sort of mention of "partnership" or "collaboration," but you have to dig to get into any specifics. This is the nature of communications to have a broad focus on the organization up front, and only get into specifics of the work later.

I attended a talk by Ralph Smith of the Annie E. Casey Foundation a few months ago about the new federal innovation programs coming from the Obama administration. He discussed how the requirement for match funding on the Investing in Innovation, Race to the Top and Social Innovation Fund awards actively increases collaboration among grantmakers, and between grantmakers and their sub-grantee nonprofits. He said that this collaboration has many benefits for the nonprofit sector and can cut down on a lot of inefficiencies. I think communications professionals need to find a way to tell the story of their organizations that includes the acknowledgment of these collaborative efforts going on around them. Collaboration is key, and the messaging should reflect that.

I also don't feel like acknowledgment of collaboration--stating that some result couldn't get done without the insights and connections of a funder, or that a community organization's sensitivity to local issues was essential to completing an initiative--always reflects poorly on the organization who did not come up with that solution. The players in the nonprofit sector should recognize that everyone has different roles to play in accomplishing the end goal of social change, and we should find where we fit in and celebrate those different roles. This can also help us focus our energy on our strengths and let our weaknesses be supplemented by others' work. (I think this is also pretty good personal advice, too.)

As the sector shifts towards a more collaborative effort to solve social problems, those of us telling that story need to include the efforts of all the organizations working around us and with us. This more accurate portrayal of the work being done can only help the nonprofit sector as a whole.


                                                                                                   
Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of Venture Philanthropy Partners