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December 02, 2008
Dusk into Dawn
Investing in a time of great uncertainty is never easy--and yet crucial for future growth. As such, Aharon and I wrote an oped for Haaretz, arguing that thanks to the digital revolution's impact on the means of production, investment should be primarily in human capital:
With digital technologies becoming increasingly sophisticated, and our actions freed from many of the restrictions of time and space, as we are able to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any hour, the elements of the equation at the core of nonprofit success have shifted. In particular, the same technological conditions that have proved enabling for hyper-bootstrapped start-ups, in the business sector, have also enabled nonprofits to do much more in terms of building their brand for much less money. In addition, the material expenses of programming have gone down - making it easier to package the content of a nonprofit's mission.For example, through its online platform, the Obama presidential campaign was able to leverage every two paid field organizers to manage 50 volunteers - and used that same platform to collect more money than was ever raised for a presidential race, with a fraction of the effort. With costs of programming and communicating dropping, time - the time and attention people invest in a project - has become the currency of most value. And therefore it is the ability to capture attention and muster time - to recruit and manage volunteers through strategically trained staff - that in many cases will determine whether an effort will have an impact on the world or not.
This shift in the relative weight of resources should change the rules of the game for those who give as well. Digital-age philanthropic investments in nonprofits should focus on giving them the ability to deploy more hours in the field, paradoxically increasing the staff part of "overhead" that so often is targeted for cuts.
Tell us what you think.
Posted by ArielBeery at December 2, 2008 09:23 AM