NGOs in the Age of Collaboration

At this very moment, there are millions of people around the world collaborating with each other, voluntarily contributing their knowledge to the community, and enthusiastically absorbing the information that others offer. The availability of Social Software , such as Facebook or MySpace , is allowing the web to be transformed into a space for citizen participation; a true platform for collaboration, interaction and the deployment of collective intelligence. The capacity and willingness of users to collaborate, their impressive creative talent and their social energy, are extraordinary news for Non-Governmental Organizations, which have immense possibilities for growth before them. But to achieve this, they must be able to adapt to new circumstances. In today’s conversation we will talk, therefore, about innovation opportunities for NGOs in the Age of Collaboration. I will share with you some of the strategic reflections for the future of NGOs which I presented a few days ago at the presentation of the new website of the Spanish Volunteering Platform.

Although I have had the opportunity to collaborate in several projects and initiatives within the social responsibility area of my company, I make these reflections with prudence, since I have not had direct experience in the management of non-profit organizations. As in previous conversations, the intention is none other than to provoke and stimulate reflection, so that we are all aware of the importance of what is happening around us; so that we decide once and for all to leave our “Comfort Zone”, and make innovation and leadership a job shared by all. These are times, of course, in which it is preferable to ask for forgiveness rather than ask for permission.

New Social Paradigm

As I have already explained in previous posts , we are immersed in a new paradigm. The world has changed in all areas: in our personal lives, in our work and, of course, in the way we relate to each other in society. Technology has changed, the way we learn and understand reality; the models of value creation, consumers, the profile of volunteers and collaborators have changed. The whole of society has changed, and continues to do so at full speed. The people around us are different today. Our own children have developed skills that are very different from ours and have a new way of understanding the world. We ourselves, by force, are different today. It is important that we realize that the phenomena we are experiencing are not reduced to just another technological change. We are at the beginning of a new era, a revolutionary era in all aspects. In the words of Manuel Castell , we are at the dawn of a new type of Network Society :

The Internet is not simply a technology; it is the means of communication that constitutes the organizational form of our societies, it is the equivalent of what the factory was in the industrial era or the large corporation in the industrial age. The Internet is the heart of a new socio-technical paradigm that is in reality the material basis of our lives and of our forms of relationships, work and communication. What the Internet does is process virtuality and transform it into our reality, constituting the network society, which is the society in which we live.

These changes enable new models of social value creation, new forms of volunteering, and new ways of organizing in networks for interaction, collaboration, and participatory activism. The opportunities for collaboration, learning, and solidarity action are endless, and NGOs must be able to take on the challenges that have arisen in this new scenario: new communication tools, new forms of organization and networked collaboration, new expectations in volunteers and users, and new values – such as openness, transparency, fluid communication, creativity, and collaboration – that make up an absolutely new frame of reference.

New leadership: NGOs 2.0

Faced with a new paradigm, we must review the mental models that we have created, and that we have used until now to move around the world. This is the paradox: we must open our minds and we must enter the new world to build the new maps . We have no choice but to reinvent ourselves as leaders, as organizations and as people to respond to new demands. A concrete example: it is true that “command and command” – which until now has prevailed in organizations – has allowed us to create efficient and scalable organizations; but it is also true that these organizations tend to be inflexible when it comes to doing something different from what they have always done; their cultures are not prone to change and, in many cases, hostile to innovation; and what is more important: they are usually deathly boring and unable to achieve the trust, creativity and passion of the people who are part of the organization.

However, perhaps the greatest incompatibility of the organizations we have created so far – whether they are governments, political parties, institutions or companies – is that they do not sustain themselves when exposed to the increasing levels of transparency demanded by the Network Society. And I am not referring exclusively to transparency in values – a field in which NGOs are possibly an example – but to transparency in the added value and contribution of people . The reality is that the traditional command and command leads to a leadership style based on personal affinities, with low tolerance for criticism, and where too often personal interests are confused with the goals of the organization. We need a new vision of the leadership of the future, which we have called Leadership 2.0 . A vision capable of stimulating and channeling new talent, and of making the most of opportunities in the Age of Collaboration. The label “2.0” is not a fad or a whim. It refers to an improved version of our society and of ourselves; a more participatory, open and transparent version, and that from now on will be present in all orders: in government models, in action

Politics , in the Organizations , in the Companies and, of course, also in the field of Non-Governmental Organizations.

Creating value in the Age of Collaboration requires imagination, creativity and passion; it is about creating organizations designed for people, in which leadership and innovation are a job shared by all.

For all these reasons, we need to ask ourselves: What motivates the new generations of digital natives to contact NGOs? How should NGOs participate in the new conversations and collective spaces generated by blogs and social networks? How can we involve donors and beneficiaries in the definition of the services we provide? How can we use the new 2.0 tools to make our organization more transparent and effective? What can we do to develop our managers and collaborators in the new 2.0 disciplines? How can we build organizations capable of creating social value in the new era? Undoubtedly, the answers to these questions have important implications for the strategic leadership of NGOs. We will develop some of them below.

New spaces for communication and collective learning

Today, leading is equivalent to talking. Web 2.0 has opened up new spaces in which citizens can converse freely, without limits and without physical barriers. The blogosphere is a global and distributed network of conversations; social networks are spaces for linking people and sharing; and wikis are spaces for the collaborative construction of content. On a personal level, you should ask yourself where you are within this space of conversations: do you read blogs regularly?, are you part of a social network?, do you make comments on forums and blogs?, do you maintain a blog yourself and upload your videos to YouTube? Do you still not do any of these activities? Then, you can transfer these questions to your organization.

For NGOs, it is very important to interact with the new reality. It is not enough to have a website to communicate what we do. The central thing is not to access information, but to access conversations and participate in them actively. It is these new conversations that will allow us to develop new skills, learn about the new needs for social action and find the new talent that our organizations require. Good news for NGOs is that Web 2.0, thanks to its collaboration platform, allows us to reach any point on the planet. Through a blog, for example, we can “touch” a volunteer or a donor located 100 meters or 2,000 kilometers away, and with hardly any resources invested. These are some of the possibilities that a blog opens up for us:

• To provide our associates and volunteers with a space for conversation and active participation.
• Provide media coverage and attract possible funding.
• Recruit volunteers, document and communicate their contributions.
• Receive feedback on the added value and quality of our actions.
• Stimulating and fostering open innovation with partners and volunteers

It is not about technology, but about taking advantage of technology to go beyond traditional physical barriers, and multiply the reach of our message. Facts that were previously ostracized can now become visible thanks to new communication platforms. Calls that never reached the media before can now open a gap in daily information. It is about evolving and adapting to the new spaces for social interaction that blogs and social networks offer us. Understanding and learning to use this communication potential is vital.

New volunteers: digital natives

The fact is that a new talent is arriving in our organizations that is very different from the previous one. Digital natives are young people born from the 80s onwards. They have grown up with the Internet and digital devices (mobile phones, computers, video consoles, etc.) always by their side, and that is why they have developed a way of learning, working, having fun and understanding the world that is very different from ours. Attracting and retaining their extraordinary creative talent must be one of the priority objectives of NGOs. As we have said, digital natives have a very different mentality from the one that has characterized previous generations. No more “command and command”. They

They seek recognition, try to leave their personal mark on everything they do , and only exploit their extraordinary talent if the work is fun for them. Otherwise, they will look for a better place to develop their skills. They are authentic, express their opinions clearly, and expect reciprocity from their interlocutors. Digital natives have taken advantage of the technological platform to create innovative forms of communication that we, digital immigrants, are not yet familiar with. As volunteers, digital natives want more options, demand personalization, and are used to interactive relationships. As collaborators and professionals in organizations, they have a different conception of authority. They prefer reciprocity to hierarchy, are more demanding than other generations, and seek interactivity in relationships and immediate rewards, because they question the long term. After all, they experience greater turnover in the organizations where they work. They also have a greater predisposition to travel. Achieving the involvement and commitment of these new generations is key to the future of NGOs.

Are we creating NGOs designed for the new generations? This is a crucial question. Are we really building organizations that know how to relate to young people, that are able to communicate in their language, and that participate in their social networks? Are our NGOs organizations designed for them, capable of mobilizing them socially and deserving of their commitment, passion and creativity? The answers to these questions will make us see that

the challenges faced by NGOs will not only require incremental improvements in management models; These are far-reaching changes, and therefore require genuine disruptive innovations in the governance models of organizations, in their operational structures and in their models of creating social value.

New forms of financing: The Long Tail Economy in NGOs

To date, NGOs have found their main sources of funding in a few institutions: public entities and, to a lesser extent, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) departments of some private companies. But, if we apply the Long Tail business model, formulated by Chris Anderson, we realize that, thanks to the possibilities offered by technological development, small donors can become the main source of funding for some NGOs. In his book, Chris Anderson explains with great simplicity how technology, by making the sale of limited quantities of products profitable, makes us move from mass markets to niche markets. “Long tail” is the name given colloquially to a well-known characteristic of statistical distributions that we can observe in markets, and which applies to any large enough sample. For example, we can say, without much risk of being wrong, that 20% of the Spanish population owns 80% of the country’s wealth. And, similarly, that approximately 20% of donors contribute 80% of the resources of NGOs. In its application to the business world, the “Long Tail” economy has meant a new paradigm of innovation in traditional business models. The best-known examples have perhaps been in the distribution of books and records. In its stores, El Corte Inglés basically offers the best-selling books, but not those that would only be bought by a very small number of people. In the same way, if we look for a record at Fnac, we will find the records that interest a wide audience. The high cost of distribution and storage does not allow them to offer other alternatives. However, Web 2.0 has changed the laws of distribution and the rules of the market. Physical restrictions are no longer significant in online business models such as those of Amazon or Rhapsody. This allows them to have a very wide catalog of products, with which they can cover the tastes and interests of a larger group of customers. Amazon, for example, has a catalog of more than 2 million books, and Rhapsody offers users about a million songs. In the graphic representation of sales, the upper left part (the head) would correspond to the best-sellers. The right part, which seems to stretch towards infinity, would represent the products sold in a few copies. This “long tail” is what the Internet makes profitable. Similarly, the application of the “Long Tail” economy to NGOs can lead us to new financing models; models

which may be particularly relevant for those organizations that, due to their size and financial capacity, have not been able to access traditional public and institutional financing resources via CSR. Hence my reflection:

The accumulation of all small donations for solidarity actions, made directly by anonymous donors from any geography through the multiple channels of the Internet, can exceed what has been achieved by traditional means of financing. Web 2.0 and the new platforms of social collaboration make it possible to reach new sources of funding, so in the future it will not be necessary to base the sources of funding of NGOs only on the public sector and on large institutional donors.

When applied to NGOs, the Long Tail model would correspond to the following graphic representation: a “head”, made up of the main sources of funding (governments and large companies), and a very long “tail”, made up of small donors, which due to its size can generate more money than the head. In other words, the large ones contribute a lot but are few; the small ones contribute little, but there are so many that they can generate more income than the large ones. Web 2.0 as a communication platform allows us to reach small donors without having to resort to traditional mass communication models (TV, daily press and radio), which are prohibitive for many NGOs. Today, thanks to technology, we can reach the smallest without consuming hardly any resources. The opportunities for innovation are immense.

Barack Obama’s use of social media in his campaign for the US elections is the clearest practical example of these new financing possibilities. Using social media, Obama managed to raise hundreds of millions in small donations of less than $100. Compared to the traditional model of financing – based on contributions from the state and the lobbies of big business – Obama was able to go a step further, and developed a much more creative and efficient model : managed to increase the collection in a brutal way thanks to the micro-donations of its supporters and sympathizers. I believe that this is a model that should be analyzed in depth by NGOs. The key to accessing and convincing this large number of small donors is to create a solid presence on the Internet, and to build a powerful social network of volunteers, capable of taking the message to a wide sector of the population. As we have mentioned, the technological platform to do so is ready and fully operational. Obama, for example, worked masterfully on already consolidated social networks, such as FaceBook or YouTube, to effectively take his message to millions of citizens. The results prove it.

“Open Source” social action and V2V volunteer networks

In our exploration of what models of value creation through people will look like in the future, we must not give up good ideas from other fields of activity. The creation of “Open Source” tools, products and services – open source and use to everyone – is one of the most significant examples of these new forms of global collective organization and creation. Through their voluntary contributions, users from all over the world have been able to build Wikipedia , the largest encyclopedia in human history. With their effort and passion, these communities have been able to create and maintain some of the most successful applications: the Linux operating system , the Mozilla Firefox browser, the Open Office office suite, and many other reference tools. Despite its successes in collaborative software development, it is clear that the “Open Source” model is not a model that can be extrapolated to any type of organization. But it is no less true that, due to the goodness of the task , and the altruistic motivation of the participants , social action organizations based on volunteering can draw many lessons from this model. Proof of this is the emergence of social action organizations based on open networks of V2V volunteering , that is, from Volunteer to Volunteer. A very recent example is the launch of Starbucks V2V , “an innovative volunteer network that fosters a worldwide collaborative environment for V2V volunteers through the network: people from all over the world have the opportunity to share their passion for volunteering”. Hacesfalta.org is another good example of using Web 2.0 to create a channel that connects organizations and volunteers, thereby stimulating collaboration and communication between different actors. There is a fundamental reason why NGOs should seek to understand these new models of voluntary action: peer-to-peer (P2P) forms of organization are the natural forms of collaboration, learning, and action for digital natives. It is therefore important for NGOs to become familiar with these new forms of volunteering, and to ask themselves the following questions: How do the new models of social value creation affect my value proposition? How do they affect my funding sources? And, more importantly: What can I learn from these new forms of coordination of voluntary social action? Here are some of the characteristics that differentiate the new organizations from traditional NGO structures:

Horizontality vs hierarchy. Faced with “command and control” and the weight of hierarchy and bureaucracy, the new communities are committed to horizontal structures, in which everyone shares and contributes dynamically. People are judged by the added value they bring to the organization, not by the credentials they present. Anyone can participate and be recognized for the quality of their work, regardless of their age, their grade or any other external sign. Responding to changes vs. following the plan . It turns out that today things change at full speed, and it is practically impossible to make medium-term forecasts. In the face of millimetric planning, and the “here we have always done it this way”, “Make it Happen”, “less is more”, common sense, and the ability to change quickly to adapt to the new needs and new challenges of society are imposed.

Reputation vs. rewards and punishments. Until now, the performance of an activity has always been reinforced or corrected through the application of rewards and punishments by the bosses. In the new volunteer networks, the alignment of the members is based on reputation, and on the loss of credibility by the members who lack the codes and values agreed upon by all. Credibility – and this applies to both bosses and non-bosses – must be earned in daily action.

Self-management vs. control. Coordination is done through mutual adaptation, commitment, and collaboration. A prevalent norm is that authority follows and derives from responsibility. The more an individual contributes to a project, and the more responsibility they take for concrete actions, the more authority the community grants them to make individual decisions. When there is value-added transparency, letting everyone manage their work can be the best way to motivate employees, and the most direct path to achieving shared goals.

The value of trust as a social asset of NGOs

In times of change and uncertainty such as the ones we are currently experiencing, trust is a fundamental value. This is precisely one of the most valuable assets that NGOs have to face the challenges of the Age of Collaboration. Not surprisingly, according to the results of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2008 – a prestigious study that generates its trust indexes by surveying 3,100 opinion leaders from 18 countries – Non-Governmental Organizations in Spain have a trust index among citizens of 53%, placing it well above other basic institutions such as the Government, which obtains 39%, or the media which, despite rising by 4% compared to the results of the previous year, have to settle for a meager 48%. In our society there is, therefore, a curious paradox: the institutions with the greatest credibility are those with fewer resources. Companies, with a confidence index of 51%, are in second place in the barometer, which should give pause to the many NGOs that are sometimes reluctant to associate their name with companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility programs and yet seek public funding without any qualms.

This social trust represents, for NGOs, an asset of enormous value when it comes to addressing the new challenges and opportunities of the Network Society that I mentioned earlier. These challenges require the humility to recognize that the legacy of orthodox management that has brought us here is not enough to carry us into the future. We must have the courage to reinvent ourselves as leaders to explore the new models of social value creation that the Network Society offers us; to develop the necessary capacities and to make them a reality in increasingly open, transparent and global collaborative networks. And we must do so without forgetting, in our daily action, Keynes’ warning:

“The real difficulty in changing the course of any organization lies not in developing new ideas, but in getting rid of old ones.”