In my last post, I referenced When Good Is Not Good Enough,
a recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. This article makes
the point that the nonprofit sector needs to shift attention from modest goals
that provide short-term relief to bold goals that tackle root causes. The
dilemma is captured in the essay "A Contemporary Fable" which I included
in my post. "A Contemporary Fable" has been around for a long time
and reflects the same challenge to our work as a sector: Are we getting to root
causes or are we inadvertently making it easier for unjust and mal-functioning
systems to remain unchallenged and unchanged? As a sector, are we about social
change or social control?
Here is the link to my earlier post:
http://tinyurl.com/ox88hp8. The
following question was posed in response to this post: "How do you propose
that a nonprofit fund such a preventive project? Many, if not most, have just
enough resources to provide day-to-day services."
A few thoughts to get us started: Let’s begin with the good
news. Today there are more and more donors and funders, deeply dissatisfied
with our collective failure to solve a range of problems, who are looking for
new approaches that get to the root causes of those problems. They want help
"getting upstream".
The not-so-good news: Many nonprofits are simply not
organized or positioned to work upstream. They have neither the leadership
vision nor the revenue base to support such efforts. In some cases they are
saddled with legacy programs that make it very difficult to consider anything
different from what they've always done. Added to this, the words "social
change" are used so loosely today and applied to so many things, that it
becomes very easy to mistake well-intentioned activity for purposeful social
change, as in "changing and transforming underlying systems" that
give rise to so many problems facing our communities.
Not that every nonprofit needs to be working upstream. In
fact, there are so many people being deeply hurt by the way our social and
economic systems are organized, that some of the nonprofit sector needs to be
working "downstream". Countless children who are hungry right now, recently
returned vets who are unemployed and homeless right now, young people
languishing in failing schools right now – all of these and so many others need
help right now.
But the problem is that not enough of the nonprofit sector
is working at the deeper systems level, addressing the root causes. So, for
nonprofits that want to move upstream, how does that journey begin?
I think it starts with asking ourselves a few questions:
What problem are we trying to address with the programs and services we
currently offer? What is our vision of intended future impact on the problem -–
What are the changes we seek to create and at what level? Do we understand the
root causes of the problem? Do we see our role as primarily addressing the
symptoms or do we want to address the deeper causes? Are we interested in going
deeper – in identifying the root causes? Do we have board understanding and
support for such an approach? Do we have a donor base that is supportive of
such efforts? (Or are we dependent on donors who don’t want us to rock the
boat?) If the answer is “yes” to any of these initial questions, what are we
prepared to do to come to a deeper understanding of those causal factors and,
based on this understanding, to then identify/ uncover/ design promising
programs, services and initiatives that will address those root causes? In many
cases such initiatives will involve our organization in nonpartisan advocacy
and public policy work allowable by law – in addition to direct services.
Some more good news: there are many resources for analyzing
problems in terms of root causes. The world of systems thinking offers us many
tools and techniques. Also, in the last several years, there has been a
proliferation of resources for developing theories of change for our work. A
theory of change has been defined as a graphical depiction of the strategies
that an organization plans to undertake to achieve its intended impact in
alignment with its mission. All of these tools provide opportunities to analyze
the problems we face at a deeper level. Often, we discover the underlying
systems that give rise to the problems and symptoms we encounter in our
everyday lives on a daily basis.
Armed with an understanding of root causes and promising
approaches to address them, we can begin to consider other roles our nonprofit
can play: We can launch new initiatives that increase our mission impact
further upstream. Or we can enter into new partnerships and alliances with
organizations that are already tackling the problem at its root. In some cases,
we can redesign programs and services we currently offer in order to have
greater impact at a deeper systems level. Or we may decide to divest of some
programs and services so that we can free up resources and focus our future
efforts to advance our mission. We might even end up changing our mission!
We are now in a stronger position to develop ways to
communicate our intent and resolve to others: we can search for the donors and
funders that that are looking for the new approaches to seemingly intractable
problems. We also can also look for partner organizations that have an interest
in tackling the problem at the deeper systems level. They’re out there. We have
to find them and develop relationships with them.
There is so much more to say. What are others doing to move
upstream? What problems and successes have you experienced? What have you
learned?
