Some Random Social Innovation Thoughts

Just a few random thoughts on reading Seeds of Innovation.
1. Vertical integration - Companies try to control other companies that comprise supply, distribution, and sales channels for the company. Nonprofits really don’t absorb others but the basic concept seems useful - team up to coordinate efforts at all stages of addressing a social problem. The example of homelessness came to mind. The descent into homelessness sometimes get interrupted by social service nonprofits. Other nonprofits provide services to the homeless. Some nonprofits try to help people transition successfully from homelessness to a home and stable job. The nonprofits in question are all trying to do something about homelessness, just at different phases of the person’s experience.
2. Skunk works - Aerospace giant Lockheed (now Lockheed-Martin I think) developed a couple of spy planes in a dedicated research and development unit that existed apart from the organization’s normal structure. Maybe nonprofits - I’m thinking or really big organizations or networks here - could establish skunk works to develop revolutionary new programs or technologies.
3. Suggestion boxes - Generic suggestion programs are generally a waste of time and resources. Focus a suggestion program on a certain campaign or event and solicit ideas relevant to that target.
4. External collaboration - Nonprofits work together, but they might need to spend time working with “customers,” business owners, teachers, local officials, or other stakeholders. The point is to work with people who can help, hinder, or benefit from an innovation to get their input on what innovations would work.
Many of the concepts could be used in a nonprofit or an activist group. Seeds was written with business people in mind, but the language of profit, customers, and marketing that she uses should be easily translatable.

Books the World Might Need

I’m doing a bit of market research on some books I’d like to write. Not much point if there’s no market right? Well, I’m hoping my blog readers will be willing to offer some comments on these ideas:

1. The Little Book of Bad Ideas - Catalogs the social and personal costs of ideas including astrology, God, free will, responsibility, self-improvement, homeopathy, and lotteries. There will also be a chapter on the concept of “social pollution” and a chapter on the cognitive biases and cultural factors that support the birth and survival of bad ideas.

2. Social Pollution - While #1 is mostly a sociological trivia book, Social Pollution is a study of the subject, the causes, the consequences, prevention, and remediation. Think The God Delusion for culture and you get the idea.

3. The Worldchanger’s Toolbox - Problem analysis, planning, idea generation, decision making, social marketing, persuasive writing techniques are explained in detail with instructions for applying them to advocacy, fundraising, political campaigns, program and policy design. Also includes a primer on copywriting, on the psychology of selling, and on the diffusion of social and technological innovations.

Ways to Make Small-Scale Activism Efforts More Effective

This is from a press release I wrote and sent out in anticipation of the World Social Forum on Januray 26.

This is the very-long season of selling candidates and ideas, including a candidate’s ideas, a party’s ideas, or a group’s ideas for policies and programs. The usual methods of creating and selling political ideas are well known to political activists, though some simple principles for creating and selling ideas may have been overlooked.
Analyze Challenges – Ask plenty of questions about the nature of the issue, the social environment, and the likely solutions. Michael Michalko’s book Thinkertoys contains some of the best questions.
Define Good Ideas – The social environment, the time frame involved, and your organization’s resources will help define what counts as a good idea.
Steal Ideas – Look for ideas in advertising, products, commercial services, magazines, novels, government programs, and other organization’s projects.
Think Creatively – Use brainstorming techniques or systematic idea generation methods get new ideas. Many good creative thinking books describe idea generation techniques that are both effective and easy to use.
Think Design – Ideas have to fit the culture, economy, and political climate of the community. Test ideas for their fit with the social environment
Think Marketing – Ideas generally need to be sold. You need to raise money, recruit program participants or get people to vote for something by selling them on your idea’s benefits. Books on social marketing and on copywriting principles can help.
Find Leverage – Look for an audience, geographic location, or specific action that will have the greatest impact for the time and money that you can devote to a change effort. Focus on the highest impact focal point that you can identify.

Odd but Useful Activism Questions

Random input is a popular brainstorming technique, described in several books on creative thinking. I just thought I would share some random input, in the form of seemingly silly questions:
1. How is a fundraising campaign like a wedding?
2. How is an education campaign like a lizard?
3. How is activism like housework?
4. How is fundraising like jogging?
5. How is a social service agency like a street gang?
How do you answer such questions? Ask yourself about the attributes or characteristics associated with, for example, lizards. Take each item on your list and see if the suggest a new way of running a public education campaign.
If any of those five crazy questions prompts some useful ideas, please leave me a comment.

Education and Social Change

Public education campaigns are an important part of many social change efforts. People need to know about the problem - how big it is, how much it costs, who is affected, why the problem exists, what exactly can be done. Magazine ads, press releases, television and radio advertising (if you can afford it!) are all good ways to get a message across. But there might be better ways. A little creativity is called for here. And budget issues might force you to be more creative.
The following list of principles could help you develop better public education campaigns:

1. Leverage - What medium will let you reach the most people who need to hear your message, for the money you can spend? What specifically can you communicate that will have the most impact? Research or think. Don’t guess or assume.

2. Design Thinking - Design the message for the audience and not for your group or to copy something cool/touching/edgy that you’ve previously encountered. Your message has to consider the norms, beliefs, and attitudes of people who are going to get the message.

3. Marketing - You have to sell, sell, sell. It might be regrettable that people have to be made to care about the facts of a certain issue, but that’s the way the world works. If you want your message to stick, study copywriting principles and social marketing.

4. Science - At least use relevant facts about an issue. Maybe Americans use 40% of the world’s resources while being only 5% of the world’s population. So what? Maybe the rest of the world is too poor!

Use these principles when designing or redesigning a public education campaign. Consider all four principles when you use the idea generation tools I’ll write about next time. I’ll also apply these principles and tools to public education campaign about critical thinking. Real applications of my abstract ideas!

Don’t forget that public education is different from advocacy, though there is certainly going to be some combining of objectives - publicize the costs of global warming and convince them to take step X or make change Y.

How to Raise Money, Creatively

Just a few random thoughts on fundraising:

1. Sometimes it must be possible to forget about money and (a) barter for the goods or services you need, or (b) get in-kind contributions to meet your operating needs. This probably won’t work when it comes to things like salaries, rent, consulting fees, or utility bills. However…

2. Brainstorming often works, even when it comes to dealing with money problems. Look for new appeals, new audiences, and new promotional media. You can do simple, old-fashioned brainstorming on one of those subjects. You could try a formal idea-generating method like SCAMPER, attribute listing, or morphological analysis.

3. Don’t fundraise without knowing some copywriting principles!!! I don’t care how small or cash-strapped your organization happens to be.

Maybe these thoughts will spawn some creative and practical thinking on how to get the resources you need. Let me know what you think, or what ideas you get. My idea is to look for ways to generate resources for my own humble group - IdealistDC.

Selling Social Change: Some Components of Effective Advocacy

Advocacy efforts depend on lots of things for success - good ideas, hard work, money, effective marketing, and many other factors that are more or less controllable. This post is about four principles, the use of which can influence a campaign’s chances of success. The example of advocating for household use of solar energy technology should make these “effective advocacy principles” more concrete.
1. Facts - Facts can change perceptions or, maybe, spur people to take action. The more the facts relate to real life, the more likely people will be swayed by them. For example, you would be wrong if you think I care about a lifestyle that produces X tons of greenhouse gases a year. I do care about the potential cost savings I could realize by installing some solar power equipment.
2. Logic - Simple logic, as in avoiding common logical errors in your reasoning has to a priority. You can also use logic against your opponents. Trust me when I say it won’t be hard. But, back to the solar power example: Try to promote it through a ballot initiative (to offer a break on property taxes perhaps) that encourages people to use solar power. A logically sound argument might help make the case, once you‘ve managed to get our attention. .
3. Marketing - All advocacy is about selling. You want to sell some political action, or some lifestyle change, or something else. How do you do that? Convince people that there is something in it for them. Most of us don’t care what moral imperative you think you’ve discovered and embodied in your proposal. We might philosophically agree with , for example, the need for wider use of renewable energy. We are definitely interested in what‘s in it for us. Present a compelling case that we’ll get concrete benefits from putting solar panels on our roofs and, we’ll be (a little) more likely to do it.
4. Science - Use scientific concepts, principles, research, and theory promote your cause. Psychology’s been heavily used in advertising and in persuasive writing. Study copywriting. Dig up stuff from the natural sciences and social sciences. Use what you dig up to strengthen your idea. Use what you’ve learned to strengthen your sales pitch. Allay my fears that I won’t be able to run the microwave and TV at the same time on a cloudy winter day. Isn’t that what can happen if you depend 100% on solar power?

Being a Better Advocate for Yoru Cause

Activists want to sell ideas - conservative ideas, liberal ideas, environmental ideas, and many other types of ideas. Social change necessarily depends on getting ideas and selling them effectively. Promoting new beliefs, laws, lifestyle choices, policies, programs, regulations, and values could (One hopes!) be done more effectively with the right tools and techniques applied at each stage of the process. This post is about new tools and techniques that can be used at each stage of the advocacy process.
1. Defining the Problem - What problem are you addressing here? What, specifically, do you want to accomplish? Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity (both by Michael Michalko) describe some easy techniques for exploring a problem, or challenge if you like to keep things positive. Using one or two should give you a much clearer idea of what you want to do or need to do.
(If you are getting into the advocacy game after the challenge and general approach have been defined you can still use the tools and techniques referenced in the following sections.)
2. Defining a Good Idea - Take a few minutes ahead of time and think about the criteria that define a good idea. You need to at least spend a few minutes considering your audience, your resources, the social environment, and the timeframe in question.
3. Generating Ideas - Traditional, informal brainstorming could come into play at this stage. You know how to do that sort of brainstorming. You may not know about the many, many techniques that exist for generating ideas. Thinkertoys and Cracking Creativity describe many brainstorming tools. Try two of them, one traditionally “creative” and one systematic.
4. Evaluating Ideas - An informal process of comparing your list of ideas to the criteria that define a good idea. Many ideas are rather weak in their original form. Don’t worry about that! Take promising ideas and reinforce them. Mindtools.com offers some guidance on strengthening your ideas.
5. Deciding What to Do - Taking time to formally study a decision is usually a good idea. Some decisions are simple enough to make without much research or analysis. For the other decisions that come at you, there is a need to develop a formal method for deciding what to do. The “Decision Making” menu option at mind tools.com summarizes many decision analysis techniques.
6. Doing Something - This is the obvious last step in any advocacy effort. This is also a subject for another post. I’ll describe some principles and practices that can lead to better results.
Remember, even a small improvement (however defined) in two or three parts of the process could really make a difference! Who wants to study these techniques and apply them to a real project? I do!

Getting Better Social Change Results

The beginning of a new year brings with it a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how our social change efforts can be improved. Sustainable businesses need to innovate and advertise and promote. Nonprofits need to raise money and develop new programs or projects. Social marketing campaigns are always starting up. Activists and nonprofit managers are interested in public education and advocacy efforts, that are maximally effective.
Tools for generating ideas and solving problems can help, and there are certainly plenty of tools! That’s what this blog is about - informing the socially conscious about the tools and their applications to social betterment.
The beginning of a new year offers me the opportunity (excuse?) to change the focus of my posts. I’d been focusing on he tools and techniques. Now, I’m going to focus on goals common to social activists. This list matches those goals and common variations on them:
1. Advocacy - development of new strategies and tactics
2. Fundraising - including in-kind contributions and grants
3. Program Design - including policies and projects to implement or “sell” to an audience
4. Social Marketing - cause marketing, public education campaigns
5. Sustainable Business - process redesign, products, services
A little bit of systematic, formal problem analysis and idea generation might lead to better results - more money raised, more votes, fewer people doing (insert your favorite bad behavior). In the next few posts, I’ll focus on advocacy efforts - how to create and sell new ideas about social policy, consumerism, diet, or any other issue area.