Draft PrescriptionsThis is a featured page

  • Build cooperative capacity first, THEN internal capacity. The internal capacity of most organizations is going to come under intense pressure. The ability to cooperate will enable you to know more about what capacity you “need to own” and what services you will be able to count on from people across the network.
    • Get cooperative. Leverage more of others’ investments. Share more services. Outsource more. Reduce overhead costs. Look for deals. (more on network capacity here)
  • Invest in Social Capital. It will be the only growing market in 2009. Look at it as part of your organization: There have always been good reasons to build your social network, but now it is a matter of strategy and applying the techniques of network weaving. You need social capital to help in difficult times.
    • Let's add some specific, practical ideas here.
  • Be hyper communicative. Talk with partners early and often. Be over communicative. All networks "live" on the strength of one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many conversations and exchanges. Invest more heavily in outreach and communication efforts and infrastructure (newsletters, blogs, etc). Talk extremely openly about your challenges and opportunities. Discuss openly the staff , departments and offices you are likely to cut; with them first, then to the open network. Being highly communicative also means more listening for trends and opportunities.
    • Examples:
  • Revisit your Strategic Communications plan. Identify the new target audiences, and determine whether the recession has changed what they need to believe in order to change their behavior. Increase the volume to your target audiences; they are going to be focusing on more issues and more channels. If your campaign is going to proceed, you are going to need to increase your media and new media outreach.
  • Focus on common story and shared vision. It is time to refocus on why our staff, donors, boards and volunteers are motivated and passionate about our work. For most of us, it is to solve the problem wrapped in the common story of each segment of the movement. In order to open up new opportunities for collaboration and partnership organizations, and give staff the authority to think creatively, key leaders should continue to tease out what will change if people stay networked with your organization and vision. Build excitement about the big picture items, not the allegiance to a particular brand. Think and communicate more about the story. Organize around the stories to stay plugged into the broader movement and partnerships that are going to be more carefully scrutinized.
  • Monitor trends on broadest scale possible. In a rapidly changing environment, the search for variables that can influence your group, security and agenda needs to be broader. The tempo of healthcare reform and financial bailouts can effect after school programs. The broader area of trends that you monitor the more likely you can observe opportunities and perceive threats before you chance for action has disappeared.
  • Develop more robust programs to recruit support and leverage volunteers. Develop talent-swapping initiatives with others and provide surge capacity to allies in the movement. The goal is to find resources and manage in a way that can accept a surge of capacity from volunteers or other groups. Find ways to exchange or loan staff across organizations.
    • Use of smaller contributions from volunteers. (http://www.theextraordinaries.org/)
  • Develop redundant paths for projects to succeed. Create collaborative, complementary ways to assemble the resources needed for each campaign.
  • Develop management systems for ad hoc work team management. Find new ways to assemble and manage capacity in real time on projects. Build a network of vendors (consultants, nonprofit partners, volunteers) that with some premium investments can come together to work on project but that you don’t have to sustain throughout the year.
Draft Recommendations for People


MartyKearns
MartyKearns 		Latest page update: made by MartyKearns , Dec 9 2009, 12:02 AM EST (about this update About This Update MartyKearns Edited by MartyKearns

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