All of us got into the business of nonprofits because of our humanity. We loved animals or the environment or supporting kids to college or protecting the redwood trees. Love and empathy are the most human of emotional experiences and it’s what drives the nonprofit sector.
We were called by the promise of changing the world. We worked hard, we rallied people to the cause, we grew our organizations up. The great paradox is that the more successful we were at building our organizations, the less time we had to do the things that we loved in the first place: working with kids, hugging the panda bears, cleaning up the ocean etc. Our time was now taken up with tasks like fundraising, board management, and marketing. While we recognized that this was a necessary part of the job, it wasn’t why we got into nonprofits in the first place.
Having left the nonprofit sector after 15 years recently, I find myself with the luxury of time to think and learn. Like most nonprofit leaders, I considered myself lucky if I got to eat lunch and find time to go to the bathroom at least once a day so the concept of time to think is almost unheard of. So, here are some thoughts I’ve had recently about nonprofits, technology and the future. If there is only one thing you take away from this article, let it be this: THE FUTURE IS COMING AND YOU NEED DEVOTE TIME AND ENERGY TO GET READY OR GET LEFT BEHIND.
Ahem. Now onto the show.
Thought #1: Don’t fear the robots.
I’m a big fan of HBO’s Westworld and there’s a lot of reason to fear the robots in a gun-toting frontier town with bloodthirsty hosts hell-bent on revenge. This is not the case for you. There is a world in which technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process automation can significantly drive down the cost of doing business by eliminating the need for humans to do tasks like data entry, analysis of donors, predictive models for outcomes and marketing strategy. There are a ton of potential use cases that we haven’t even conceived of, but the bottom line is that a lot of work can be delegated to the robots, which frees up the humans to do the human work of connecting, building relationships and thinking creatively. Doesn’t that sound like more fun?
Thought #2: Dude, where’s my workforce?
The future of the workforce will be agile and decentralized. The rise of the gig economy coupled with the millennials’ desire for flexibility and variety will mean necessary changes to the way that we think about management and teams. This could be a really good thing for nonprofits as it means that they can run leaner and with fewer employees on payroll and pay for specific help when they need it. What, then, does that mean for how we build human relationships and organizational culture? It could mean that we hire fewer core members, which may mean higher salaries and less overall “management” of people and more focus on the work. Additionally, for those in the youth-serving or workforce development business, you need to focus less on “job skills” of today and think about marketable skills of the future such as entrepreneurship, ability to solve interesting problems and straight up #hustling.
Thought #3: Your data is so…big.
Big data is thrown around a lot these days and basically just means really big data sets. The exciting part is what you can do with it. How can we use big data to solve some of the most pressing social issues? For example, in the field of education, big data can be used to track student performance, “risk” factors and provide actionable insights for effective interventions. Big data can help organizations and donors identify the most pressing social needs, funding trends, predict future trends and help with collaboration. It’s much harder to be in the business of systems change if we don’t have a clear view of the system. Big data can solve that by bringing together disparate sets of data, analyze, visualize and distill insights.
Thought #4: I’m still Jenny from the blockchain.
Blockchain–it’s the sexy new thing in town. I admit that I’m still learning about this myself and have very little insight at this point. However, here are a few ideas about how blockchain can help nonprofits. Blockchain will allow for a more direct, frictionless way to exchange funds in a verifiable way. For example, sending money directly to refugees, allowing nonprofits to collect donations more easily or getting services to the homeless of New York. More to come on this front, but blockchain is here to stay and the sooner we can figure out how to leverage it for good, the better.
Thought #5: Show me the money.
All of these ideas entail a pivot in the traditional ways that nonprofits are run. In order to maintain our competitive advantage and run lean, I believe that we need to both carve out time, resources and investment in change. We need to have some money set aside for investment in infrastructure and to educate ourselves and our constituents about what’s coming. For nonprofits to survive and thrive in the future, we need to act now, invest now and future-proof for tomorrow.Change is going to come whether we like it or not. The most successful nonprofits in the future will be the ones to ride the crest of change. Don’t be the grumpy person who is sitting on the porch complaining about these new-fangled horseless carriages. And the good news is that technology and change will help us to do our work better, work on leveraging the best of our humanity and allow us to focus on hugging the pandas and less time on the administrivia. Rhea Wong is a recovering Executive Director. Have any thoughts about this article? Share them! If you liked this, check out this article.
