As a marketeer I’ve always been fascinated with behavioural science and how to change the values and beliefs that drive our behaviours.

So far, the only time I’ve seen a real change in beliefs is when someone experiences an issue for themselves. It’s about lived experience, or human to human connection that makes the issue tangible and personal.

Having come from a family that struggled financially, I have the benefit of that lived experience. The knowledge that poverty is not so much a practical challenge, but an emotional one. The shame, helplessness and stress it causes are far more dangerous symptoms than not having food on the table.

It’s that lived experience that drives me and my commitment to building a more equal economy where no one has to live in poverty.

The thing about something like poverty or inequality, is that it’s not contagious. So it’s easy to ignore. It’s something that happens to other people, in other places.

On the other hand, Coronavirus could impact any of us. Rich or poor. Young or old. Black, white or something in between.

World leaders and movie stars have caught the virus. People with steady jobs were stood down overnight. Flourishing industries have been brought to their knees. Some of the richest nations have the highest number of cases.

Coronavirus has equalised us.

Coronavirus has reminded us all that we are all human.

It’s that knowledge – the fear that this could impact me and the people I care about – that has driven us to completely change the way we live our lives. We have seen behaviour change on a worldwide scale, practically overnight.

Therein lies an opportunity. Our society and economy has been upended. We can choose to take this moment to rediscover our shared humanity and use it to shape what we create on the other side of the pandemic.

If we can hang on to our shared humanity as we emerge from the crisis, I hope our collective empathy will grow.

We have unfortunately seen some disgusting examples of people capitalising on this crisis to the detriment of others. Corporate CEOs standing down their staff without pay while they retire to their mansions. Airlines quadrupling the price of flights for people that just need to get home. Fraudsters offering fake testing for the virus as a way to enter people’s homes and steal.

But we have seen so many more examples of hope, support and kindness. From live streaming of concerts, to parents continuing to pay their fees when schools have closed, to Woolworths offering jobs to Qantas staff, to (dare I say it) the conservative government’s fiscal stimulus packages that prioritises the most vulnerable.

Humans have an amazing innate drive to go out of our way to look out for each other. But for some reason, when we put on suits and enter board rooms, we tend to forget our shared humanity. The ‘us and them’ separation blinds us to the view from outside the boardroom walls.

But through this crisis, we are all as vulnerable as each other. We all need to work together and do our bit to get to the other side.

I hope the result of working together and building our empathy will be a commitment across our economy to strengthen the structures that give everyone the opportunity and support to live a decent and dignified life.

Structures like a bigger and more respected social enterprise ecosystem, so that the majority of businesses in our economy are social enterprises that put the health of people and our planet above profit.

Structures like a more expansive safety net – one that provides benefits that any politician themselves feels they could reasonably live on.

Structures like new partnerships (of equals) between the corporate and third sectors, that allow for cross-pollination of skills, experience and resources to increase the ability of both sectors to deliver more social impact.

We can’t let this crisis go to waste.

Let’s use this experience to remind ourselves that when it comes down to it, we are all one global tribe. We all depend on each other. And that when everyone is taken care of, we all benefit.

We have a once in a generation opportunity to hit the reset button on our economy and our society. Let’s use it wisely. And with empathy.

The post Could this crisis create the empathy we need to build a fairer society? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

It was an innocent question with good intent. The context however, was a Board meeting. The agenda item was the launch of a new facility. The Chair kindly suggested that perhaps staff might deal with this operational matter.

When the corporate world suffers from bad governance, the consequences are significant. Enron, Seimens, Thomas Cook, Carillion – just to name a few of the bigger failures.

But what about the third sector? How do we know what good or bad governance looks like?

The situation: the profile of boards in Australia and the UK

A review of the third sector in the UK – Taken on Trust: the awareness and effectiveness of charity trustees in England and Wales– provided the following snapshot:

• The average age of trustees is 62, with 8,000 aged over 75.
• 64% of trustees were men.
• 99% of trustees are white.
• 73% of trustees are recruited informally – generally by a word of mouth invitation.
• 55% of charities do not use a skills audit when recruiting.
• 30% do not run an induction for trustees.
• Only 40% of trustees have a fixed term – 60% can stay on forever.

In Australia, the recent ICDA Not-for-profit Governance Survey gave the following profile:

• 66% of board members are women.
• 43% of boards have at least one member who is from a culturally and linguistically diverse background.
• 68% of board members are aged over 50 and 27% are aged over 65.
• One in three boards do not have any system in place for reviewing their own performance.
• More than a third of board members say they did not receive a good induction.
• 50% of board members say they would benefit from governance training.
• One in ten boards do not measure success in any way and one in four do not collect any sort of performance data.
• 40% believe their board had insufficient understanding of the organisation’s finances.

The governance challenges in the third sector

While there are a few differences between boards in Australia and the UK (for example representation of women and people from diverse backgrounds), the data points to quite a few big concerns.

As one headline sums it up, governance in the third sector is ‘pale and stale’.

There is a large underrepresentation of young talent and a corresponding different worldview.

There appears to be huge opportunity to expand board representation in both countries to include CALD and BAME communities.

Organisations need to recruit, train and induct new board members on the basis of skills required – not willingness to be involved or existing contacts.

Boards need a good turnover that retains members for a term to ensure continuity, but moves members on to allow for fresh insights and dare it be said – innovation.

How we can improve: the 10 principles of good governance

Recent work completed in Australia by the Australian Institute of Company Directors and in the UK through a collaboration including Cass Business School, NCVO and the Charity Commission provide a set of principles that all Boards would do well to put in place.

These ten principles are a great place to start:

• Purpose and strategy: the organisation has a clear purpose and a strategy which aligns its activities to its purpose.
• Roles and responsibilities: there is clarity about the roles, responsibilities and relationships of the board.
• Board composition: the board’s structure and composition enable it to fulfil its role effectively.
• Board effectiveness: the board is run effectively and its performance is periodically evaluated.
• Risk management: board decision making is informed by an understanding of risk and how it is managed.
• Performance: the organisation uses its resources appropriately and evaluates its performance.
• Accountability and transparency: the board demonstrates accountability by providing information to stakeholders about the organisation and its performance.
• Stakeholder engagement: there is meaningful engagement of stakeholders and their interests are understood and considered by the board.
• Conduct and compliance: the expectations of behaviour for the people involved in the organisation are clear and understood.
• Culture: the board models and works to instil a culture that supports the organisation’s purpose and strategy.

Good governance is not only the very best option for the organisation being governed. In the sectors that care for people and planet, it is a crucial factor in making the world a better place for everyone.

The post What is good governance in the third sector? How we can do better appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

I recently read a short article on why kids should learn philosophy and immediately thought the same about economics – but not for kids – but for all the grown ups currently working feverishly to do good and change the world through socially innovative entrepreneurial enterprises.

In fact it occurred to me that there was a business opportunity or gap in the market as they say, to have a whole semester or two added on economics to all MBA and equivalent courses that now exist for social entrepreneurs.

By now you’re yawning because as Richard Denis recalls in his article in The Monthly “I remember my first lesson in economics like it was yesterday. I’d never heard a bigger bunch of crap in my life. It made no sense. The assumptions were flawed. The examples were ridiculous and the conclusions worse.”

And that’s about where we leave economics – back in high school.

Not that we don’t hear a lot about ‘the economy’. But economics – no thanks!

Let’s just get on and do it! Economics has nothing to do with changing the world. The solution lies with new business models to challenge and solve social problems. Poverty and inequality – all solved with scaling up, volumes, price point, marketing, distribution points, strategic planning, supply chains, market segmentation and financial modeling, and more financial modeling.

In the meantime while we all learn about ‘good’ business (or is it ‘business for good’?) the economy runs on, adjusted from time to time by the invisible hand of the ‘market’.

And we know as much as we need to know about ‘the economy’ because everyday we are educated about ‘the economy’ by politicians and media to such an extent that we know all we need to about economics. Right?

Richard Denis calls this constant everyday education “econospeak” noting that “the primary purpose of the econospeak that fills our airwaves, most of which is complete nonsense, is to keep ordinary people out of the big debates about tax, fairness, climate change and the provision of essential services. Econospeak is a great way to limit the options on our democratic menu. Would you like a small tax cut and a small cut in services or a big tax cut and a big cut in services? What? You want to spend more money in health and education? You must be mad. Just imagine how “the markets” would react to such a suggestion.”

What’s really startling is that while we have all been learning about ‘good’ business to solve social challenges, we’ve taken our daily dose of econospeak and swallowed it hook, line and balanced budget. As Denis notes “the whole strategy has worked a treat for the past few decades”.

Swallowing econospeak allows us to live with myths like, it is the lifestyle of the poor that threaten the economy, or, that tax concessions to the super rich will create more jobs, or, that the great financial crisis was caused by governments spending recklessly on public services, and that business above all else is how all our problems will be solved. Ignorance produced by econospeak is a powerful tool – after all, how can you criticize economic policy when you don’t understand economics?

Perhaps that’s where education is needed.

What if all of us who want to change the world for the better took some time to educate ourselves beyond econospeak so we had some tools to use when we critically consider the economy we are part of? What if every aspiring social entrepreneur had to complete a year of study in economics before studying business tools? What if this education allowed us all to understand why even the best intentions to change the world informed by econospeak, actually just perpetuate the very challenges we want to solve?

So where to begin? Here’s a sample of some really good economic thinking – and if you don’t want to read the whole book, look for articles that discuss the thoughts of the authors – even Wikipedia is better than gulping down headfuls of econospeak. So have a look at:

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money

Ha-Joon Chang, Economics: The User’s Guide

Joseph Stiglitz, The Great Divide

Thomas Picketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What can be done?

And after some reading, consider afresh Richard Denis’ final words: “you don’t need to be an economist to call out crap when you hear it. But unless people start calling it out and stop worrying about “what the markets think”, then one of the richest countries in the world, living at the richest point in world history, might continue to believe that we “can’t afford” to invest in a better health or education system . . . Economics doesn’t tell us that we need to cut taxes for the rich or cause climate change if we really want to help the poor. And “the markets” don’t tell us that either. Those are the sentiments of some wealthy people, and some politicians who represent them. But they say it in econospeak because it sounds so ridiculous in plain English.”

The post ‘Just do it’ and forget economics! appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Measurement is certainly a big issue, and no more so than in the social economy or the social sector. The proliferation of tools, agencies and consultants affirms that data and more data demonstrating how ‘effective’ you are as a social enterprise, charity, social firm, provider of human services, or green company is now crucial for providing evidence that your activities are having some kind of impact.

Enter big data. We have the technology to create, connect, correlate, aggregate, store, process and report on sophisticated sets of analytics, logarithms, equations, indicators and data.

So is all that information useful? Well, it depends on why you’re measuring your impact, and for whose interest.

Many measurement agencies have developed intricate formulas, assessment criteria and indicators, and charge a significant amount for access to their particular measurement tool kit. These metrics are worth buying because they will prove the success of your project to funding bodies and government.

But are these metrics actually relevant to delivering value for our customers and achieving our mission, as well as satisfying our funding bodies?

For example, let’s take all this measurement to the small impoverished Meru View School outside Arusha in Tanzania. It’s the school we support at The Dragonfly Collective. Let’s apply some of the metrics one can buy from those in the measurement industry.

The facts: $26 AUD provides two meals a day, health care and vitamins, pre-school education and introduction to English (essential for future prospects in Tanzania) for one child for one month.

The metrics (for customers):

• Did you get two meals today?
• Did you have a health check at school today?
• Did you have soap and running water to wash your hands before each meal and after you went to the toilet?
• Do you have enough clothes to wear?
• Did you count numbers today?
• Did you practice English today?
• Are you still hungry?

The metrics (for donors):

• Did you get the intended return on your investment when you contributed to this project?
• Are you happy with the outcomes for the children on the basis of your donation?
• What do you aspire for the children and have you achieved this with your donation?

The perspective you take when measuring can lead you down very different paths. Just because you’re ticking a measurement box, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right one to tick. What matter to customers in the immediate future might not actually be that complicated.

So in the spirit of developing complex metrics systems, as a Christmas gift to you all we have designed a sophisticated set of tools for you to measure your achievements over 2013 available at the Christmas give away price of £1000 or $1804.13 if purchased before midnight 24 December! Orders received before midnight will receive a free sample of turkey, ham, chicken, lobster, duck with all the trimmings and a free bottle of fizzy.

So happy Christmas from the team at The Dragonfly Collective. And as you reflect on all your achievements over the past twelve months, remember that not everything that matters can be measured, not every thing that can be measured matters. Sometimes it’s actually the little things that have the most impact.

Cheers to celebrating the little things that make a difference for others.

Talk more in 2014.

The post Measuring what matters appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Havel does not suggest that living on the margins in a physical sense is a great place to be. What Havel argues out of his lived experience in a communist dictatorship, is that many people can turn adversity into creativity and ideas that generate freedom and democracy, especially when they collaborate and act in community.

His words written some decades ago are validated today when people pushed to the margins take action together and creatively overcome adversity. For example, as Spain continues to cope with its economic crisis and attempts to address their recession with punitive austerity measures that by and large hurt the poor, in Andalusia where unemployment remains at 36% (for those aged 16 to 24 the figure is above 55%) one potentially very poor village called Marinaleda has defied poverty through creatively and ‘social’ innovation (see The Observer 20/10/13 The New Review p.16). In abject poverty in the 1070s, today while the rest of Spain suffers, Marinaleda enjoys a quality and standard of life because of a collaborative commitment to the communal use of land and village resources to ensure there is both food and jobs available for all its inhabitants. The Marinaleda cooperative works the 1,200 hectare El Humoso farm providing local jobs and sharing both the produce and the benefit across the village. Pushed to the margins, this village, led by a charismatic mayor, opted for a model that is the polar opposite of current neoliberal efficient individualistic capitalism. Against this ‘empire’ that produced the financial crisis that afflicts us still, the village has won, while the rest of Spain struggles.

The ‘margins’ of society can however refer to a philosophical (thinking) location rather than physical location. From around 1965 until mid-1980s this space was called the ‘counter-culture’. It was a space for questioning the status quo, for challenging authority, for ‘free’ thinking, for creativity and new ideas as well as a little drugs, sex and rock and roll. It was a time when people decided for a variety of reasons to live outside socially accepted norms. It is hard to contest that these two decades were amongst the most creative and innovative across all sectors of life in recent history.

Reaction to this creativity and freedom however has been very efficient. Led by the restructuring crusader Margaret Thatcher and supported by a third-rate ex-actor with primitive right-wing leanings in the USA called Ronald, three decades on, globalized market forces reign supreme, generally indifferent to the human and environmental damage they cause, and in which the gap between rich and poor has widened in real terms, no matter how the trickle-down theorists attempt to portray reality.

Now in the western democracies the majority of people assume they have power and with it contentment – so long as that power is consumer power and their contentment is rooted in material accumulation. It’s a deadening space where creativity and ideas are only acceptable if they support the status quo, and it is only questioned when it does not give more materially to its adherents. As Richard Flannery in his essay ‘The Australian Disease: on the decline of love and the rise of non-freedom’ observes: “in present day Australia, it doesn’t matter what you do or what you have done, so long as you conform to power. The only true crime in an ever-more bland Australia is to not conform . . . to speak out is to be declared a rat, . . . to not speak out is to be rewarded with endorsement and promotion . . . it is the Australian disease” (Quarterly Essay Issue 44 2011).

So where are the people living on the margins in a philosophical sense? Where can we find them? Where are the people living in a marginal thinking location that questions the status quo, searches for creativity, looks for new alternatives to the dominant discourse and does not forget about justice and equity?

One could assume they are to be found in the not-for-profit/NGO sector – organisations originally charged with providing services to those in society living physically on the margins. If markets depend on material self-interests, governments on coercion and power, the alternative base of the not-for-profit sector originally was one of moral commitment to ensure quality of life for those physically at the margins. One could assume this alternative space to that of markets and government would be the location of thinking philosophically from the margins. But this appears more and more improbable as many in leadership and executive roles in the not-for-profit sector primarily inhabit the physical space of the centralised (not the marginalised) and their acquiescence to the status quo is a key performance indicator in order for them to retain their position, and usually the revenue from government contracts (note: as with all broad brush stroke statements there are always outstanding exceptions, John Falzon of St Vincent de Paul being one of them).

So where are the spaces and places for creative radical thinking in Australia? Where are the people who are the cure to the Australian disease of conformism within a political-economic system that increasingly promotes hardship for those already physically on the margins? Where are those who can co-create alternative solutions like the village of Marinaleda in Andelusia, that combine thinking from the margins with practice to ensure those living physically on the margins don’t remain there? How do we solve this ‘disease’?

Here is a proposed solution: co-creation and collaboration. Invite people who are on the physical, as well as the philosophic margins, to work with you to find solutions to ongoing challenges and ‘wicked’ problems. Invite front-line staff to inform central office staff about the reality of working at the ‘front-line’ and set up ‘ideas incubators’ where the least powerful can be given the opportunity to have their ideas really considered. Bring the board-rooms and the street together so that the mayor of a town can sit down with the farm workers and co-create a solution. Let those on the margins both physically and philosophically hold a mirror up to those who stifle creativity and ideas and shake them awake to new possibilities.

We know it’s possible. We’ve seen it in action, and we’ve seen the results it can generate. It’s time to re-embrace the margins, the marginal and the marginalised.

The post Embracing the margins and the marginalised appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Let me take you to a little village called Tengeru just outside Arusha in Tanzania, where there is a pre-primary school called Meru View.

Meru View caters for 63 of the poorest children in the Tengeru village. Most of the children have lost either a mother or a father, and in some cases both parents, to HIV. Their families live in one or two room houses with dirt floors and no running water or electricity. Unemployment is high – most parents don’t work. For many of the children their school uniform is their only set of clothes. Often there is no food available at home, so they live on nothing more than sweet tea.

Access to the school is via a dirt road lined with banana trees and rubbish that’s barely passable by car. The school consists of a rectangular patch of dirt (the playground) and one set of buildings including four classrooms, an office and a storage room. There is no electricity, no play equipment, no text books for the children, only three teachers between four classes, and on some days (depending on funding) there aren’t enough pencils to go around.

Meru View is the only pre-primary school in the area. It provides the children with two meals a day, health care and pre-primary education in English. Its vision is to break the cycle of poverty by giving the poorest children in the village the best start in life through good health and education. Without Meru View, most of the kids that attend would not eat, would receive no health care and would have limited chance of moving into Primary School.

The children that attend Meru View are people like Paulina.

Paulina (pictured left) is four years old, and has been at Meru View since she was three. When she first arrived at Meru View she was significantly undernourished, lacked energy and was often unwell. After the Head Teacher arranged tests, it was confirmed that she was HIV positive. Her father passed away from disease, she has no grandparents and her mother is unemployed. Without an income, Paulina and her mother have nothing to eat. Paulina has only two sets of clothes, and only one pair of shoes.

Since attending Meru View, life has changed dramatically for Paulina and her mother. Paulina is now on the Government antiviral program for people who are HIV positive. Meru View takes care of all her other health needs, for example providing antibiotics and extra nutritional support when she recently caught a chest infection. Her mother works at Meru View sweeping the grounds, maintaining the fire pit and watering the vegetable garden. The school provides two meals a day for both Paulina and her mother – the only food that either of them will eat all day.

Paulina’s health has improved dramatically – she is now full of energy, and has a smile that would light up the whole world. She can count to 10, name colours, speak some words in English and is learning to read. When Paulina grows up she wants to be a fairy, or a teacher.

Paulina was one of the children that we had the privilege of meeting while we were in Tanzania. What really touched us and inspired us to support Meru View is that despite how little the children like Paulina have, or perhaps because of it, their graciousness and gratitude is astounding.

We were at the school one Saturday to help distribute a set of clothes to each child. The clothes were a hotch potch of second hand items, often a little bit worn or wrinkled. Every single child accepted what they were offered with absolute joy, and would look up at us with a shy smile and in a small voice would say “thank you teacher”. Compare that to the Western world where a child can throw a tantrum because they want to wear the yellow dress instead of the pink one, or because they like their sister’s shoes better than their own.

There is no spitting out your vegetables at Meru View. Every meal time, plates are licked clean, despite the fact that the two meals they receive at school are the same every day. On the Saturday we were out at the school, one of the girls said she was feeling sad that day. When we asked why, she said it was because she hadn’t had her porridge at Meru View. That’s when it dawned on us that if the school provides their only meals, on weekends the kids don’t eat at all.

All the children know that it’s an absolute privilege to receive an education. Here the kids cry when they can’t go to school, not the other way around. So many of the things we take for granted are new for them. We ran an art class with the three year olds (what they call ‘baby class’) and set out paints, textas, coloured pencils and butchers paper. When the kids just looked at us blankly, we realised that they had never seen paint before, and had never even used a coloured texta.

These are children that have barely enough to survive, let alone access to luxury items like paint, and yet they are happy, gracious and grateful.

The school runs entirely on donations and is managed by Vikki Thomas (pictured above with Paulina), a Nurse from the UK. Vikki is an inspiration herself. Following a gas bottle explosion where she suffered 67% burns to her face and body and lost a leg, she came to Africa to use her nursing skills to help others. She volunteers her time to manage the school and look after the children’s health. Vikki is The Dragonfly Collective’s latest Project Champion.

In the past few months, Meru View has lost a major donor. As a result, the school can no longer afford to provide vitamins to the children with their meals, and the budget for the meals program has been halved, meaning there is less food available for the kids. The school has also been forced to review the numbers of students they can support.

And so on behalf of the kids at Meru View we have two requests of you:

1. That you consider donating just $26, which will provide one month of food, medical care and education for a child at Meru View.
2. That you forward this request to your friends, family and colleagues.

We can guarantee that 100% of your donation will go directly towards feeding, educating and providing medical care to the children at Meru View. There are no administration fees to cover – Vikki, who manages the project, volunteers all her time, and any fees associated with international transfer of donations will be covered by The Dragonfly Collective.

If 63 people donate just $26, we will have funded the school for one full month, ensuring the kids receive vitamins and a full serve of food at meal times.

This is an incredibly worthy cause – we wouldn’t be asking for your support otherwise.

How to donate

The Dragonfly Collective will collect donations on behalf of Meru View. You can make a direct deposit into the below account. Please include your name in the payment details.

The Dragonfly Collective
Westpac Banking Corporation
BSB: 033039
Account number: 654029

The post Would you consider a $26 donation? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

If it wasn’t for the old stone ruins sitting on the hillsides, and the ever present images of Machu Picchu in the shop fronts of bookstores and tour companies, it would be hard to imagine that this world was previously governed by the once proud and powerful Inca nation.

Like so many countries around the world, hundreds of years ago Peru was ‘conquered’ by people from another land. In the case of Peru, it was the Spanish that marched into the high peaks of the Andes in the 1530s and spent the next 30 years wiping out the native Inca empire that stretched almost the entire Western coast of South America and numbered 10 million people at the time.

The Spanish considered the Incas barbarians, despite the observations of the Spanish Conqusitors that the buildings in the Inca empire were as grand and well constructed as those in Spain at the time, with massive stones locked together with such precision that a knife couldn’t fit between them. They observed that the Inca cities were well ordered, and the Inca leaders intelligent, fiercely brave and quick to learn.

These Inca ‘barbarians’ had developed a kingdom of stunning cities, including irrigation systems, agriculture, taxation systems and paved roads through the previously impassable Andes. Their society was flourishing and growing. In fact the Spanish discovered that there was an oversupply of production, where items from crockery to fabric to food were stored in large warehouses, and when the warehouses overflowed, the items were given away by the Inca leaders as gifts to the peasants.

As Kim Macquarrie notes in the book The Last Days of the Incas, the Incas succeeded in not only creating a massive empire, but more importantly guaranteeing all the empire’s millions of inhabitants the basic necessities of life – adequate food, water and shelter. This is an achievement that no subsequent Government – Spanish or Peruvian – has achieved since.

The Incas by no means had all the answers to developing a productive society (and displayed some cut-throat behaviour of their own in establishing their empire), but they weren’t doing too badly, even by European standards at the time.

As we walked through the peaks and valleys of the Andes, on the same roads the Incas had built hundreds of years earlier, the question running through our minds was – what is it about human nature that leads humans to the kind of destructive behaviour displayed by the Spanish? What is it that leads us to make the determination that our ideas, abilities, ways of life, are somehow ‘better’ than others?

It is clear that the Spanish sought to conquer the Incas primarily out of greed – for more wealth, more land, more prestige. The Inca empire was fabulously wealthy – rich in gold and silver. Each of the initial 180 Spanish Conquisitors walked away from their first plunder of the capital city of the Inca Empire (Cuzco) with 80 years worth of their salaries in gold and silver (literally ripped from the walls of the Palace of the Sun God – the European equivalent of the Vatican – to the horror of Cuzco’s inhabitants).

But embedded within the act of genocide and plunder must have been the assumption that there was nothing of value to retain in the Inca culture, and nothing the Spanish could learn.

This assumption is not unique to the Spaniards of the 1500s.

In a modern day setting, this type of arrogance occurs in not-for-profit organisational settings often – to the detriment of the local communities that these organisations seek to assist.

We met with a women in Washington DC who has spent years working with the justice system in America. She relayed the story of a meeting she attended, where four large not-for-profit groups were offered a multi-million dollar grant from the Government to develop a project to support people exiting prison. Everyone around the table felt it was a great opportunity and agreed they would be part of it. But within one hour of the meeting, every single group had called to say that they would only participate in the project if they were leading it. The end result? No deal.

Similarly, a panel at a conference for Baptist not-for-profit leaders we attended a few years back (that had just announced that they had decided to investigate opportunities for partnerships with other Christian denominations) was asked whether they had considered working with groups of others faiths, for example Jewish or Buddhist not-for-profit agencies. The response? Silence. Blank looks. Some looks of incredulity (who would even think of such a thing?). The answer was a resounding ‘no’.

What wasted opportunities. And for whose benefit?

So what is it about human nature that leads us to assume that we know best, are they only ones that can do best, and that we should have exclusive rights to whatever it is we think we’re best at?

What if, instead of being threatened by the knowledge or power of others, we sought to learn from it, in the process strengthening both our own ability to deliver positive community impact, as well as that of our partners?

What if the Spanish had sought to learn from the Incas, to replicate the best parts of the Inca culture back in Spain, and to share their knowledge with the Inca people? The native Peruvians actually greeted the first Spanish ship with gifts, and questions. Perhaps that’s the first lesson the Spanish could have learnt from the local people.

What would the Inca empire look like today, if it had been left in peace to flourish and develop alongside the rest of Europe? What might we be able to learn from the Incas, if their empire still existed?

Kim Macquarie ponders this question in his book, suggesting that had the Spanish allowed an Inca Emperor to govern the last remaining Inca province in Peru (Vilcabamba) alongside the Spanish, then perhaps today the kingdom of Vilcabamba might be represented at the United Nations with a Quechua speaking ambassador. The same tourists who visit Machu Picchu every day might have the chance to visit a functioning Inca capital, perhaps learning about ancient Inca techniques such as stone cutting.

The question ultimately comes back to the idea of a ‘common good’. Working together for shared benefit. There are many great examples where this is occurring, on both a micro and macro level. And we want to encourage more of it.

Let’s not continue to display the same arrogance as the Spanish Conquisitors, who in their short-sighted greed, destroyed an enormous amount of valuable Inca intellectual capital. Perhaps a little humility and a cooperative spirit could be our first lesson.

The post To conquer or collaborate? appeared first on The Dragonfly Collective.

Singe points out that as many as 27,000 children die every day from poverty that could be easily and cheaply helped by existing charities. He notes the psychological barriers to charitable giving in the western world, including cognitive dissonance where a public belief can be held – for example ‘we are all very generous donors in Australia’ – that is contradicted in practice.

Singer says that many of his readers enjoy at least one luxury that is less valuable than a child’s life. He says his readers ought to sacrifice such a luxury and send proceeds to charity, if they can find a reliable one. He clarifies that people have a right to spend money any way they want, but says that fact does not change the way one ought to spend it.

This once again raised for us the issue of how comfortable middle-class affluent Australians might understand their role in alleviating poverty, both within Australia and globally. It also raised the issue of the amount of effort and time that is put into fundraising and marketing campaigns by numerous not-for-profits, often about the same cause, without any interest in collaboration to maximize effect, or indeed to educate Australians long-term about their role as global citizens.

It seems that little has changed over many years in the Australian ‘charities’ sector. Australians, compared to many Europeans, know very little about the real statistics and the devastating human impact of global poverty. The size of Australia’s GDP allocated to overseas development assistance is hardly an issue that will surface at the next elections. The pitiful amount provided through social security benefits for single mothers and long-term unemployed in Australia, or the third world conditions of many Indigenous communities will not be issues that are crucial for any party to be elected or lose government.

Unlike Sweden, there are no coordinated ‘development education’ programs in Australia where education about suffering and poverty in the two-thirds world is on the primary school curriculum, and remains a part of the education process through to the tertiary level. Most not-for-profits have little resources to provide ‘education’ with the sole purpose of teaching people about the causes and effects of poverty, separate to fundraising and marketing. It seems that ‘education’ is not seen as an end in itself but always tied to seeking a dollar.

So the challenge for the Australian charity sector appears to be unchanged for the last three decades at least.  How do you effectively educate people to think mindfully about both domestic and global poverty, and how do you take disparate resources in the Australian charities sector and combine them to produce effective education initiatives?

Maybe that is where we can go backwards and learn from history in order to move forward. It was way back in 1964 that ‘development education’ was added to the Swedish curriculum by Olof Palmer (the then Swedish Minister for Education and future Prime Minister who was assassinated in 1986). And yet there is still nothing similar on offer in Australia.

Maybe if all the different not-for-profits in the charity sector in Australia combined resources they could effectively lobby and produce resources to ‘teach for change’, commencing with the primary school curriculum and then targeting specific adult market segments.

This means a lot more than 30 second TV adverts featuring a smiling African child. It means a concerted and collaborative venture where individual not-for-profits combine their energies to educate people of all ages in Australia about the real effects of poverty and suffering. This would be a long-term project, but then domestic and global poverty appears to be an equally long-term blight on the human condition.

Such a concerted education campaign might at least offer a counter-point to the Hollywood ethos of materialistic, mindless consumerism that dominates and fuels media coffers and provides a frame of reference for the lifestyles of so many Australians.

So who or what could coordinate such a project? How could individualism and competition within the not-for-profit sector be mediated for the common good – both domestically and globally?

Is this a possible role for the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC)? Can the ACNC envisage a role for itself beyond compliance to include coordination and collaboration of long-term and impactful education strategies for the common good? Perhaps individual not-for-profit organisations could take a moment to stop and consider what role long-term education of the Australian public may have on the issues they are seeking to address. Or perhaps there is another body already working on this? Is there any energy out there to collaborate and educate for change and a more just world? We would love to know if there is and join forces!

We were impressed to hear about the Teaching for Change project in Washington, that provides educational resources to schools to enhance students’ understanding of issues relating to social justice. There is enormous opportunity to establish a similar project in Australia.

Surely it is hard to refute that a more ethically engaged and literate society will tend to make for a better quality of life, both for educated donors and those who benefit from their engagement to end poverty.

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We’ve come across some exceptional projects that are making a significant impact for the local community. There is the School of St Jude, established ten years ago with three students, that now caters for 1,600 of the poorest and smartest children in the region, funded entirely by donations. There is also the Shanga Shop, a social enterprise employing local people with physical disabilities to make glassware, jewellery and clothes from recycled items.

Both of these projects are flourishing. But unfortunately they are rare. The majority of the projects we’ve visited are at best struggling to operate, and at worst slightly questionable in their intentions.

There is the women’s refuge, the only one of its kind in Arusha. It provides housing, food and fees to cover education for women who have been abused or abandoned by their families. It’s an incredibly inspiring and very well organised project, but at the moment they only have enough funds to cover the next two weeks of operations.

There is a local school providing primary education (a combination of free education and fee-paying students), where all income from school fees and donations is deposited into the personal bank account of the Principal. When you find out that all the teachers, including the Principal, where given pay rises last month, while some of the classrooms don’t even have roofs yet (apparently due to a lack of funds) you can’t help but question what’s really going on.

There is the hostel for volunteers designed to link volunteers with local projects, which in theory is a fabulous idea. But there is no volunteer management plan – ‘volunteers’ are dropped at a project and end up standing in the middle of a school yard with no direction about what support is needed and how they might assist. And some are wondering why local services recommended by the hostel appear to cost double the price of services that have been arranged from elsewhere (taxis being one case in point).

Amongst all that you’re left feeling slightly uneasy, and a little overwhelmed by the need. You get the sense that there is some kind of missing link, but you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Why wouldn’t the NGO sector in Arusha be flourishing?

There is no shortage of great intentions. There are numerous small start-up organisations around the Arusha region attempting to address a multitude of challenges from access to education, to supporting abused women to housing orphans.

There is no shortage of obvious need – it lurks on every street corner. There is the man that follows us home most days attempting to sell us Australian coins. There are the people wheeling around carts of scrap plastic and metal they’re hoping to sell. There are the kids that don’t attend school and spend their days running around the villages.

There is no shortage of people that are willing to contribute either. There are many passionate and committed volunteers in Tanzania, many supporting multiple projects. And the fundraising success that some projects have had indicates that there is no shortage of people willing to donate, if you know where to look.

But it seems that there is work to be done in connecting the dots. Connecting good intentions, with evidence-based need, with people who are willing to offer time and funding.

And there is the added complication of low levels of trust in the community, born from poverty that leads to desperation. As a ‘muzungo’ (a white person) you often feel like a walking dollar sign and never really know if you’re being taken for a ride. Even amongst locals there are difficulties. The schools we’ve been working with lock everything up at night, including their chickens, because whatever is left unsecured will be stolen.

The lack of efficiencies is also a challenge. The locals operate on what they call ‘Africa time’. There is a saying in Africa – ‘pole pole’- which means ‘slowly slowly’. ‘Soon’ in Africa can mean three hours later, and apparently in Africa you’re doing well if you get one thing done per day. It took us two entire mornings just to get one quote for a new chicken coop for one of the schools.

In that environment, how do you build a sustainable and impactful project that fights poverty and oppression? In the face of all the challenges, do you give up? Crawl into a foetal position and say it’s all too hard? Never.

There are two obvious opportunities from our perspective. One is strategic and business planning (including financial, marketing and fundraising planning). The majority of projects have no strategic plan, no business plan, no articulated mission or vision statement, and all are in desperate need of funding. Some don’t even keep records of accounts. When we asked the Principal at one school for a copy of her books, she brought us a piece of paper where she had hand written the cost of the items she purchased last month.

Without a strategic plan and a clear mission that sets priorities, everything becomes a good idea. When it became clear to us that we weren’t going to get any guidance on what kind of volunteer support we could offer at the projects we visited, we started to make our own suggestions. Would you like a new chicken coop? Yes please! Would you like a vegetable garden? Absolutely! What about new school books for the kids? Of course! Could we support you with fundraising, or teaching assistance, or sports activities, or painting or building a new shelf? Yes to everything. Which leaves you not really knowing where to start.

The other opportunity is collaboration and partnerships between NGOs. In the time we’ve been here we haven’t come across any partnership models. The projects don’t seem to be aware of how many or what type of other organisations are operating in their space. There is no real need for a ‘competitor analysis’ in the sense that demand for services well and truly exceeds supply, but there is a seemingly obvious opportunity for NGOs with similar missions to strengthen each other through collaboration and shared learning.

Filling those two gaps alone could make a significant impact for a lot of the projects we’ve visited.

A friend of ours who works at The School of St Jude made the wise comment that the need in Africa is overwhelming, and that’s why you need to pick one project (one clearly defined need) and stick to making an impact in that space.

We couldn’t quite narrow it down to one, but we have narrowed it down to two projects that we plan to support long term (more will follow in upcoming blogs). One project we will work with on a bro-bono basis to develop a strategic plan, marketing plan and fundraising plan, and to look into options for collaboration with other similar NGOs. The other we will be supporting with direct financial assistance.

It’s easy to become disenfranchised in Africa, particularly when you arrive with high hopes about the contribution you can make. But that doesn’t mean you should give up. Through long-term partnerships with two projects, we’re hoping we can make a focused impact in working for a more just world – pole pole.

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Now granted my background is in marketing, so naturally I’m going to see marketing as a crucial component of any organisation, but I’ve been genuinely surprised at how many not-for-profits and social enterprises either don’t have a marketing plan, or don’t have any marketing staff at all.

In fact this has been proven. Research conducted into not-for-profit marketing across the US, the UK and Australia by the University of Woollongong in 2009 drew two interesting (and slightly alarming) conclusions. Firstly, only one fifth of the marketing professionals they interviewed had formal training in marketing (and that’s using the broadest possible definition of ‘training’ including on the job training). And secondly, not-for-profit marketers tended to take an ‘organisation-centred’ approach to marketing focussing on one-off promotions and tactics, rather than embracing the full marketing concept beginning with customer research followed by marketing strategy. Only 10% of the marketing professionals surveyed cited marketing strategy as a priority. That’s a scarily small number.

When I read that research, my first though was, yep that sounds about right. My second thought was, what are we going to do about it?

I started talking to the Australian Marketing Institute about a new project called Marketing for Good. We put a call out to all the not-for-profit organisations that were part of the Australian Marketing Institute, and very quickly around 30 not-for-profit marketers put their hands up to join the group. The most common comment at the time was – it’s about time someone setup something like this!

We ran four forums, each focussing on a particular topic, kicking off with a presentation from an industry expert in that particular area, followed by group brainstorming, discussion and a lot of sharing of challenges. Almost all members of the group expressed their frustration at the lack of respect for marketing in their organisations, and as a result the lack of resources they had to work with (compounded by the lack of representation of marketing at Executive level).

It would seem that for many not-for-profits and social enterprises, marketing is an afterthought, seen as something that the receptionist could probably do in their spare time (I have come across many marketers that started their careers as receptionists).

Our answer to this lack of understanding was the Marketing for Good Tool Kit, a practical guideline full of tips and advice for conducting a strategic marketing program in a not-for-profit context. The kit is designed primarily for those that are new to the marketing industry, but could also be useful for CEOs and Executive teams to help generate an understanding of the level of discipline and training required to run an effective marketing program. The kit covers four crucial areas: marketing strategy; market research; campaign implementation; and, marketing metrics.

I would strongly encourage all marketing professionals in the not-for-profit or social enterprise sector to read through the tool kit. And for the Directors of social enterprises that don’t have a marketing team to do the same.

Education is the first step to change. And a change in the level of importance placed on marketing is long overdue in the not-for-profit and social enterprise sector.

You can download the Marketing for Good Tool Kit in our publications section. It’s a free resource for the industry, so please share it with anyone who you think would gain value from it, and if you have any suggestions to enhance it or any general questions, please get in touch with me.

Let’s work together so that discussions around marketing in not-for-profits and social enterprises are no longer met with apprehension or ignorance from people who aren’t familiar with the area, and instead marketing conversations and activities are informed, strategic and generate real social impact.

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