Social Change By Design

One of the most common issues I've seen on the ground is clarity of, and coherence between, Vision, Mission and Strategy. This is often the root cause behind poor solution design, difficulties in achieving lasting outcomes, and challenges with raising money.

To make it easier to explain how they fit together and the order in which they should be developed, I've put together a short video that connects the dots for you.

The video is based on learnings from my work with more than 100 projects around the world. I'll try and address common issues, myths and challenges faced by social organisations in both designing for outcomes as well as delivering them.

[Note: If the video doesn't play in your browser, view on YouTube at http://youtu.be/aRcox743Dfg]

Here's the transcript with a downloadable graphic in case it makes the video easier to process:

Very simply, with social change, direction is laid down by your vision, and your mission is to achieve that vision. The trouble is that if your vision isn't clear or sensible, you end up without proper direction, and consequently without a proper basis for design. Your strategies end up all over the place, and you become very susceptible to mission drift. Outcomes lose coherence, and impact becomes a random pick n mix. Donors struggle to connect with unclear goals, and shy away from disconnected strategies. The end result as I mentioned earlier, is a struggle for survival, but more importantly a struggle to achieve the impact that is needed on the ground.

After addressing this issue a number of times, I've put together an easy DIY toolkit to help you visualise how all the pieces connect together.

Let's call it a Metamodel of Solution Design. A blueprint for your organisation. To keep it short, I'll focus here on a high level overview to show how everything connects, but I'll explore each piece and provide working examples in later posts to help make it a little more real.

People tend to start with either vision or mission, and sometimes even with strategies. In actual fact the first place to start is with the Problem Definition.

Without a good characterisation and deep understanding of the problem, none of the other aspects of solution design have any hope of being effective.

Contrary to general assumption, the problem definition is not a one-line statement. What we're talking about here is a detailed picture of the problem at hand, with data that validates and benchmarks the outcomes that indicate there is a problem that needs addressing.

Once you've got these, you need to understand the root causes behind those characteristics; in other words, understand what drives the problem.

The benchmarks in your problem definition will allow you to identify Macro Indicators, and thus the outcomes to aim for. These should be lasting % point changes on a regional level over a mid to long time-frame. Over time they will also tell you if your strategies are actually achieving anything useful, and whether or not you need to rethink.

Critically, the problem definition defines why you care, and why you set up your organisation in the first place. It is the fundamental basis for your existence as a social entity, so invest the time to get it right.

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Once you have the problem well defined - you can then move on to Vision.

Your vision is what the problem looks like when it's fixed. Again, what is needed here is a detailed picture rather than a single statement. With this, you have the potential to inspire, and you have a proper target to aim for. You can later summarise this into a one-liner for communication purposes.

The vision also helps you define your targets. I recommend splitting it into at least three phases - a short term realistic vision, a mid-term challenging vision, and a long term aspirational one.

Overall your vision provides goals and direction. It is the fundamental basis for design and decision making.

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Once you've got this in place, your Mission is then to address the problem and achieve the goals and targets set by your vision.

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Your Strategies are how you will achieve the mission. In other words, how you aim to fix or eradicate the problem altogether. Focus your strategies on the root causes identified in the problem definition.

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Roadmaps are how those strategies will be applied over the timeframes you set to achieve the mission. This is where you identify short and long term programmes, and understand dependencies and priorities.

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Tactics are how your strategies breakdown into actions and delivery planning along the phases of your roadmap.

You are free to focus maximum detail on the short term, because the roadmap lets you understand what needs to come next. Keep your planning light for the later stages, because your blueprint will evolve as you go along.

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Strategies and roadmaps together help define Organisational Design and operational structure, along with how they will need to scale or evolve over time.

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Roadmaps and tactical programmes provide your Micro Indicators. These are numerical increases in size, impact or reach in short timeframes. Many organisations use these as actual impact indicators, but this is a flawed approach. All they do is tell you if you're on track with your plan. They don't necessarily mean that your plan or strategies are solving the problem in the long term, which is what your design should be aiming for.

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Finally, your detailed tactical planning enables you to Cost your work, which then allows you to raise the appropriate financing or funding.

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I recommend reviewing the whole conceptual framework about 9 months into an annual cycle. You should aim to adjust targets, strategies and roadmaps based on learnings and/or how the environment is changing.

Then repeat the detailed tactical planning for the next year with higher level adjustments across the rest of the time-frame where needed.

If you've taken the time to really understand the problem, your core vision and mission on the other hand should remain constant until data on macro outcomes indicates that the problem has been resolved or that it is no longer an issue.

At this point you and your organisation are ready to exit that particular space. You can then choose to close down, or switch attention to another issue. With human transformation work, you're typically looking at between 8 and 15 years as a sensible time-frame to really start seeing impact on a macro level. Resolving an embedded issue altogether will likely take you even longer. Regardless of what anyone tells you, there are no quick fixes and no magic bullets.

Many thanks to Akshay Cherian for helping me put this together, and credit to Barbara Holtmann for coining the phrase 'what it looks like when it's fixed', although I've used it here in a slightly different context.

Thanks for tuning in. Please share if you found it useful.

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Impact Financing Challenges and 7 Potential Solutions

This post is about new alternative financing options and the challenges they present to social entities around the world.

Along my journeys around the world, I worked with more than a hundred social organisations of all types. From ‘first storey’ ones running programmes to secondary and tertiary social institutions like funding intermediaries and foundations. The full list is here. Given the financial stresses that the world is currently under, I’m sure you can imagine that much of my time was spent in helping design new structures and approaches for reducing dependency on traditional fund-raising.

Traditional Fundraising

1. Donations from Friends and Family
2. Street level and online collection campaigns and donation drives
3. Larger scale hand-outs and Endowments from High Net Worth Individuals
4. Grants from Foundations and Funding Intermediaries
5. International Development Funds – Governmental (eg USAID) / Trans-Governmental (eg WorldBank)
6. Corporate Social Responsibility

 

The big challenge that non-profits, intermediaries and social entrepreneurs have been facing is that traditional funding has dried up with the recession, while at the same time the number of entities effectively vying for the same funds is increasing as the internet levels the global playing field. Couple this with the fact that most funders haven’t really got a clue what they’re doing and you’ve got a situation where organisations are forced into a pied piper situation. Follow the funder into whatever hole they dictate. This is both demoralising and unproductive en-route to any desired social impact.

In most countries around the world, there is also limited or no Government funding for social or non-profit enterprises, so organisations are having to consider other alternatives.

Alternative Financing Options

The following in no order of priority are rapidly growing in take-up all over the world

1. Revenue Streams
2. Sponsorship from large corporate or multinational entities
3. Crowd-funding
4. Social Loans
5. Social Investment
6. Hybrid Value Chains (Inclusive Business Models)
7. Self Financing Business Models (Social Enterprise)

1. Revenue Streams

Most people would have you believe that non-profit entities generally have no financial or business acumen. This is not true at all. Many mid-sized and large non-profits operate a range of activities that generate income. Social organisations can directly or indirectly monetise a range of things from Products to Services to Advice, Brand, Data and I.P. (knowledge, learning, methodology, tools). Thinking along business principles brings a range of operational benefits including agility and efficiencies. This is the option I usually recommend, but organisations have to be watchful to maintain priorities.

The simple reality is that transformative work can rarely be funded by revenue generating activities alone. It takes between 8 and 15 years to really transform the lives and environments of people and communities and that kind of intensive support and interaction can rarely be funded by peripheral revenue streams. If a social organisation in the transformation space is able to cover 15 or 20% of its operating cost through its own revenue streams, it’s usually doing pretty well.

The danger of revenue streams is that they often feel like high priority even though they are not the primary finance source. This means that they can often drain the time and energy of the leaders of the organisation away from the social mission, or worse still result in significant mission drift. The best way to take on revenue streams is to ensure that they have their own dedicated people and that they spin off from work that the organisation already does in delivering its social mission.

2. Sponsorship from large corporate or multinational entities

As social networks continue to humanise and change the face of brand perception, companies are ramping up their connections with social change. This presents an increasing opportunity to leverage sponsorship for social movements and campaigns. They can also provide a range of value from expertise to connections but often need exclusivity and/or adherence to their own set of conditions. The sponsor is usually looking for three things to make it worth their while: Reach, Scale and Impact. If your project can provide these, then this is an option worth considering. Here’s the basic proposal structure you will need.

Unfortunately, there's only a certain number of corporates large enough and interested enough to run social sponsorship programmes. In Mexico for example there were probably only about 20 obvious candidates... HSBC, AXA, Zurich Bank, Scotia Bank, Axtel, Kleenex, Kotex, Marti, Danone, Wal-Mart, Gamesa, Colgate, Novartis, Pfizer, Cemex, Bimbo, P&G, Cadbury, Kraft, Pepsi Co and Femsa - and only about 2 of these were actually local companies. What I found therefore was that social organisations, large and small, were all competing for funding from the same players. The small ones can't really compete with the bigger organisations, and the bigger organisations need more funding than is now available after the recession, so nobody wins except the funder, whose primary goal is brand kudos and audience recognition.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but I'd imagine that if all these companies and foundations co-operated to create a single fund, and then split this to cater for larger umbrella organisations and smaller grassroots organisations separately, there'd be a better distribution of funding. Specifying focus areas would still allow companies to be associated with the projects that fit the image they want to project, and they'd all benefit from the economies of scale and removal of duplication of administrative effort and cost.

3. Crowd-funding

Crowd-funding is simply a fancy word for getting lots of people to put in a small amount of money to your venture, typically online. In reality donation drives are an example of crowd-funding, but these typically only apply to projects and organisations formally registered as Charities. If you’re looking to set up revenue streams, finance local economic development or run a project without formal charitable status, your options used to be very limited. Today however there are a number of avenues to crowd-fund your projects. Some of them require a return on investment, while others don’t. Here’s some sites you can use

• http://www.giveforward.com/
• https://www.profounder.com/
• http://www.kapipal.com/
• http://www.createafund.com/
• http://www.thepoint.com/
• http://www.crowdrise.com/
• http://www.socialvibe.com/

4. Social Loans

These may seem like an oxymoron, but they do exist, at least in the western space. Organisations like the Adventure Capital Fund provide development loans to non-profits and social enterprises which then have to be paid back the same as any other loan. These can be useful in moving organisations forward; come with a bit more flexibility than a standard bank loan; and usually involve useful coaching and business development support to help ensure ability to pay back. In principle this ought to work, but for all the talk of the triple bottom line, my experience has been that lending and investment entities do not weigh the social impact the same as financial return. Inability to pay back the loan will not be overlooked regardless of how much benefit is being provided to the community, and compromises to the social mission all the way down to liquidation will be enforced in order to ensure recovery of finance. In other words, be careful!

5. Social Investment

This is the big hype of the moment. The apparent answer to all our scaling prayers. Social Investment of course is really only an option for social businesses and not a viable funding strategy for general development work. Investors aren’t interested in non-profit or human transformation programmes. They’re looking to fund new technologies, utilities, energy, products, enterprise and saleable services. The typical IRR is still 30% and for many investors this is just another opportunity to make money, gain competitive advantage in an increasingly socially aware market, and look good at the same time. Aside from the few that are really trying to do something positive, I’ve already been pulled into extricating a series of social organisations from investors doing everything from under the radar land grabs, to fraud and brute exploitation in the sharing of profits. It’s all still too new and exciting for much of the negative aspects to surface, but be sure that it will in the next few years.

My usual advice is that if your organisation isn’t simply an alternative business, and doesn’t have legal, contractual and financial expertise equivalent to that of the investing entity, the power imbalance is too steep. However good it looks on the surface; best avoid.

6. Hybrid Value Chains (Inclusive Business Models)

The hybrid value chain model is relevant only to the limited spaces where social enterprises are working with local or indigenous producers or communities, and can connect these with commercial organisations looking to reduce production costs or to scale their markets; thus creating partnerships that should result in financial and social benefit for all parties. From my experience however, I find that the winner here is usually the corporation. They receive brand kudos and often a massively subsidised entry into new markets, while social and community players absorb the brunt of cost and complication. This is because they are usually entering new operational spaces without the expertise to cost, plan or deliver what they’re taking on. Not because they aren’t capable, but because their skills are differently focused. The result is usually a massive underestimation and under-costing of commercial deliverables by the social players, putting them at much higher risk than the commercial partner.

7. Social Enterprise and Self Financing Business Models 

Self-financing business models are the obvious answer for complete independence, but it isn't really that simple for many social organisations. For starters, many of the founders don't have deep business skills or experience because their expertise is focused on human challenges. More importantly they don't have the spare time or resource available to identify and set these models up. The standard funder solutions all focus on up-skilling the people that run social organisations, but over the past few years I've begun to realise that while this is needed, it is not going to address the problem. The reason is that business model innovation in a social context is harder than simply starting with a business idea that sells. There are of course exceptions to every rule, but redesigning organisations to cope with these new practices is often more complicated than anything you could expect someone without significant experience to achieve.

Where organisations start out as social businesses or ‘social enterprises’ they may avoid the problem of managing business models in context, but immediately face the ongoing challenge of balancing out social impact and profit. This is simple enough with one-dimensional products or services like solar lamps or microfinance, but not so easy with long term transformative or development goals. The big myth being perpetuated by the sector is that impact and profit are not mutually exclusive, but in reality they often collide head-on. The ongoing exploitation and failures of Microfinance across the world are a good example of this. At some point the commercial entity’s priority typically shifts from social benefit to financial survival and/or growth. Without very clear ongoing definitions and regulation of priority, the grey area often blurs and we’ve ended up in a sector that is massively based on spin.

It is definitely possible and desirable to design transformative programmes so they can be self-financing, but the sector is neatly ignoring the fact that they take longer to break-even than equivalent businesses that don’t have to cost for ethical and development practices. These entities may be financially viable but are unlikely to ever make serious money for their owners, and the number of small and mid-sized social enterprises that operate at survival levels bears this out.

Out in the field and away from the ‘first world’, I found most social enterprises to maintain non-profit rather than commercial status. Their charity status usually goes a long way towards subsidising costs and provides them with alternate means of financing if their revenue streams fail to meet operating expenses in the pursuit of social impact.

Coping with Financing and Operating Challenges 

One of the things I’ve been advocating for is for umbrella organisations to set-up Shared Service (Resource) Centres that add the skill and resource capacity that smaller organisations need in order to be able to innovate and grow. I've helped set these up for Local Government when I was working as a Consultant in the UK, and don't believe this would be difficult to set up for the social sector. I wrote a bit about them in my article on partnerships for the social sector (http://bit.ly/4BSu9y) and put up some scribbles from a workshop with UnLtd on designing Shared Resource Centres in a presentation here:

Designing Shared Service Centres For Social Enterprises V0.1 from Rizwan Tayabali

It’s specific to their context, but you’ll get the jist.

Some organisations like Sustentavia are also starting to provide this improved operating capacity as consultancies. They have clever business models which recognise that you can't really expect cash strapped social organisations to pay for services up front when they don't have the money, and hence aim for long term partnerships and investment in future financial success instead.

Overall, you could suggest that I paint a bleak picture, but this is the reality out there. We still have a way to go. Of course, as mentioned earlier, there are exceptions to every rule and laudable successes in every financing category, but exceptions aren’t going to solve problems on the scale we’re dealing with around the globe.

My usual suggestion is to understand the risks and challenges that the different options present. Then pick and choose the financing mechanism, or combination of, that your organisation is best able to manage and cope with. If you proceed sensibly then any of the above should work reasonably well for you.

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