Designing for Civil Society

Governance is more than Board behaviours

Good governance for nonprofits will not be achieved by simply importing recommendations about 'proper' Board behaviour from the private sector, suggests David Walker writing in yesterday's Guardian
He quotes Liberal Democrat peer Andrew Phillips and charity lawyer as saying: "Some of most dynamic and wonderful charities I have to deal with have crap governance on certain managerial and academic views.
"But some of the most conformist and risk-free have got everything perfect in governance terms."
The broader point to emerge is that governance is not just about moderating power relationships between owners and executives (as in some private sector governance models).
As David Walker remarks: "The key question is ownership. In the public and voluntary sectors, ownership is a mystery. Who owns Oxfam or Shelter? If social tenants owned their own homes, they would no longer be tenants. It suits trustees of public bodies to emphasise their independence, saying, "We are not beholden to ministers or councillors." But does that mean they control their organisation's assets?
"Phillips is impatient with theological discussion about boards, arguing that, in practice, charity trustees know their job is to ensure the public interest is upheld and to get on with it. Besides, we don't know much about how corporate boards operate, in any sector, nor about their effectiveness."
These issues and more were explored extensively in a recent Home Office-funded study by the Foundation for Good Governance, in which I played a small part. The full report, and evidence taken, is now available here.

On being an ideal conference speaker

I wrote recently on Why my ideal conference may not be yours, and finished with an invitation for reflections on being a good participant. David Casacuberta, who organised the Barcelona congress that prompted my post, has now risen to the challenge with thoughts on being a good speaker, in a comment. I have reposted below so that it isn't missed.
I should add that after John Moore's complaints about lists on blogs, supplemented by Chris Corrigan, I'm a little wary of 1-10 points. I think David's should go through though.

How far should blogalysts check before reporting?

When bloggers become reporters, or commentators, how far and in what way should they check the facts? I bumped up against this issue in a small way following my post about circuit writers, and it has made me think about the bigger question of blogger as.... well, not quite journalist but perhaps blogalyst. Part blogger, part analyst and part catalyst as Ross Mayfield terms it.
First the small issue. I spotted an article about UK government funding for nonprofit technology support, and over-interpreted it to suggest circuit riders were going to get a large slice of the £10 million in prospect - writing "Circuit riders scoop the funding pool". An email or two later (though no on-site comments) I realised my mistake, added a 'maybe' to the headline and inserted an updating explanation to the post. I also dropped a message into the circuit riders list saying what had happened, and asking for any further clarification.
Today I got a friendly call from one of the members of the consortium behind the bid, offering to meet and give me the full story, and I gladly accepted. More on that next week. I hope it will be a chance to help promote collaborations between the various interests that are circling around the funding pot.
Now the bigger issue. I confess that my headline was prompted in part by my understanding from other sources that circuit riders are seen as front runners for major government funding - though I didn't spell that out. So - should I have checked before blogging? First thought - yes. When I was a print journalist I certainly would have done so, or written a more cautious piece.
But I then thought how difficult it would become for organisations if every blogger started to ask for confirmations, quotes and so on... and how uninteresting if blogs just 'gave us the facts' without any interpretation. So what is the code of conduct for the blogalyst, and what are the lessons for organisations likely to be blogged?
I think that if we wish to be blogalysts we do have a responsibility to check facts where necessary, avoid over-interpretation, explain our thinking - and I plan to do better in future. We should alert those we mention to our posts.
At the same time, organisations will need to recognise that there is a new media out there which is as much about conversations as reports, press releases and so on. They may wish to join the conversations themselves, with their own blogs able to provide updates and interpetation.
If a blogalyst alerts them to a post, and leaves comments open, there is an opportunity for instant correction or reinterpretation.
The difficulty for the organisation, I guess, is that means some staff member has to take responsibility for speaking publicly, and this may or may not be easy in a large organisation. Nonprofits can be pretty cautious, and understandable competitive and secretive where funding bids are concerned.
Anyway, this small experience leaves me with the feeling that blogalysts may have a role in dropping little pebbles in the pond that produce a few ripples and rock a few boats. That's the provocative-catalyst bit. The challenge is how then to move to collaborative-catalyst mode... something conventional journalism finds hard to do, and one of the reasons I left to become a sort of facilitator, process consultant, mentor. Could never get a name for it. Thanks, Ross, for blogalyst, I'm not sure it has quite the right ring, but it should start a few more open conversations. Which is what this is all about, isn't it?

Circuit riders scoop support pool - maybe

It looks as if the efforts of Colin Wilson and colleagues at Lasa have paid off, according to a project update in Computanews about UK Government support for circuit riders . Lasa is leading a consortium of organisations developing the US model of mobile tech support workers for nonprofit organisations. (but see my update-2 and 3 below)
Computanews reports: "Government funding to start making this happen became available as we went to press. The money comes from the fund for Voluntary and Community Infrastructure, administered by the Active Community Unit in the Home Office. A total of £10 million will be invested in voluntary sector IT across England in the next few years."
Update: Lee Bryant at Headshift has followed up with a telling explanation - based on his experience in nonprofit and for-profit fields - of why community and voluntary organisations need help. It's not just a question of getting up to speed to meet internal needs, but also being able to fulfill an expanding role of delivering public services.
I think one of the many challenges for circuit riders will be how to add to their technical expertise, an understanding of the organisational development issues that are raised by full integration of technology. Circuit rider teams needed. Trouble is the organisational development folk are not necessarily too tech-capable themselves as I've written before. How can we bridge a wider digital divide (however we interpret that) if the organisations in the front line face such a big internal divide themselves?
Update-2: More careful reading of the Computanews article, and checks with others in the field, suggests that the LASA initiative has so far just got six months funding, although they are generally reckoned to be front-runners for more substantial support.

Remembering people make partnerships

Yesterday I ran a workshop with London University staff developing their extraordinarily wide-ranging external programme - 30,000 students in 190 countries following 90 degree and diploma courses. We were talking about partnerships, because they have to deal with an enormous range of different interests within the university and its colleges, and their many collaborators. We explored what works, what doesn't, what are the do's and don'ts of partnership building processes. I was pleased to find yet again that the lessons and reality checks I had developed for other audiences played well in this context too. Here's one diagram I used that seems to work in most circumstances. You can look at partnerships through the business that they are doing, the structure that they have, or the people involved. Of course, you need all three - but it is easy to become obsessed with the organisational arrangements, and lose touch with delivering effectively to customers or local communities. Even worse, forget that partnerships are fundamentally about building trust and good relationships.... and these are made by people not procedures.
We agreed on the benefits of partnerships including additional skills, mutual support, wider reach.... and barriers like fear of loss of control and identity, uncertain leadership, lack of time. With refreshing honesty, there was a general admission that while the university's many management courses offer far more expertise than I can muster on these and similar matters, it is always difficult to practice what you teach.
I offered as a handout A short guide to partnerships, expanding on these points, which you can download here. Just to underline the universal nature of partnership process and practice, I explained this had first been drafted to help refugee groups deal with the complexities of local government and public agency partnerships in London neighbourhoods.
Full guides to partnership and participation at Partnerships Online.

Why my ideal conference may not be yours

Back from another conference and as usual some things worked well, and some not so well. Other participants are no doubt saying the same... but maybe not about the same things. As George Bernard Shaw said "do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same". I doubt he was talking about international e-learning conferences, but I'm sure the principle applies.
The conference I attended was in Barcelona, which give any gathering a head start in recruitment, but any participant a conflict of priorities in attending to sessions or the city's delights. The conference style was Euro-academic, which in Spain seems to mean a fairly high proportion of lengthy papers, with limited interaction, offset by equally lengthy lunches enlivened by good wine and animated conversations.
Our hosts were charming, and there were interesting contributions from quite a range of different countries About 20 people enthusiastically joined in the project planning game session that Drew Mackie and I had developed. More about that here.
Anyway, in the idle moments when the simultaneous translation seemed a bit off-topic, I started making a list of my ideal (formal) conference characteristics. Some come from the Barcelona conference, some from others, and some.... well, I wish.

Showcasing community media

Just as I was thinking that the technology may be getting better, but content is not necessarily more engaging, the Community Media Association sent me a reminder of The Showcase "the world's first streaming media archive of radio, TV, Internet projects and training materials from the community media sector." This now has about 200 items of web, audio and video projects. There is challenging material on racism, human rights, mental health and social exclusion mixed with gems in the history section including "a compilation of largely unedited raw audio interviews about life in the Women’s Land Army during the Second World War, recorded in Leicestershire in 1988".
I particularly liked Transient Tales , a video of simple animations of folk tales made by children from different countries, now based in London. The languages used include Farsi, Romanian, Tigrinya, Spanish, Kurdish, Dari, and Armenian as well as English.
The CMA has made great strides on the policy front in campaigning for community radio licences, and projects like The Showcase suggest to me that digital media may well make more contribution to community development than mainly text-based community networking projects, and online centres. Of course we need both/all. But the buzz is shifting.

What's your law?

No sooner had I posted an item about the Community Networker's Oath than I spot Dave Pollard alerting us to a site featuring one-liners from people offering their alternatives to Newton's Law... or maybe Murphy's. After featuring - among other's:
Malcolm Gladwell (Law of Learned Helplessness): The things we have learned to fear are much less likely to occur than we fear they are (like being a victim of terrorists). We are dangerously ignorant of the things that are much more likely to occur, the things we should fear, and be doing something about (like global warming).
Esther Dyson's Law of Optimal Information Disclosure: Do ask. Don't lie.
Alan Mulally: (cited by Karl Sabbagh) The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has occurred.
... he offers some of his own
Pollard's Law of Knowledge: Trust your instincts. Instinctive knowledge is both more reliable and more rooted in reality than either moral knowledge (what is 'right') or rational knowledge (what is 'reasonable').
Pollard's Laws of Change:
(1) Technology (the application of innovation) changes quickly, because it responds to what is possible, whereas culture (belief and behaviour) changes slowly, because it responds only to what is needed.
(2) Self-organized communities are dynamic and change spontaneously, peer-to-peer, by consensus, whereas hierarchical organizations are intransigent and change reluctantly, and only when forced by disruptive innovation.
(3) Therefore, if you want to change the world, either (a) use technology to end-run cultural resistance, or (b) drive the change through self-organized communities, and undermine the hierarchies.
You can find the original site here at the Edge Foundation.

The community networker's oath

Technology can be a powerful tool for change, and growing numbers of consultants and researchers are offering studies or solutions to local communities looking for social and economic benefits. But how can groups, who may be unfamiliar with technology, be sure those intervening in their lives are thinking about long-term benefits and not just how to do the immediate job and move on?
This was one of the issues for those at last week's community networking conference in Brighton, and workshop facilitator Richard Cupidi came up with a neat way of developing guidelines. He reasoned that doctors have a duty of care to their patients, first set down in the Hippocratic Oath**. So why not create the Community Networker's Oath? Workshop participants responded to the challenge, and you can see the results on the conference wiki. Here's one example:
1. I/We shall not attempt to patent, copyright or otherwise own the knowledge gained
2. I/We will engage my ears before putting my mouth in gear
3. I/We will honestly and candidly explain my purpose before undertaking research
4. I/We will not be driven purely by academic advancement, grant funding or commercial exploitation
On the wider question that I raised earlier of whether the researchers present were going to be looking forward to new models or not, there was a great spread, with a commitment to putting papers on the conference wiki, over the next week or two, with a chance to add and comment. Pretty forward looking, I think.
More here about Community Network Analysis and ICTs: Bridging and Building Community Ties, the Brighton and Hove-based project that staged the conference, and which Richard is working on.
**Here's a translation of the original Hippocratic Oath, and a modern version.

Does it matter if people don't want to use the Net?

Today's seminar at the the University of Dundee went really well, and I think my 10 conversation starters proved a useful contribution. One that certainly produced some discussion was "Many people don't want to use the Internet. Why should they?". I was following Kevin Harris, who said he feared that the UK Government had "given up" on the last 20 percent of people, and that this had serious implications for social inclusion policy. Not least, as others pointed out, because Government is committed to all public services being online by 2005, and non-users are among those most in need of accessing information, services and other benefits.