Designing for Civil Society

Planning a networky organisation? Just invite everyone

I was recently advising friends starting a new charitable organisation whose aim is to promote public engagement - so naturally enough they wanted their structures to be participative too. (Well, not naturally enough since there are plenty of nonprofits who preach one thing but seem to practice another. Not this time, fortunately).
The challenge in general is that charities need boards of trustees to govern, paid staff to do things, as well as volunteers on projects and probably advisers and supporters with rather undefined roles. There may be consultants doing a mix of pro bono and paid for, and members. There will certainly be funders.
If the staff aren't careful, they can spend most of their time involving all of these helpful people but not delivering to those for whom the charity was - or should have been set up - the beneficiaries, also known as customers in other circumstances.
In worst cases the Board micromanage the staff, the advisory group try and tell the Board and staff what they should be doing, the volunteers are baffled, members drop away and everyone feels both overworked and frustrated.
I have to say that my inclination is to have a board of trustees of not more than six to eight really good people, avoid advisory boards, get advisors, consultants and volunteers focussed on projects, and be clear about whether members are the same as beneficiaries - if you have members. Then be really entrepreneurial in mixing fundraising with projects and services that earn you money. You may need an associated trading company.
My friends agreed with much of this - and also wanted to be a really networky organisation, working online, developing communities of interest and much else favoured these days in the fields of organisational development, knowledge management and social software... or at least that which is blogged about.
I've been pushing that approach hard, so when they asked what that would mean for the organisation I drew the diagram you can see here. I got a bit carried away in Omnigraffle, but hope it makes some sense, at least as a conversation starter.
I suggested that they think of anyone potentially involved as being part of their network - beneficiaries, funders, advisers and so on, with the Board and staff in the middle of the cloud. Then concentrate on developing the relationships and activities that deliver to beneficiaries.
As much activity as possible should be organised around jobs to be done, projects to be developed, services to be delivered - with Board, staff, advisers etc working in mix and match teams. The Board would, of course, set the overall direction of the organisation and fulfill their legal responsibilities as trustees.
It would be essential to set up communication systems so that people could get information, communicate, collaborate, publish and manage as needed.
Projects and services would be developed on a spectrum from free (email newsletter, sponsored events) to paid for (high-value information, expert advice, high-level communication access). These projects would be developed with network members, where appropriate, rather than always run for the greater glory of the central team (another cause of dissent in my experience). The emphasis would be on creativity and fun while getting things done, and keeping both funders and beneficiaries happy.
My diagram was used at the first Board meeting, and I was a little apprehensive because a few of the trustees had actually written books on this stuff. However, sometime a picture is worth 200 pages, and it went down well enough.
The real challenge now is how to do it. My follow-up advice was to start in the centre with an away day for Board and staff so they get to know each other. Some work on personalities types and communication styles could help with understanding about runnings meetings online and off. Improv work or games could add some fun. I can think of just the people to do it ... maybe even free if that opened up possibilities in the wider network.
The core team will also need to work through the mix of email, blogging, and wikispace they - and the network - will need. Again, there are people ready to help.
What soon becomes evident, of course, is that networky working takes a pretty strong commitment to doing things differently and helping others come along with you. It's tempting to think we now need a network development plan, a training plan, as well as a business plan and a marketing plan. That could easily tie up six months.
In practice I think it is a matter of getting started with good people, taking advice in avoiding pitfalls, learning as you go along, and building up a strong sense of trust and commitment. Not a bad learning process for an organisation in the business of promoting engagement.
If any Omnigraffle users would like to improve the diagram, download original here, or there's the pdf here.
More in this site about people, partnerships, participation and networks.
As an experiment in attribution ... thanks for ideas and inspiration to Lee Bryant and Livio Hughes at Headshift, Johnnie Moore, Simon Berry of Ruralnet, and Ton Zijlstra ... even though they may not know I was listening, or even entirely agree.
Previously posted at Partnerships Online
Update: Richard Wilson, director of Involve, says he is very happy to confirm that they are the networky organisation in question - and already applying the ideas to project development. Now for some work on what that will mean online and in other ways.

Technorati Tags: participation

Storytelling proves more engaging than a survey

Sometimes challenging the brief provided by a client pays off for all concerned - and so it proved yesterday when Drew Mackie and I were invited back to Pendle for a conference on community cohesion.
The event featuring work we had done aiming to help different communities - white, Asian, rural, urban, young, old - understand each other better following riots in north west England a few years ago.
The brief put out to tender by Pendle council last year was fairly conventional - carry out a study of local attitudes that could be used as a baseline to see how far new programmes to promote cohesion increased neighbourliness and trust.
We've never been ones for clipboards on the doorstep, and prefer doing projects that lead to action and not just another report on the shelf... so we suggested something entirely different. As I've written before, we proposed that we run workshops at which residents invented fictional characters and told their life stories, so we could analyse the issues that surfaced. To our surprise, we got the job - and pressed ahead with a storytelling kit developed by Drew that we could use and also hand on to local groups to use. It's the sort of thing that could fall flat, lead to pieces in the paper about wasting money on tale-spinning focus groups, or at best a polite thank you for the report but no follow-through.
In fact it all turned out really well, thanks to the enthusiasm of those taking part, support of the council and Pendle Partnership and some excellent local voluntary groups like the multi-faith organisation Building Bridges. You can download our report here (4M pdf).
Yesterday Pendle council proudly invited groups from around East Lancashire to hear what had been going on. We did a presentation along with others, but the most interesting parts were the reports from groups who had developed stories using the kit - without our help - and the discussion among participants of what other techniques were working well. Roy Prenton, editor of the Nelson Leader, talked about the "myth busting" cartoon strip they were now running as a result of our work, and there plenty more new ideas bubbling up around the tables.

I think the whole exercise was successful because of two things: first that there were some individuals and organisations in Pendle ready to try something different and carry it through. Second, the technique that we used was designed to stimulate the sort of stories and conversations that are part of people's day-to-day lives.

Drew and colleagues are now using similar storytelling techniques in Blackburn and Bolton. Clearly it's something that appeals to Lancashire culture.
Programmes for social inclusion, community cohesion, civil renewal and regeneration operate at two levels: that of the official policies, targets and consultancy speak; and that of the people living in communities being studied, renewed and evaluated. The easy option for public bodies is to stay in the comfortable setting of the first levels - but more is likely to happen if they support ways of doing things that are part of the second.
You can hear first hand what the council thought of it in this Quicktime movie from Sarah Gaskill (right), our main contact during the work. I'm editing more videos to post in a day or so.
Previously published at Partnerships Online
Update: more movies

Brian Astin, Pendle council corporate strategy and partnership manager, says that storytelling provides a useful complement to harder edged policy and legislation. Both carrot and stick are needed.
Rauf Bashir, from Building Bridges, explains how they used the storytelling approach in primary schools.
Marcia Allass, developing the Pendlelife portal, explains how the Internet can help with community cohesion.

Technorati Tags: engagement, participation, storytelling

E-democracy gains some bottom-up tools: official

US-based e-democracy guru Steven Clift blew into London today with a gust of enthusiasm for citizen-led online forums to help underpin the effort by government to make councillors and officials more electronically accessible.
Over the past few years the UK government has spent £4 million on e-democracy pilots, well displayed on the national local e-democracy site.
Today's focus was on the one element of the programme that is about citizens talking to government on their own terms, rather than the other way around.
Steven has been circling the globe for eight years on a personal e-democracy mission since pioneering work in Minnesota. Most of that time it's been message: use new electronic tools to engage and empower citizens. Create spaces for discussion and collaboration. Do it in a way that is government and citizen friendly. Use generic tools.
Today at a meeting at the Local Government Association he was able to both summarise e-democracy good practice around the world, and also offer some e-democracy-tailored product to those who might say 'great idea Steven, but how do we do it?'
As Steven said, there are many online tools, and these need to be mixed with the other ways in which people talk to each other, and with the officials and politicians who should serve their concerns.
However, he was able to demonstrate the GroupServer software that enables pilot projects in Newham and Brighton and Hove to create issues forums around local concerns. The open source software, developed in New Zealand, is a great combination of email and web functionality - but is only part of the picture. Just as important is the process of recruiting local participants, agreeing groundrules, and moderating proceedings, all set out on a guide (download pdf).

The best way to judge whether it is working or not is to take a look at Newham and Brighton and Hove discussions. I think it is pretty high-level discussion as these things go ... but at this stage should declare an interest. I was particularly glad to see old friends Richard Stubbs from Newham (left in picture), and Mark Walker from SCIP (right) with Steven because I had worked with both nationally and locally in the mid 1990s on local online communities - when I also met Steven. The software and guidelines are fine - but it's people like these three who hold fast to a vision over the years that really make things work.

What was interesting today was to sense the shared vision between these pioneers, and others present in national and local government.
There was acknowledgment in the discussion that e-democracy, as currently operating, is pretty limited. Issues forums appeal to those who are literate, confident online, loquacious and prepared to step up on the electronic soapbox. There is still a big gap between 'offline' community engagement and politics and e-democracy. E-democracy can be disconnected from the realities of local decision-making. Even if the council is involved, many other important agencies may not be.
But it is a start, and there's lots else to be shared in the e-democracy toolkit now being developed from the pilots.
The big challenge now is twofold: how to connect with offline participation, extend the tools to include more storytelling, multimedia, and fun stuff; and how to move from pilots to all areas. Fortunately there seems to be a willingness from local and central government to form some partnerships to do that. The best thing about e-things is you meet collaborative people.
There's a Quicktime clip video clip of Steven here, grabbed on my Nikon S1... not great quality, but amazing what you can do on a compact camera now. Couldn't resist it. Essential e-democracy tool. (Large file which I'll compress further later.)
Originally posted at Partnerships Online
Previously: Time to open-source local e-democracy

Technorati Tags: e-democracy