This past week, I have caught up on a lot of traffic about a new book called Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits and a supporting article both by Heather McLeod Grant & Leslie R. Crutchfield. I am also working on looking at how we organize and structure iMIS moving forward for the UX Team. The article refocused some of my thoughts.

There has been a trend in the non-profit world to adopt more for-profit business practices to succeed. I have seen, as an example, more people with advanced degrees and experience in the for-profit world recruited into customer organizations. I have often wondered about the overall impact of this direction, whether over the long-term it would bear greater results or just somehow make it more mechanical, lose a little bit of the magic. I am an idealist and I want to be believe that through my work at ASI, I am affecting social change and having an impact on the greater good, regardless of how small or indirect. It’s one of the main reasons I work here. I guess, like most relationships, there are benefits to both the non-profit and for-profit sectors from these trends.

The article reminded me of not only the incredible work that is accomplished in our market, but of how much we can actually learn from successful non-profits in what we are trying to achieve. As a company, we have a goal to become more open and engaging, and in fact that is non-profit’s secrets of success. They are extremely focused on engaging their network and others. I have said before, when it comes to community and network building, non-profits lead the way, it’s at the core of everything they do. I know we have stellar examples of this level of engagement in our customer base and clearly their enthusiasm and thirst for social networking should be a guidepost for us.

But it also made me think about what that means from a product perspective. We also have a goal to build a system that is more collaborative and community-oriented.

From the article: "In other words, greatness has more to do with how nonprofits work outside the boundaries of their organizations than with how they manage their own internal operations. The high-impact nonprofits we studied are satisfied with building a “good enough” organization and then focusing their energy externally to catalyze largescale change."

Shouldn’t this mean that we need to be more concerned with how customers are engaging and working externally than internally? Everything we do should be evaluated not only on the efficiency and richness of the feature set for staff, but how it impacts an organization’s outward reach. How can they leverage a feature to have a larger impact – how does iMIS engage constituents? This is why Don’s vision talks focus on the public interface. This is why our only 2 out of 5 personas are directly tied to staff. We too have a role to play in the larger objectives of customers and need to constantly remind ourselves of that. I think its time to go back to ‘we help people achieve great things through innovative solutions’, where the great things are their external reach and not just organizational efficiency and management.

From the article:
"4. Nurture Nonprofit Networks: Although most nonprofits pay lip service to collaboration, many of them really see other groups as competition for scarce resources. But highimpact organizations help their peers succeed, building networks of nonprofit allies and devoting remarkable time and energy to advancing their fields. They freely share wealth, expertise, talent, and power with other nonprofits not because they are saints, but because it’s in their self-interest to do so.7"

We are very lucky to have a channel that is very supportive of each other. But we know that big changes is coming and we need to be proactive in helping and sharing knowledge to make sure everyone gets onboard, has the right messages and is in a position to succeed. For me personally, this means more communication. More direct contact, with all our partners and peers about where the product is going and how we are going to get there. Remember to share, Sara…I tend, not intentionally, to horde knowledge, resources and nuggets. I think what is happening on iMIS Community is a great start, and this reminds me about how important it is to share what we know.

From the article:
"5. Master the Art of Adaptation: High-impact nonprofits are exceptionally adaptive, modifying their tactics as needed to increase their success. They have responded to changing circumstances with one innovation after another. Along the way, they’ve made mistakes and have even produced some flops. But unlike many nonprofits, they have also mastered the ability to listen, learn, and modify their approach on the basis of external cues. Adaptability has allowed them to sustain their impact.8"

I don’t necessarily have a lot to say about this one, other than I think its important to see the value in experiment and change, be willing to try new approaches and processes. More importantly, we need to hone our listening skills, new vehicles such as iMIS Community and others give us even more opportunity to engage our customers in dialogue. We need to be listening and ready to take action.

Highly recommend the article found on the Stanford Social Innovation Review site at
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/creating_high_impact_nonprofits/.