Thanks to Beth Kanter for a detailed report-back from the "Social Media for Social Good BBQ" at SXSW. Kanter sums up a lot of sentiment from many conversations that I had at SX: that many campaigns of late have focused on fund-raising/charity - with little connection to systemic change on the ground. Of course, as Kanter notes:
"I think there is some indirect social impact when we use social media for charity. It happens through the organization that receives the funding. Of course, it depends on the capacity of the organization and its programs."
This is clear. In every fund-raising campaign, we're assuming that the funds will be spent to make conditions on the ground better. But it seems that there's a growing skepticism that these bettering acts take place in practice. Perhaps it's tied to a general distrust of organizations that are not entirely transparent - in the wake of Madoff, Enron, and AIG. We might reasonably apply skepticism to nonprofits as well. This sentiment is heightened when we hear about campaigns that focus on building lists and raising money - with little mention on what they're doing with those lists and funds. The campaign isn't tied to action on the ground (at least not from what we hear about it). This sentiment was neatly summarized by Lina Srivastava as quoted by Kanter:
"As a sector, we still have work to do to clarify the distinction between charity and social good/systemic change. The "Social Media for Social Good" panel, in particular, led off with stories of fundraising and good deeds on behalf of individuals, as opposed to scalable social change. I'm not making a value judgment against fundraising here (had they titled the panel "Social Media for Fundraising," I would have had less of a problem with the focus-- though I will continue to argue the prevailing system of fundraising needs a major overhaul). But I and a few other attendees later voiced the view that charity is an entry point, not an endpoint, in sustainable social change."
Having run a nonprofit for five years - I can tell you that fundraising comes at the expense of making change. It's a direct suck of energy that would go into action. For this reason, we've been exploring alternatives to the nonprofit structure for The Extraordinaries. And we've found it in Dr. Yunus' vision of a "social business." See Jacob's post on social business - along with some of our research and thinking into entity types. The structure proposed by Dr. Yunus solves a lot of the problems and frustrations described in Kanter's post. It offers a way to create a business focused on systemic change while free from the suck of fundraising. Of course, it's open to mis-use, like anything - but it provides a framework and many examples of how it can work well.
Beth, thanks for getting this conversation going. Looking forward to focusing on these issues over the next months and years.
