Last week I gave a speech to a group of leaders from some of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) including World Vision, Oxfam, CARE, The Nature Conservancy, Red Cross, and others. The group was assembled to assess the possibility of putting together an industry standard for project design, monitoring and evaluation (DM&E) that could increase the transparency and effectiveness of the sector. My role was to provoke debate about what the future of the non-profit sector might look like in five to ten years time given the forces of wikinomics.
View the Slideshare link here.
One of the issues we discussed at length is the growing call for NGOs to embrace greater openness and transparency with regard to how they spend donor’s money and how they wield influence in developing countries. Organizations such as Intelligent Giving are giving donors more information, while others like Global Giving and Kiva are giving people the option to bypass established NGOs and provide micro-loans directly to local entrepreneurs and small businesses. The trend toward increasing transparency is putting pressure on NGOs to find new ways to maximize the impact of their efforts to address issues like poverty alleviation and climate change.
Growing transparency, in turn, means NGOs need to work smarter and harness opportunities to collaborate with all of the key stakeholders in the ecosystem, including their donors, their peers in other sectors, and the ultimate recipients of their aid. One can easily envision dozens of opportunities: from InnoCentive-like marketplaces that connect solution seekers with problems solvers (see the UN’s Solution Exchange, for example) to Digg.com-like forums where participants in the development community suggest and rank projects that require funding. Virtual worlds like Second Life could provide donors and recipients with a venue to build virtual mock-up of their projects, while e-Bay-like development auctions could provide governments, communities and individuals in the developing world with the ability to bid on the “development products” of aid agencies and NGOs. All of this NGO 2.0 activity would need to transpire in an environment where organizations worked harder to share knowledge and coordinate their activities through clearinghouses and other mechanisms that my colleague Dan Herman can elucidate.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for the sector is accepting the newfound political responsibilities that come with their growing size and influence on the international scene. New geopolitical realties have created an opportunity – and some might say responsibility – for NGOs to play a larger role in governance at local, national and international levels. Decades of participation in local and international development efforts have shown that NGOs can be effective change agents and make important contributions to decision-making with a blend of effective leadership and adequate access to information and resources. Governments have even come to rely on NGOs in many cases to help create and implement policies that better reflect the needs and aspirations of citizens. But, as with governments, NGOs will face significant challenges fulfilling their new roles competently and responsibly.
Got any NGO 2.0 examples? Let me know.
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Check out my org — socialmarkets.org — we implement a lot of Web 2.0 technologies and we will be using crowdsourcing to determine the value of the social goods that a nonprofit creates in an upcoming release. In fact, I’m one of the earlier people to have written about Nonprofit 2.0 at http://www.nonprofittechblog.org/nonprofit-20
Comment by Allan Benamer - March 17, 2008 12:21 pm
Well there’s the NGO: ‘Open Architecture Network’ which is basically a platform for ‘Open Source’ architectural solutions. There slogan is ‘Improving living standards through collaborative design’. http://www.openarchitecturenetwork.org/
It’s funny you mention using Second Life for prototyping, because the ‘Studio Wikitecture’ group recently submitted a competition entry to the ‘Open Architecture Network’ that was composed and designed collaboratively in Second Life by a loose, diverse network of people.
The final boards can be viewed here…
http://studiowikitecture.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/the-final-design-wikitecture-30-thank-you/
The project is a Health Clinic in western Nepal.
Over and above just using Second Life, they also developed an inworld interface (essensially a 3D-Wiki), that allowed contributors to save iterations of their model throughout the design phase. This versioning system then allowed other contributors to cycle through these designs in SL, in addition to voting and commenting on them as well.
This video gives a quick overview of the SL ‘plugin’ as well as a quick timelapse of how the design ‘evolved’ throughout the design phase.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amCi90zH3VI
Comment by Ryan Schultz - March 17, 2008 12:35 pm
A couple of months ago I posted a few pointers on the Wikinomics Playbook under the heading of “Sustainable development 2.0″
http://www.socialtext.net/wikinomics/index.cgi?development_2_0_collaboration_in_the_development_sector
Hope this helps
Giulio
Comment by Giulio Quaggiotto - March 17, 2008 1:23 pm
Though not directly relevant to the focus of NGO 2.0, you might also want to take a look at “iSimulate @ World Bank” http://isimulate.worldbank.org
Comment by gsr34 - March 18, 2008 12:59 pm
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Pingback by Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Wikinomics in the blogosphere - March 27, 2008 1:48 pm
http://betterplacede.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/ach-waren-wir-doch-so-wie-betterplace/
Comment by joana breidenbach - April 8, 2008 6:10 am
WiserEarth.org is a (nonprofit) web 2.0 project (created on an open source platform) that is attempting to map out the extent and scope of the work of nonprofits around the world. It is also provides some elements of social networking too, but it could have the potential to be to nonprofit world what the human genome project was to genetics research. Ideas on where this could go would be welcome though…!
Comment by Camilla Burg - May 29, 2008 4:01 pm
YOUTH - ADULT DEVELOPMENT
No 32 DANFODIA STREET
NEWTOWN BAKAU
BANJUL GAMBIA
TEL; +2207401314
SIR/MADAM,
Unehalf of the Youth and Adult Development in Gambia, I am appealing to join as a member benefiting information from the organization ideas, conferences, materials and otherwise to help this non governmental organization grow. We started operation last year september with the help of the executives here as we are giving meaning to life of the, widows, hospice, orphans and others.
These are youths and adults who maybe orphan, widows (not Aids victims) and those from less priviledge background economically as a result of perculier circumstances, some of them end up as exploited house helps, unemployed, unplanned pregnancies, Hospices and others. These people deserves good health, good food, shelter, moral education, knowledge of skilled works and assistance.
Youth and adult women in these circumstances are evidently likely to suffer serious adverse consequences with their children regards to their health, well-being, technically development and others.
However, because of the severity of the deprivation, it is likely that multiple and sustained interventions will need to be taken by YAD more or less simultaneously give the relative short time frame to women development growth and the nature to aspects of poverty in reinforcing each other.
Yours sincerely,
Uzoma Phoday
Comment by YOUTH - ADULT DEVELOPMENT - May 30, 2008 6:51 am
The organization I’m part of is looking to champion NGO 2.0. We’re about transperancy, choice, and proof-of-impact.
Comment by Leif Baradoy - August 12, 2008 12:47 pm
The organization is called ChristmasFuture.
Comment by Leif Baradoy - August 12, 2008 12:48 pm