Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

A professor of mine once mentioned in passing that the tasks of leadership were different in pre-industrial society, in post-industrial society, and now. That was intriguing, but I could not find anything about this topic in sociology literature, literature about leadership, or history; I someone must have researched this. Here are some questions the topic evoked:

• What type of leadership skills does tribal society call for?

Tribal Society – family groups with common language & customs. The leaders tended to be elders (those who survived) and those religiously sanctified (who carried oral history). They guided a small unit of culture; influence was the capital of power. Workforce is united in extended-family groups with similar functions.

• What type of leadership skills does agrarian society call for?

Agrarian Society – larger groups in distinct social classes (those who work on the land and those who own the land). Land was the major source of wealth and power. More elaborate political institutions like a formalized government and legal system evolved. However, land was largely individually owned and was often inherited (governmental power was held by the land owning aristocracy).  Workforce is united in local/regional groups with similar functions.

• What type of leadership skills does industrial society call for?

Industrial Society - produce finished goods, in a continual state of rapid change due to technological innovations. People start living in cities and urban areas. Status and power can be achieved in corporations, political parties, and government bureaucracies. Workforce is divided into workers and managers with disparate functions.

• What type of leadership skills does post-industrial society call for?

Post-Industrial – service based economy, professional and technical workers, use of technology for formerly manual processes, higher education. Roles become less defined in the name of efficiency, arts and ideas become part of economic market, rather than relegated to fringe hobbies. Status is achieved through service innovation that leads to a broad, and/or wealthy customer base. Workforce is divided into discrete teams at all levels, some with similar functions and some not.

• What type of leadership skills does digital society call for?

Digital Society – accessing information 24/7; blending of international news, socializing, work, entertainment, and social action. Status is achieved through celebrity and technical innovation that is used by huge masses of people at all economic levels.  Workforce is fluidly and vaguely divided (individual contributors and loosely connected groupings) to address tasks, which determine the function.

What era are your leadership skills suited to? If not the digital society; what skills, intelligence, and presence do you need to cultivate to be an effective leader in our era?

Here is a list to start with:

• Be open to input from all directions
• Care about others’ intelligences
• Embrace change that you did not envision
• Be a synthesizing agent
• Learn to be grounded while moving forward with purpose
• Lend direction through influence
• Share power
• Be internally connected (mind, body, emotions, spirit), flexible, and open to change in yourself

Ideas are not in short supply,
only our willingness to receive them as leaders.
- Paul Extrum-Fernandez

Interconnected by Beth of Glos Programming

Over the last year we have lived through a profound and perhaps epochal shift
in the distribution of power.
- Mark Pesce

Closed and strictly hierarchical systems of management are vulnerable to challenge by the forced transparency of digital hyperconnection and the might of web-connected polities. Mark Pesce is a technology writer, researcher, and teacher who gives vivid examples of breakdowns already occurring in the public arena when hierarchies clash with digital crowds. How do you enact effective leadership in a new, open, and hyperconnected system? Become more flexible and welcome change; move from opacity to transparency and then to permeability – so that crowdsourcing works to your advantage; share your power and be generous in your inclusiveness. In this new epoch, leadership is more about convening and synergizing than it is about commanding.

Mark Pesce on Mark Molaro's interview web page, "The Alcove"

In our digital era, as Mark Pesce details in his writings and teachings, our hyperconnected-ness (access to inconceivable amounts of information) has led to hyperintelligence (vast numbers of individuals in a network coordinating their efforts), which  transforms into action by adhocracies (groups of connected people concerned about an issue), which spreads and replicates itself through hypermimesis (mimesis is learning through imitation). Pesce writes compellingly about how hyperconnected and hyperintelligent networks of individuals using hypermimesis are already smashing into institutions and traditional hierarchies to thwart and disempower them.

The question is:

• As a leader, how can you direct individuals (who are curators of individual knowledge-bases) to become unified polities, and get everyone pulling in the same direction?

Here is what Pesce says:

Top-down hierarchies which order power precisely can not share power with hyperintelligence. The hierarchy must open itself to a more chaotic and fundamentally less structured relationship with the hyperintelligence it has helped to foster. This is the crux of the problem, asking the leopard to change its spots. Only in transformation can hierarchy find its way into a successful relationship with hyperintelligence. But can any hierarchy change without losing its essence? Can the state – or any institution – become more flexible, fluid and dynamic while maintaining its essential qualities?

I propose that the way to lead in this new epoch is by being open to input from all directions, caring about others’ intelligences, embracing change, and being a synthesizing agent. This leadership is about lending direction through influence and sharing power; I would call that generous leadership.

How does this actually work; how is it structured? What are the traits and qualities of effective leadership in this unimorphic system? How can you learn to do this? A good start is to be internally connected (mind, body, emotions, spirit), flexible, and open to change in your self. If you can do that and keep yourself grounded while moving forward with purpose, you may have the ability to do the same with your leadership in outward structures.

…power must surrender power, or be overwhelmed by it.
Sharing power is not an ideal of some utopian future;
it’s the ground truth of our hyperconnected world.
-Mark Pesce

Here is a video of Pesce speaking about this at the Personal Democracy Forum in June, 2009:

Sharing Power (Global Edition) from Mark Pesce on Vimeo.

Photo by Istvan Hernadi

You get the best effort from others not by lighting a fire beneath them,
but by building a fire within.
- Bob Nelson

Think of someone in your life who has been your leader. It might be a supervisor, a CEO, a teacher, a parent, a mentor, or a political figure. Why did you follow that person? What was it about what they did, about who they were?

If you generate a list of the characteristics of that person, it might include qualities like they are honest and forthright, empowering and challenging, inspirational and passionate. To me a key quality that a good leader has is vision. Yes I mean vision as in the ’vision thing’ – being able to visualize a profitable direction and make that direction clear and reachable for the people around them. That vision thing is about the future of an enterprise. But just as importantly, I mean the much simpler ability to see the people who are in front of you – being able to see them clearly in the present.

And what is seeing clearly? It is undeniably an act of generosity. Have you ever been in a situation where you were seen fully as who you are, with all of your strengths and your challenges? That is a true gift for all of us and tends to bring out our hardest and best work, our highest level commitment. When we are well and truly challenged by someone else, they are seeing what we can do (that we are not already doing) and it motivates us toward that better performance. When we are stuck in a system or an action and someone sees that and empowers us to free ourselves (or decides on a change to break that logjam), that not only opens an opportunity for us to deliver our best work, it also acknowledges that the logjam we were in was real and alterable.

It is an absolute no-brainer that acknowledgment and appreciation motivate and encourage follower-ship. Nothing more needs to be written about this. But what predicates acknowledgment and appreciation? Seeing the good work, seeing the person who did the good work, seeing the results of the good work. If you have ever gotten insincere appreciation you know that the person acknowledging you really did not see you or what you did.

As my good friend Kristin Kaufman of Alignment, Inc reminds us, being polite is also part of good leadership:

The strongest and most successful leaders with whom I have worked were the ones that took the time to thank, to acknowledge hard work, to say please and yes … to  say “I’m sorry” when a mistake had been made or an injustice had occurred.

And what is politeness? Seeing other people, acknowledging them as adults, and giving them the benefit of our consideration.

Are you getting the parallels here? If we are seen, challenged, our barriers are taken down, appreciated and treated politely, which all grow out of being seen clearly – we feel better about ourselves, we deliver better work, and guess what – we stick with our leader and follow them!

Good leadership is about seeing. And it is up to the leader to see. This means that to be a good leader and see people in their fullest authenticity and potential, you have to work on your ability to see clearly. Now this is not all rosy – leadership is challenging because you are also called on to see what is not working, who is not delivering results, and you must act on those things as well.

So how do you increase your ability to see? I have 2 simple suggestions:

• Practice by seeing yourself. Observe your own reactions, your own thoughts, your own feelings, and your own motivations (the list can go on…).
• Practice being more generous. Take the time to think about what would be a gift to the people around you and start giving it. Start with recognizing people’s good work and with politeness. Turn up the volume on these two and the others will follow.

Seeing clearly is much harder than it sounds and takes practice. It also goes rusty pretty quickly, especially when we are under stress. If you are going to be the leader that people want to follow, it is worth doing that practice – for the rest of your career.

We practice generosity with others and with ourselves, over and over again, and the power of it begins to grow until it becomes almost like a waterfall, a flow.
- Sharon Salzberg

John C. Maxwell

Nothing speaks to others more loudly or serves them better
than generosity from a leader.
- John Maxwell

John C. Maxwell is an evangelical Christian author, speaker, and pastor who has written more than 50 books, many of which are for a secular business audience and primarily focusing on leadership. He has sold more than 16 million books such as Developing the Leader Within You and The 360° Leader.

The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him
but the number of people he serves.
Generosity requires putting others first.
If you can do that, giving becomes much easier.
- John Maxwell

In his book, The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader, Maxwell has a chapter titled, Generosity: Your Candle Looses Nothing When it Lights Another in which he gives five suggestions for cultivating the quality of generosity in the leader’s life:

• Be grateful for whatever you have
• Put people first
• Don’t allow the desire for possessions to control you
• Regard money as a resource
• Develop a habit of giving

As you can see, these are more personal development suggestions than they are leadership techniques. As personal values and beliefs will inform leadership, these personal practices will make a difference to the success of a leader. They are not particularly difficult to practice and worth considering.  How much do you see generosity in leaders you admire?  How much does your generosity affect your ability to inspire followers?

Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure,
does something within us. It destroys the demon greed.
- Richard Foster

Photo Eric Robinson (http://ericrobinson.net)

Leadership Generosity entails giving others latitude, permission to make mistakes, and all the information that they need to do their job. It’s making sure they have the authority that goes with responsibility – it’s giving them due credit for their ideas. In a nutshell, all of this translates to generosity of spirit, a quality we admire in leaders.
- Glenn Stevens

Glenn Stevens is a systems analyst and former project manager for Gallup, who is now a global marketing entrepreneur and writes a blog called the Fast Growth Home Business Blog. It is not entirely clear why he is writing about organization leadership, however his insights are compelling. Here, for example, he takes the definition of generosity and applies it to good leadership practice:

Generosity, a word which derives from “of noble birth,” used to be associated with members of the aristocracy who, by virtue of their privileges, were expected to show generosity towards those in lesser standing. A leader too, by virtue of their position, and the power and privileges that they hold relative to those they lead, has the same expectations and obligations. A prime obligation is to lead with a generous heart, and to be guided by a nobility of mind. It is the habit of giving without coercion. A leader’s generosity has a positive spreading effect. Conversely, its absence can also have a series of negative consequences that, if a leader paused to reflect on them, may stop them in their tracks.

Stevens also gives a number of action steps to enhance generosity in leadership (these are abridged, so please visit the original posting for the full commentary):

• Give people a sense of importance and meaning: Consider what small actions you can take today to make people feel that the work they do is important, and that they themselves, as people, are important to your team. Help connect the dots for them and help them see how they can and have helped others.
• Give encouragement and feedback, not criticism: If giving frequent criticism is your style of management, consider some of these questions: Is your motivation genuine, or is it to gain points? Are you picking the right moment? Are you stopping to reflect how you might deliver the feedback while still honoring the other person?  As a leader, giving people the gift of not just our appreciation for good work, but our genuine admiration for their talents, is generosity of spirit at its pinnacle… When you see good work, say it, and say it from the heart, just as you thought it…
• Give people visibility: Giving people visibility on your team is a special gift we can give to help others shine and grow. Knowing that your leader is representing us well to senior leaders and upper management in your organization is a high-octane motivator, and engenders fierce loyalty.
• Know when to forgive: Martin Luther King said that “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind…” A characteristic of a generous person is a total lack of resentment – it’s in effect being too noble, too big for that. Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go?
• Share your knowledge and experience: Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise, or best practices can you share with others as a way to enrich them?
• Give anonymously: Real generosity of spirit is doing something for someone without their knowledge. Do something for someone today that will really help without them ever knowing you gave that help.  That is real generosity!

As you continue to grow as a leader, consider how much you are engendering the kind of motivation, commitment, cooperation you seek. If you look over your shoulder and find that the people following you need more of these qualities, consider increasing your generosity by using Stevens’ advice.

Giving, leading with generosity, being grateful are all like building a muscle. It requires practice and persistence – once it becomes habitual, you will emerge as a stronger leader.
- Glenn Stevens

…once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.
- Seamus Heaney

Katherine Fulton at TED | www.leslieimage.com

What do current trends in philanthropy tell us about what we might expect in the future? Katherine Fulton is a speaker and author about philanthropy and social change. In her video lecture on TED, she envisions us – you and I – and all of us, as leaders in philanthropy to effect social change.

Fulton shows how philanthropy now is moving toward global reach and efforts, it is entrepreneurial, and is democratizing, where the average person has more power than at any time in the past. To show this, she gives 5 categories of experiments, each of which challenges an old assumption about philanthropy. In this list there are many organizations that you may want to look up; I have not hot-linked them for your ease in reading, however a web search will pop up any of them:

• Mass collaboration through sites like Wikipedia and WISER – World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility and the work of Paul Hawken who wrote the recent book, Blessed Unrest.

We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have we have Wikipedia… Suddenly big things can be done for love.
- Clay Shirky

• Online philanthropy marketplaces: Kiva, Global Giving, Network for Good, Donor Choose, Youth Give, Give India, and many others challenge the idea that organized philanthropy is only for the wealthy.
• Aggregated giving: Acumen fund, New Profit, New Schools Venture Fund, Venture Philanthropy Partners, and Global Fund for Women build philanthropy communities and challenge the assumption that each giver should have his/her own fund.
• Innovation Competitions: Efforts like X Prize place the problem at the center of the effort rather than the giver and the organization.
• Social investing: Organizations like Xigi.net refute the idea that business and philanthropy are separate and distinct. They are creating a way for businesses that have a financial bottom line can use a small portion of their economic clout to develop social capital markets.

Fulton then talks about the future:

Our ability to confront the problems that we face has not kept pace with our ability to create them. It is no exaggeration to say that we hold the future of our civilization in our hands as never before. We are going to need a new generation of citizen leaders willing to commit ourselves to growing and changing and learning as rapidly as possible.

Finally she offers us this way of imagining what we hope for:

I want you to imagine that this is a photograph of you, and I want you to think about the community that you want to be a part of creating, whatever that means to you. And I want you to imagine that it’s 100 years from now, and your grandchild, or great-grandchild, or niece or nephew or god-child, is looking at this photograph of you. What is the story you most want for them to tell?

Photo of you today as seen 100 years from now - imagine...

Here is the video of Katherine Fulton speaking at TED:

Photo by Joey Looch

How do you interact with the charitable organizations that you support, or are considering supporting? Unless your concerns are extremely local, and are being addressed by non-profit organizations right in your own community, you will probably never be in their offices or see them working on the issue you care about. You may never even go to an event sponsored by that organization or benefiting their organization. How do you find out about them and interact with them? In all probability, it will be through the web and your relationship may always be through the web. Forward thinking for-profit businesses are working to “humanize” their interfaces, led by their web communications, and engage their customers. How well do you think you are being welcomed as a human being by the charities you support? And, since many non-profits are addressing the needs of other humans, what does that say about the work these charities do with their beneficiaries?

As both domestic nonprofits and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have grown into huge enterprises, they are less bound by the constraints that govern smaller and single-community organizations, while being more dependent on web communications. However, these nonprofits and NGOs also face greater scrutiny and demand for transparency than ever before because they manage complex networks of relationships with internal and external stakeholders at all levels. As contributors expect more humane and permeable interfaces, transparency, and ways to engage with these organizations, how can thier work carry forward productively?

Co-Creation

Taking off from similar dialogues in the corporate community, what I am suggesting to nonprofits, and to their contributors (and let’s not forget their beneficiaries!) is nothing less than co-creation. Fresh Networks is a UK based market research company and online community builder for corporations. Their blog looks at customer interfaces and has been advocating co-creation models for online businesses. Fresh Networks writes that co-creation will make businesses successful because:

1. Customers want to help and work with brands they know are listening to them
2. Customers want to solve problems
3. All too often the solution or idea you need will be really simple to somebody else

This can be applied to nonprofits to read:

1. Contributors want to help and work with nonprofits they know are listening to them
2. Contributors want to solve problems
3. All too often the solution or idea your beneficiaries need will be really simple to somebody else (like your contributors!)

For instance, check out the example from this for-profit toy manufacturer: The Story of LEGO® Mindstorms on Patty Seybold’s blog Outside Innovation. LEGO® literally had its customer’s create their products and then sold them commercially. This expanded their reach, their vision, and their effectiveness (at selling LEGO®). Imagine what could happen in all of the passion and intelligence you hold as a contributor was really unleashed on our charitable needs? What would happen if all contributors were unconstrained in their passion to solve the problems they care about? What could that mobilized force for good do for humankind and our planet?

Many nonprofit organizations are already doing small pieces of co-creation through their web pages; microfinance and direct-funding (like DonorChoose.org) organizations are already engaged. What other non-profits are co-creating with their contributors and beneficiaries? Please comment (below) and trumpet for your own organization’s efforts or share what you know.

Photo by brickartist.com

Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik

Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik is a writer, illustrator, and mythologist. He has the wonderful title of Chief Belief Officer for the large Indian retail corporation, Future Group. I found him through an article he wrote for The Economic Times about generosity and how it is an essential element of leadership. He gives two illustrations of this, each of which sheds light on the subject of generosity.

The first tale is an ancient one about the throne of a legendary king that is buried in a farmer’s field. A king named Bhoj is one day riding with his men by the field and the farmer shouts at him to stay away. As Bhoj moves off the farmer calls him back cordially and offers hospitality. As the king comes closer the farmer again screams for him to stay away. Pattanaik tells,

Bhoj observed the farmer carefully. He noticed that whenever the farmer was rude, he was standing on the ground. But whenever he was hospitable, he was standing on top of a mound in the middle of the field. Bhoj realized that the farmer’s split personality had something to do with the mound. He immediately ordered his soldiers to dig the mound in the center of the field.

King Vikramaditya

Their digging reveals a golden throne, which Bhoj moves to sit upon. Just as he moves, the throne speaks to him,

‘This is the throne of Vikramaditya, the great. Sit on it only if you are as generous and wise as he was. If not, you will meet your death on the throne.’ The throne then proceeds to tell Bhoj thirty-two stories of Vikramaditya, each extolling a virtue of kingship, the most important virtue being generosity. Thus through these stories, Bhoj learnt what it takes to be a good king.

One might say that Bhoj already demonstrates his kingly abilities both by trying to respond appropriately to a fickle farmer and also through his careful observation, which led him to the throne. It would be interesting to find the one of the 32 actual stories that illustrates the virtue of generosity, but I could not locate it on the web.  It is telling that if you sit on the throne without the correct qualities, generosity being among them, it will be the death of you. Perhaps that is the true moral of the story, that leadership is destructive to the person in the power seat, if she/he is not equipped with the tools to lead well.

Pattanaik then tells a more modern tale about a man named Sunder who gains a promotion to lead a team and then becomes a nasty person. The owner of the company, Kalyansingh talks to him and asks,

‘And how do you plan to get a promotion?’ Sunder replied that it would happen if he did his work diligently and reached his targets. ‘No,’ said Kalyansingh, ‘Absolutely not.’ Sunder did not understand. Kalyansingh explained, ‘If you do your job well, why would I move you out? I will keep you exactly where you are.’ Looking at the bewildered expression on Sunder’s face, Kalyansingh continued, ‘If you nurture someone to take your place, then yes, I may consider promoting you. But you seem to be nurturing no one. You are too busy trying to be boss, trying to dominate people, being rude and obnoxious. That is because you are insecure. So long as you are insecure, you will not let others grow. And as long as those under you do not grow, you will not grow yourself. Or at least, I will not give you another responsibility. You will end up doing the same job forever. Do you want that?’

So, one can gather from these tales that people earn leadership by growing more secure, by nurturing others, and by being generous.  The alternative seems to be professional stagnation or the death-by-throne described in the ancient tale. In this time when so many Americans are focused with anger on the myopia and self-interest of corporate leaders, these tales from India might serve to illuminate a better path.

Giving is the new taking, and sharing is the new giving.
-trendwatching.com

'To be a greedy pig or a free cone, that’s the question' -trendwatching.com

trendwatching.com is an independent trend firm, based in Amsterdam, that relies on a network of 8,000+ spotters to find consumer trends and marketing ideas. They put out a free monthly trend briefing culled from the information they have gathered. This month their briefing is called Generation G: that would be G for ‘Generosity’ not G for ‘Greed’ and it gives evidence that generosity is a long-overdue ‘umbrella trend’ that pulls together various existing and new sub-trends in business. The information they present is substantial and is worth looking at, from a for-profit and nonprofit perspective. The real question here: Is this really generosity?

A series of previous postings on this blog also address the intersection of business and altruistic generosity. Some titles to look for are The Business of Generosity (Parts 1 -4), Is the Gift Economy Generous?, and Economic Systems and People in Poverty.

The trendwatch.com briefing cites 3 drivers that are fueling this emerging generosity trend:

1. Recession and consumer disgust
2. Longing for institutions that care
3. For individuals, giving is already the new taking, and sharing is the new giving

We’re talking the collaborative / free / creation / crowdsourced / gift / sharing movement* that—especially online—has unlocked in entirely new ways the perennial need of individuals to be appreciated, to be loved, to feel part of the greater good, to contribute, to help… To basically find status and gratification in something other than consuming the most or the best.
-trendwatching.com

Then they go on to list 8 Ways for Corporations to Join Generation G:

1. CO-DONATE: innovative corporate donations programs (to charities)
2. ECO-GENEROSITY: beyond compensating for the environmental degradation they create, actually improving the environment
3. FREE LOVE: giving things away as a way to build customer relationships
4. BRAND BUTLERS: brands offering things to consumers that they need, and also allows them to promote the brand
5. PERKONOMICS: perks for the consumer from a brand  – that might be completely unrelated to the product
6. TRYVERTISING: allowing consumers to try the product free for a period of time
7. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS (RAK): providing gifts to the consumer in a random/unpredictable way, employs chance
8. (F)RIGID NO MORE: businesses just being nicer and more accommodating to their customers

Joining GENERATION G as a company or a brand is not really optional,
it’s a fundamental requirement if you want to stay relevant
in societies that value generosity, sharing and collaboration.
-trendwatching.com

These 8 Ways have clever names, but they do describe interesting business models, patterns for business development, and marketing techniques. If you want to learn more, you should really go to the briefing itself. It is engaging and full of images and does actually delineate and document these different ways.
If you are interested in charitable giving or from a nonprofit perspective, what is important about this information?

• The first two items actually fund charities and if you are in a non-profit, you might gain assistance with your mission through this conduit.
• These are all methods of engagement that are adaptable to the nonprofit environment. Engagement is the key to building relationships with your contributors and constituents.
• If people are used to interacting in these ways, they expect to interact in these ways, so you might need to adjust your communications program to adapt to this trend.
• Along the same lines, your contributors and constituents will expect you to be less oriented toward transactions (you give me a donation, I will give you this tote bag), will expect you to show caring for them as well as your mission beneficiaries, and they will expect you to engage in sharing (that is, equitable and collective giving and taking from both sides). This last element, sharing, may be the most difficult for traditional nonprofits to conceptualize and implement.

One of the most inspiring things to me about this trend report is, I think they are right. trendwatch.com is guiding businesses to take advantage of a cultural shift that is taking place, and is evidenced in many different sectors, from the grandiose philanthropic world to intimate personal interactions. Although I am ambivalent about people’s impulse toward generosity being used for commercial gain (which may just be fueling a repackaging of greed), I am glad it is strong enough for the commercial world to want to reflect. And who knows, maybe it will grow a broader ethos of generosity.

The larger and more lasting trend is passionate, empowered individuals
(if not entire generations) being more willing and able
to give, to share, to collaborate; to be more ‘generous’ in many ways.
-trendwatching.com

VRM is about making better customers — on customers’ terms, and in better ways than any vendor makes available today. – Doc Searls

I believe that by giving contributors more ways to engage with nonprofits and more say over that engagement, that these contributors will be more generous with all of their resources (time, muscle, intelligence, connections, and money). These ways to engage include providing the contributors more access options for possible engagement, allowing them to manage and broaden these interactions according to their own preferences, and giving them more options in regulating their own privacy. Many earlier posts on this blog relate to these ideas. Designing for Generosity and What a Nonprofit Web Site Can Say are just a few. How can this work? Will this not leave nonprofits with no way to deepen relationships with their contributors? These are important questions that are being explore in the commercial (for-profit) world as well. This blog discusses one for-profit development area that may lead the way for non-profits in the future.

Because they are involved in rethinking the way business is done in the modern world, and they reference “generosity” regularly, I follow some web-based business thought leaders – like Doc Searls. One of the projects that Searls is involved with is the development of software that will help consumers manage their relationships with the set of vendors where they do business. Right now, companies use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to gather and use information about their customers: who buys from them, at what price, and through which outlets (on the web, at a store, catalogue or phone order, etc.). Charitable organizations have something similar in donor management systems and software. Searls and his group are working to create a reciprocal system – Vendor Relationship Management (VRM) – that engages the consumer in having more control over the “demand side” of commercial transactions.

Model of VRM and CRM by Eve Maler in her blog Pushing String

What is intriguing to me is to think about how this VRM model might work for people who have relationships with various charitable organizations. First let’s explore their VRM ideas a bit.

Project VRM has a web page that explains the project and gives these principles:

• Relationships are voluntary.
• Customers are born free and independent of vendors.
• Customers control their own data. They can share data selectively and control the terms of its use.
• Customers are points of integration and origination for their own data.
• Customers can assert their own terms of engagement and service.
• Customers are free to express their demands and intentions outside any company’s control.

These can all be summed up in the statement Free customers are more valuable than captive ones.

Replace the word Customer in the list above with the word Contributor, and I think this list nicely expresses a better model for generosity in a contributor/nonprofit relationship. This is, as the VRM folks say it, user-centric. These concepts may sound somewhat radical, whether in the nonprofit or for-profit world. But consider that eBay and Farecast (cheap airline flight finder) already work in the direction of VRM – they allow the consumer to determine the item they want to buy at the price they want, independent of what the company may want them to buy. And on the nonprofit side, the organization The Hunger Project is moving close to this model by allowing contributors so many options for engagement and giving.

What would it be like if nonprofits could expend fewer resources on courting donors to greater engagement? What might a synergy between the combined energies of contributors, charitable organizations, and beneficiaries of their missions produce? Some of this energy is going to waste today because all of the onus on growing relationships lies with the charitable organizations. Especially in this down economy, where so many people are suffering, and the charitable organizations trying to serve them are short on resources, we cannot waste anyone’s energy.