Guest Post by Stacey Monk: Dogooders Won’t Change the World (Alone)

Submitted by Stacey Monk, founder of Epic Change

There’s an ever-burgeoning number of forums, chats, conferences, meetups destination websites, competitions, you-name-it, for dogooders. Call us social entrepreneurs, changemakers, social innovators, nonprofiteers, the delta sector, np techies, community benefit professionals, pick your poison, there’s a growing number of places we hang out - with one another. Just yesterday I read a tweet that called the #nonprofit twitter tag a “cavernous echo chamber.” Ouch.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love you people. I think you’re some of the most brilliant, passionate, tireless, amazing humans I’ve ever met. To be truthful, I’d rather hang out with you than just about anybody. And I think it’s good that we’re building such a fun, vibrant community…but not good enough.

There’s these kids sitting at the other lunch tables in our global cafeteria. They’re jocks, geeks, artists, musicians and cheerleaders…and we need their help. Doing good isn’t our job, it’s everyone’s. And as long as changing the world is relegated to a sector, it will never happen.

Photo by clyatt.jasper (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic license)

A few weeks ago in response to a post I wrote on the cultural bias of social change competitions, Michael Lewkowitz of Igniter.com commented:

“I am painfully tired of destination [sites] for social entrepreneurs/changemakers or any other community…Changemaking needs to engage others both to make the change happen and to probe/test/evolve the venture itself. To me, what we’re hoping for is vibrant ecosystems of changemakers from all places, backgrounds, and disciplines pushing the frontiers of the world we want. An ecosystem where its members connect, interact, and support not just the people in their circles but people they ‘bump into’ based on some ‘random’ interest and connection. This is about facilitating discovery, nurturing trust, sharing experiences, and light-weight focused request/responses.”

I think he’s right…and, online and off, I’m beginning to make it a priority to hang out with folks outside our dogooder set. Last week, I spoke at the 140 Characters Conference in NYC. While everyone in the room was changing the world in their own way, very, very few were in our sector. There were social media folks, musicians, print and television journalists, scientists, fashionistas, and more. Even on the “social media for social good” panel, I believe I was the only one who actually worked within a nonprofit or social enterprise.

As I sat there, I was reminded again that societal change is not the domain of nonprofits or social entrepreneurs; it’s created by musicians, politicians, journalists, technologists and so many others. Here’s just four key conversations that I thought had deep significance for the social change community:

(CAUTION: F-bombs below. )

ANN CURRY | Today Show News Anchor | @AnnCurry
On empathy & telling stories that matter

The quotes below are taken from a New York Observer story about an incredibly interesting panel that included Ann Curry, Robert Scoble, and other journalists from CNN, FOX and NBC in a discussion about the evolution of journalism in the context of Twitter and social media. You may find some of these comments in the thoroughly engaging video as well, though some of the Ann’s more salient points didn’t make it into the footage.

“Here’s what’s pissing me off: The reason I have to fight every time to do these stories [like Darfur] is because the truth is that it’s hard to get the majority of Americans…to care.” (not in video) “Often times, when we go into foreign countries, one of the worst mistakes that we make as mainstream media people, as any kind of media people, and I hope this changes with the advent of citizen journalism, is that we are unable to empathize in a way that sees their story truthfully…We often go in as Americans telling the story of how Americans see the story going on somewhere. That is a huge mistake.” (starts around 16:46) “I want you, whether you’re in the Congo or Darfur or if you’re in Iran or if you’re in Tanzania, Kosovo…you shoot that story like it’s your mother, your brother, your sister, your father and your cousin and you tell that in that way because that’s actually the road, I think, to not only clarity and truth and understanding. But I think it’s also the road to really fully becoming global.” (starts around 17:27)

How can we develop audiences, cultivate care and empathy, and find alternate funding that doesn’t require public popularity so that important stories get told?

CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTEN | Rolling Stone Music Critic| @1000TimesYes
On the limitations of silos & crowdsourcing

“That dude John Burn [an earlier presenter] was up here saying that ‘Twitter makes it easy to find stuff that pertains to you.’ And he thinks that’s awesome. That’s the fuckin’ problem!…I can always learn about stuff that’s important to me; that’s easy. I want to learn about stuff that isn’t important to me. I want to be exposed to things.” (starts around 7:01) “Crowdsourcing killed punk rock…Crowdsourcing kills art…It’s bullshit. You wanna know why? Because crowds have terrible taste. People have awful taste…it’s all this music that rises to the middle, this boring, bland, white-people guitar music. It fuckin’ sucks. I hate it…It’s not the music that’s the best, it’s the music that the most people can stand. It’s the music that the most people can listen to. If you let the people decide, then nothing truly adventurous ever gets out and that’s a problem.” (starts around 7:21)

What’s the appropriate role for crowdsourcing in the context of social innovation? What ecosystems facilitate serendipitous discovery and collaboration? How can we ensure truly revolutionary, “punk rock” ideas get found, selected & funded?

WYCLEF JEAN | Musician | @wyclef
On poster children & social investment

“I hate these poster child looks of these kids that look so hungry…like ‘please give us money.’ …I hate that because I was one of those kids. There’s a happy side to these kids and this is what we try to focus on with Yele Haiti.” (starts around 20:58) His interviewer interjects with a comment that ends with “It’s a really dire situation I think.” Wyclef responded: “It’s a dire situation, but it’s a hopeful situation. Hopeful in the sense that you can still twitter from Haiti, …you have an airport in Haiti so…if we can give this country a little bit of boost, it will get itself back on its feet…Unfortunately it’s either that you’re poor or you’re rich, there’s absolutely no middle class. I think one of the things that we can start doing in helping to move this country forward is education…[and] jobs…Investors have to feel like Haiti is a safe place [so] they can actually go back to Port-au-Prince and start investing…because you can do as much charity work as you want to but unless you start to bring business and infrastructure into a place you’re gonna always find a group of kids that are crippled.” (starts around 22:30)

Are we sharing stories and imagery that undermine the dignity and humanity of the very people we’re trying to serve? Are we building sympathy or empathy? How can we build partnerships between nonprofits and the corporate sector such that our successes build upon one another?

DREW OLANOFF | Geek & GOGII Community Director | @drew
On the power of individual storytelling & fun

“When I was diagnosed [with stage 3 hodgkin's lymphoma]…I wanted to do something good. I wanted to turn this experience into something positive…so, basically, we released BlameDrewsCancer.com which allows you with a twitter hashtag, #blamedrewscancer, to blame anything you want on my cancer.” (starts around 4:35) “[there's] a [new] feature that is amazing and fun…A song is being written…Anything we can do to get the community involved because twitter has alot of artists, alot of musicians…anything we can do to come together…2 weeks ago was my first chemo treatment I felt like crap and I sat there and I read these tweets and they made me laugh. And it helps. And I appreciate it.” (starts around 6:50)

Drew’s engaging an incredibly diverse group of collaborators with his personal story - from coder friends, who developed his website and this cool new twitter tetris game, to musicians, who are writing a song, to businesses like FreeCreditReport.com, who partnered and donated to the cause.

Are there tools we can create that help people tell their own stories in fun, personal, engaging ways that change the world? How can we re-humanize giving? How can we reach out in creative, compelling ways to bring a diverse group of people together around important causes and ideas?

Perhaps that question is the most important of all: how do ecosystems emerge in which conversations like these, with participants from many sectors, evolve further and lead to collaborative action and real change? I also had the opportunity to catch up with some folks at TED while I was in New York and I shared some ideas and posed the same question for them: how can “ideas worth spreading,” which originate from amazing people of incredibly diverse backgrounds, evolve into mass collaborative action from the top-down and the bottom-up to bring them to global scale?

The 140 Characters conference is being re-broadcast in its entirety Monday, 6/29 and Tuesday, 6/30. I assure you there’s many other interesting conversations that may inspire ;) Details are available at http://www.140conf.com/140conf-rebroadcast-june-29-and-june-30th.

This article was originally posted on The Epic Change Blog at http://epicchange.org/blog/2009/06/28/dogooders-wont-change-the-world-alone/ by Stacey Monk:

Stacey is the founder of Epic Change and TweetsGiving.

Comments

[Greg Rollett]

Awesome post Stacey. I agree that nonprofits and anyone looking to make any amount of change needs to break outside of their niche, their comfort zone of friends, volunteers and peers. I know that for our organization, Rock For Hunger, if we want to truly make a difference we need to continue to involve young people and musicians, because their passion is so strong but we need to involve the entire community - from politicians to other nonprofits to tv personalities to big business to mom and pops to lawyers, doctors and construction workers. Together, with action, we can make a difference.

I followed the 140 Conf and the ideas and stories that came out were amazing - a little jealous that I wasn't there to see it live. Keep up the inspiring work.