Archive for March, 2010

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March 24, 2010

Shared Measurement Systems for Non-Profits

Attended a great webinar this morning hosted by FSG Social Impact Advisors. They are a non-profit consultancy focusing on social impact measures.

The webinar talked about some of the research they have done in the sector. One of the fundamental challenges for non-profits and funders is that funders naturally want to see the results of their grants and investments. The problem arises that non-profits then need to report back to every funder for every grant in different formats. The FSG research looked at groups that are using shared measures to minimize this impact, save money and learn from each other.

They have identified three main categories of sharing measurment

1. Shared Measurement Systems – A common platform to report different goals and measures. www.successmeasures.org is an example of this type of system for community impact measures with over 200 orgs using the system.

2. Comparative Performance Systems – A system that uses identical measures to compare performance. The Cultural Data Project is an example of this type of system used by thousands of non-profit cultural organizations across the U.S.  And an example of one useful by very small organizations in the cultural sector.

3. Adaptive Learning Systems – A system that uses identical measures to align efforts and goals. Strive is an example of this type of system to connect leaders across sectors around a common vision of education support. The cool thing about this project is that the participating groups really get to learn from each other, identify missing pieces and develop new programs.

What is interesting about all of these categories is that they are sector driven. The benefits of the measurement and data accrue not just to funders (the traditional beneficiaries) but to the sector and the non-profit organizations themselves.

I believe this model is the way of the future for non-profit organizations and measurement. The bottom-up development approach, the focus on “usefulness” of the measures for organizations and the drive for collaboration around measure development are all critical in creating effective measurement systems. I believe this is also a great example of the trend toward openness and collaboration in the non-profit space.

Finally, there is an amazing opportunity here to connect this movement with the open data and open government movements. Shared measurement systems like this can benefit from benchmark and other data held in government systems. For example, Strive is looking to access data on school performance stored in State data systems for comparison.

I’m looking forward to seeing the evolution of these strategies as well as integrating this thinking into the Demonstrating Value Initiative and our own social sustainability reporting.

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March 17, 2010

BC Apps for Climate Action contest for developers coming soon

I’m very excited about SAP sponsorship for an upcoming developer contest by the Province of BC.  The province is working with nine sponsors to develop an apps contest for climate action software applications. The contest asks participants to design fun, dynamic and innovative applications for both the Internet and mobile devices using government data.

Like the City of Vancouver did here, the province is developing a data catalogue focused on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in preparation for the contest. This will be a great opportunity developers to take advantage of this data to build some really interesting applications.

Details still to come but suffice it to say that SAP will be helping out developers with out data visualization and analysis solutions like Crystal Reports and Xcelsius. Imagine the possibilities!

An announcement about the contest is expected at GLOBE 2010 (Mar 24-26) so keep your ears open and I’ll have more info very soon.

Stephen Hui has more background in his Georgia Straight article here

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March 15, 2010

Missing Links: Traditional Media Still Doesn’t Get It

I don’t usually get drawn into debates about the roles of mainstream vs.  new media. Commentators such as Reilly Yeo at The Mark have done a great job of that here

What really struck me over the weekend was how out of touch organizations such as The New York Times still are, despite their efforts to modernize and incorporate new media techniques.

In this Sunday article, “Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle”, the authors talk about a new initiative to improve access and speed to the Internet across the country. Part of the article mentions a new F.C.C. application that will “allow [subscribers] to test the speed of their home Internet and see if they’re paying for data speeds as advertised”.

Since I was reading the article online, I thought that sounded cool and wanted to test my own speed.  So I looked for the link to the FCC app – and looked and looked and could not find it anywhere. In fact, the only links in the article are to internal NY Times web site searches.

So of course, I leave the NY Times site, flip over to Google and search for the site. At which point the New York Times has lost any ability to capture any revenue, click-through traffic or anything from me. Why would I go back?

To me, this is a vivid example of a fundamental problem with “traditional” media. The Internet is not an afterthought or add-on – it needs to be part of the basic DNA of an organization for communication, collaboration and connection. Unless groups like the Times get this figure out fast, they won’t be around much longer. Of course there are other issues around business model and so on, but if consumers like myself cannot actually do what I need to do with the product, no changes to business models will help.

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March 12, 2010

Changes to Society Act to Affect all BC Non-profits

A recent email from Enterprising Non-Profits brought a very important issue for BC non-profits to my attention.

In December 2009, the BC Provincial Government issued a request for consultation on possible changes to the BC Society Act. Since then, a group of local organizations have been working together on developing a collaborative submission to help represent the interests of the not-for-profit sector in BC.

A copy of this submission, initially endorsed by 28 leading organizations from BC, is available here.  The submission does a good job of describing some issues with the current Society Act (such as inflexibility in governance structures) and some things that are not required by changes to the act (such as mandatory audits at the cost of non-profits).  What I find most interesting is the section on what is needed. Simplicity of incorporation is key but also support for social enterprise organizations.

Many organizations have been exploring the use of social enterprises to drive revenue and to achieve a public good at the same time. Such organizations and their objectives do not fit easily into the Society Act, the Business Corporations Act or the Cooperative Association Act.

The problem is that social enterprises are a hybrid type of organization and the tax treatment and investment rules are not very clear. This results in confusion on the ground and sometimes lack of investment until rules are clarified.

There has also been a sector based website established to build momentum and encourage more dialogue and education about the importance of this legislation  www.yourtake.ca . The website is supported byVancity Credit Union, Vancity Community Foundation, the Vancouver Foundation and the United Community Services Co-op

In the words of Derek Gent, Executive Director of the Vancity Community Foundation,

We believe that a strong voice is necessary at this time, showing some solidarity and confirming that an overly restrictive regulatory framework is not in the public interest. Accountability is certainly important, but there is a significant risk that changes to the Act (which applies to the vast majority of not-for-profit organizations here) could result in new onerous requirements for compliance and undue limitations on activities or governance as we have seen in other jurisdictions. Given the very broad diversity of organizations in our sector here in BC and the already strained capacity, we encourage you to voice your opinions directly to the government through their consultation process http://www.fin.gov.bc.ca/society_act_review.htm , and/or to show support for this collaborative response.

The deadline for submissions through the formal consultation is April 1, 2010, so even just a quick e-mail to fcsp@gov.bc.ca confirming your opinions about the prospect of increased regulation in the not-for-profit sector would be useful.

For those interested in adding support to the collaborative group, the team will work to compile lists of supporters for the collaborative response at vcf@vancity.com or on the website at where the submission is posted

Please take the time to read the submission and add your voice at www.yourtake.ca/sign-on-to-joint-submission/

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March 11, 2010

Green Commuting Before and During the Olympics

Nice writeup in Going Green blog out of U.S.  talking about SAP Vancouver’s commuting initiatives during, and hopefully after, the Olympics.

Great to see how we stacked up against the Vancouver and Canada averages. We have only 32% of employees driving solo as compared to an average of 67% in Vancouver, 72% across Canada and 77% in the US

The post notes a few reasons for this high level of non-car commuting:

  • Downtown location near transit
  • Showers and lockers on site
  • Bike lockers
  • Transit pass discounts

It will be interesting to see how many “converts” we have to the new way of commuting 3 or 6 months after the Olympics are over.

Plus I love the quote from Kirsten Sutton, our Managing Director, from her tweet. Saying she will be continuing to ride the bus now that the Olympics are over she says “You can teach an old dog new tricks”

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March 8, 2010

Open Gov West – Seattle Mar 26-27

Open Gov West is a very cool conference coming up in Seattle at the end of the month. Bringing together technologists, civic engagement organizations and  governments, the conference is designed to “facilitate regional collaboration and share best practices across open government initiatives”. The concepts of open government have been very prevalent lately in forums such as The Economist and with the publication of the new book “Open Government“

Innovative governments and agencies are taking advantage of new technologies to create a different relationship with citizens. Rather than a limited and one-way flow of information, open governments create an environment for collaboration and conversation with citizens. Where citizens can not only access and make use of public information, but in turn influence government policy.

In an interesting twist, the two days of the conference take very different approaches. The first day is targeted mostly at government representatives and leaders of open government initiatives and takes a fairly traditional approach with keynotes and breakouts.

The second day brings in “Citizens, technologists, designers, academics, social entrepreneurs, policy wonks, political players, and government employees” and is built around the unconference format with some pre-determined sessions, but lots of room for anyone to propose a new session on the day. I had a great experience with this type event when helping to organize Vancouver Change Camp last year and the energy and ideas released have to be seen to be believed!

Register here and please pass on to your networks. Hope to see you there!

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March 5, 2010

Virtual Cross-Canada David Suzuki Workshop with SAP 12sprints

Today I had the pleasure of delivering a David Suzuki at Work workshop at Read Jones Cristofferson Consulting Engineers. I facilitated the workshop as part of the Suzuki Ambassador program I have mentioned earlier.

RJC are a Canada-wide firm with main offices in Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto. A challenge when trying to build a green culture in a geographically distributed company is how to engage, collaborate and build connections between these offices. There are also differences in company wide objectives and regional/office interests. For example, in Toronto, the office is right on top of Union Station so very easy for commuting. In Vancouver, the office is on Broadway near Granville so a bit better, but not that convenient for the West Coast Express train. The prairie offices are further away from transit. These differences mean that country wide strategies need to be tailored to – and driven from – local needs.

Today we used a combination of technologies to bring the Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton offices together for the workshop. In Vancouver we had 10 people, 4 in Edmonton and another 3 in Calgary. We used a combination of tele-conference, web screen sharing with Adobe Connect and the new SAP collaborative decision-making tool 12sprints to brainstorm jointly and take notes.

During the parts of the session where we would normally break into groups and take notes on flip-chart paper with markers, we had each group focus on a particular area – reducing energy consumption, trimming waste, creating a healthy workplace and building a sustainable transportation plan – to brainstorm ideas. Each group was logged into the online 12sprints tool and we could see live as each group entered their ideas. This made it easy to do a review after the exercise, prioritize which ideas have the most value and assign action items to take the ideas forward. All of the notes remain available for use by RJC staff as they build out a company-wide sustainability strategy.

I’m really happy with the way this first “virtual” workshop went. Apart from some issues around not being able to hear all of the conversation through the conference phone, the feedback from the remote offices was great. People really liked collaborating with colleagues across the company, not just in their own office. Going forward, it will be interesting to add video to the collaboration mix.

There are lots of companies that have distributed locations across Canada – and across the world – like RJC and SAP. Combining the David Suzuki Toolkit with online  collaboration tools will allow us to reach more people in more businesses across the country with less travel, reduced CO2 and even less flipchart paper to recycle!

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March 2, 2010

Goals, Questions and Metrics: Building a Dashboard

Why build a dashboard? This question is often overlooked in the rush to get something done, something that looks good! When organizations look at building a dashboard, there are few quick items to check through. I have written extensively on using information in earlier posts (series here and here) so this time I want to highlight one particular technique.

My colleague Steve Unger at SAP Vancouver uses this technique when building dashboards for our internal R&D management and we have had success doing the same with non-profits.

The steps are:

  • What is the goal of the dashboard? Who will use it and why?
  • What questions are the users trying to answer?
  • What metrics can help answer those questions? What are the targets?

As an example, we are currently working with a Canadian environmental organization. Their communications team wants a dashboard to look at public engagement – volunteers, donors, web site visitors, etc.

When we met with them, we used this process to help map out the requirements for the project. In this case, the goal of the dashboard was to make better decisions on program spending. The users of the dashboard are members of the communications team. This team is responsible for recruiting and engaging volunteers, sending out mass email newsletters, running the web site, engaging donors over the web and quite a few other things!

The questions they want to answer are things like:

  • Does increasing email campaign frequency impact retention? (retention)
  • What would be the impact of increasing the conversion of rate of web traffic to email subscribers on fundraising prospecting?
  • What is the most effective way to increase the number of actions performed per email campaign, increase % open rate or increase % clickthru rate?
  • What method of acquisition of subscribers has the best ROI?

These questions then lead directly to the metrics that would help answer these questions. Once those metrics are defined, we can start to add targets to know whether we are going in the right direction. Depending on how “mature” the organization is, the historical data may not be there to set concrete targets. In this case, I recommend comparing to external benchmarks. For the examples above, there are best practices and expected results for conversion and open rates. The organization can benchmark against those as a starting point.

Once we refine these points, creating the dashboard in Xcelsius or another tool is easy. The hard part is defining the requirements up front. One more piece to consider is where the data is coming from and ensuring the quality of that data. More on that soon.

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