Lucy Bernholz
Philanthropy trends expert Lucy Bernholz gave 10 predictions for philanthropy in the next decade, and I had two and a half thoughts on two of them.
Structured disaster relief: More attention to preparation, less reliance on raising money instantly.
My reaction: Preparation must be flexible, and the planning document must be brief. You don’t want the plan gathering dust on shelf, and in fact you want everyone in your organization to have memorized the plan. That means it needs to be short.
Scaling up through a network: As in the nodes on the Internet, or “small pieces loosely coupled.” (This made me think of David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory Of The Web
My reaction: Nonprofits should continue to think of partnerships, collaborations, and loose affiliations with other organizations. It can mean more efficient and effective service delivery, and it helps avoid competition for limited donations.
My half reaction: Lucy alluded to the strange and wonderful things that happen when people act as groups. For those wanting to study this, a good research-starting keyword is emergence—the analysis of group outputs that can’t be predicted from the qualities of the individuals in the groups. A fun place to start is The Ants
Let me know what you think.
(St. Paul: Wilder Publishing Center, 2003), which lucky Midlands Nonprofit Summit-goers (including yours truly) got for free at his inspiring morning keynote hosted by the