Jeff, so many big companies and npo/ngo's are so behind the times digitally. I'd suggest you get on the horn and try to make a deeper connection with someone on the phone.

Interesting post, Jeff - a shame Oxfam's response shows such reluctance to communicate with others who might help.

I continue to be impressed with much of the work Oxfam is doing on the ground, but some time ago I lost faith in the way it interacts with potential supporters. I used to collect door to door in our village during Oxfam Week, but was unable to organise a complete village collection because someone else was apparently collecting in some of the other streets. Oxfam were most reluctant to assist me in trying to contact this anonymous person to see if we could work together at all and wouldn't even reveal the streets they were collecting in. Increasingly, too, I was getting hostile reaction from some villagers who were critical of the ways Oxfam was using its volunteers. Some had had bad experiences when they worked as volunteers in Oxfam shops and said they would never give to Oxfam again. Finally, it became apparent that quite a few people assumed I was being paid to collect and therefore was a suitable person at whom to direct their dissatisfaction.

I think that once an organisation is so large it starts to pay its "volunteers" (as Oxfam now does), it has lost any ambition it may ever have had to be responsive to individual suggestions and offers of help.

Though, if you follow Mark's suggestion, and you succeed in making a deeper connection with someone, I guess you will have proved my generalisation wrong.

Thanks for those thoughts guys. Unfortunately it's more than Oxfam, in that what social enterprise should be IMHO is something which encourages like-minded others to help build the "Third Economic Sector". Often it seems more like branding above cooperating. Local government for instance has a great deal of hyperbole about procurement and social enterprise, but I've yet to find one who'll contemplate putting this into action.

I'll follow up with Oxfam shortly, to be sure.

Jeff

We had a similar expereince with a large UN group ill not name. We were well on the way to selling some products made at one of their shelters and then all of a sudden their lawyers got invovled and made it impossible to go forward - much to the detriment of the women in thier program. I think with most if not all the large NGOs there is an institutional bias - if its not something they control completely they dont want it, if they cant use it for fundraising they dont want it, etc.

Now you mention the UN, John. Rather the inverse happened with another part of the organisation for us several years ago, when they wanted to take on something we'd proposed and then blocked when other parties tried to tag on their own projects. UN group agreed to back off, when the point about copyright was made.

Recently I needed to fire a shot across the bows of the British Council, a customer who seem to have missed us off their suppliers register for 2 years at the same time handing our grants for SE projects. I needed to fax an explanation of how social enterprise should work for us too.