Defining "Collaboration" in the Social Change sector

There's a lot of talk lately in the Social Change circles I hang out with online about "collaboration" and the need for more of it in our sector. But are we on the same page about what collaboration means?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines collaborate as a verb meaning To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.

That definition resonates with me to a certain point. Yes, it is extremely useful to think things through together, and to learn from each others' experiences. In this connected day and age, I'd even venture that it's silly for change agents not to seek intellectual input on their ideas. But I find myself wanting more action in how collaboration in our sector pans out. I want collaboration in our sector to mean taking cooperative, collective action for greater social impact.

Am I alone in wanting that? Is that asking too much? More importantly, perhaps, what does (or could) that desired definition of collaboration actually look like in practical terms? Will greater social impact be achieved if collaboration is intentionally better defined, structured and incentivized in the new social economy? Or is collaboration that's more loosely structured (ie, thinking things through together) as far as we need to go to see our impact as a sector increase over time?

I'd love for us to explore this.

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

Is collaboration more effective when it's structured or unstructured?

Does collaboration ever fail to increase social impact? If yes, what are the factors that lead to failure?

What are the biggest incentives for collaborating? The biggest deterrents?

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

I look very much forward to reading your thoughts.

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Last comment added: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:38:55 PST

Comment 1 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

How to get people and organizations to collaborate? Not sure, incentivize them perhaps as you say.

Defined versus loose collaboration, and the answer for what is better may well be in the hands of the people and groups doing the collaboration. In other words the answer might be...both.

Collaboration among Omidyar.net members and Invisible Children founders really seemed to help drive IC much further much quicker, and certainly did a great job energizing the o/net community.

Peace Tiles did a great job of using the Peace Tile process as collaborational element between two organizations.

How does one "open up" collaboration in general?

Love this thread.

Comment 2 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Mark Grimes said:

Collaboration among Omidyar.net members and Invisible Children founders really seemed to help drive IC much further much quicker, and certainly did a great job energizing the o/net community.

Yes, and let's piece this together. Life in Africa's more intricate collaboration with Invisible Children grew from the Onet connection, but was very negatively charged. At the end, in spite of a lot of good achieved together, we both had to let that collaboration go. The lack of a clear agreement for 1.5+ years was a devastating factor for Life in Africa's organizational culture, for our members who worked for IC, and for our microfinance program in partnership with Kiva. When a lot is at stake for the partners involved in an action oriented collaboration, I've learned that it's really important to have clear agreements in place.

Peace Tiles did a great job of using the Peace Tile process as collaborational element between two organizations.

http://peacetiles.org is such a wonderful collaborative medium. The human connections that peacetiles enable are so lovely - powerful and not expensive. One of the all time favorite collaborations I ever participated in was Peace Tiles to Darfur. Life in Africa members and I led a workshop that taught kids in Northern Uganda about the conflict in Darfur. They then created an incredible peacetiles mural as a gift for kids in Darfur. I carried the tiles in my suitcase to LA, where Gabriel Stauring picked them up and packed them for his upcoming trip to Darfur. I'll have to dig up the links to the content that we all created for that collaboration.

How does one "open up" collaboration in general?

I am hoping that inviting with intent might be an adequate place to start. Help me twitter?

Love this thread.

Tweet Tweet :)

Comment 3 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

Re: Definition: taking cooperative, collective action for greater social impact.*

I would expand the definition. Collaborative approach in the social sector is a way of doing business that promotes transparency and puts a lens on your work that supports open standards and fosters development of solutions that help the field as well as solve your problem. Simply allowing information to be available is a way of fostering collaboration. It is not necessarily a discreet action or initiative but an openness which enables awareness and future collaboration.

At the end of the day, collaboration may in fact lead to greater social impact (greater reach & larger scale impact), but how it does this is equally important. Collaboration allows for greater efficiency and the leveraging of core expertise of multiple organizations. Enabling organizations to capitalize on the strenghths of another, to complement skill sets and services - this is the beauty of collaboration. Collaboration can take the form of mergers, serve as a tactic for sustainability, and play a key role in scaling.

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

http://search.socialentrepreneur api.org First open source database of vetted social entrepreneurs. Simple, yet impactful, scalable, and beneficial to not only the participants but many others - It has created actionable knowledge and the value of the tool will continue to grow along with the increased collaboration.

Is collaboration more effective when it's structured or unstructured?

Two schools of thought - don't go in with the answers, answers need to be built. Alternatively, you DO need a process and ideally a "shepherd" to ensure that time is used efficiently and progress is made. Otherwise, people return to their daily work demands and the collaboration takes the back seat.

Does collaboration ever fail to increase social impact? If yes, what are the factors that lead to failure

Yes, I would think so - when the collaboration is forced, not a good fit, not clearly defined, or is not mutually beneficial. Also there needs to be clearly identified champions from both organizations to be successful.

What are the biggest incentives for collaborating? The biggest deterrents?

The biggest incentive is solving specific internal organization issue or challenge. The biggest deterrants: fear, money, and time. You need upfront collaboration that is low risk, high reward, then you can build to bigger collaboration. Precedent from other industries helps, proof of concept helps, "pilot programs" help. Asking for $ upfront can not only cause friction, it can be a complete barrier. (Not always, of course, - well thought out, larger scale initiatives may take longer, but that rigor can overcome barrier and fear of risk associated with deploying resources). Think about what could go right - not just what could go wrong.

Comment 4 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Defining collaboration isn't so easy, because collaboration can be something so simple, like adding a post or a small edit, or complicated like an enduring partnership.

I may be off point, but I suppose it's what's on my mind right now :-)

Generally social change connotes a progressive mindset. It's very interesting to me to see how in the USA today there is such a polarization along the liberal and conservative axis. What's strange is that when I think of real challenges confronting people today, liberal and conservative don't seem the most important categories in responding to them.

On Facebook I've got a nephew whose very much in thrall of Hannity-FreeRepublic-Fox News conservatism. Recently he posted videos of a PR guy named Bob Basso who does performances as Thomas Paine on TV and YouTube videos. These are wildly popular some of them with 9 million views. Tea Bagging...

I've also been surprised to see people from Onet who I feel I've collaborated with posting similar sorts of expressions on their FB Walls. Oh and with the G20 here looking at the online media of that event and seeing how much references Alex Jones who expresses paleoconservative views.

The Thomas Paine shtick reminded me of an early book by Jeremy Rifkin "Common Sense II" where Rifkin channels Thomas Paine in not such a different way from today's Bob Basso. The biggest difference is Basso is creating a bigger audience: Collaborators?

There is anger across the land, and I see that right-wing politics is talking up revolution. Sadly, if history is any guide, revolutions are a sort of social change that seem mostly to end badly.

While the definition of collaboration is left very open, I think implicit in starting the thread is an idea of online collaboration which crosses multiple boarders.

So back to Basso and channeling Thomas Paine. It reminded me of Rifkin back in the 1970's. His book was in collaboration with some of what Ralph Nader was doing at the time. And more generally connected with ideas about creating "economic democracy." One of Nader's efforts in this was "The People's Bicentennial Commission." The only references I can find to that are right wing organizations and the many anti-activist sites online. The People's Bicentennial Commission is long forgotten, but the people most closely associated with it never stopped working on economic democracy.

Thomas Paine died in New York City in 1810 and apparently there were only six mourners, two of them black. The popularity on the right of agitating revolution I suspect relies on the notion that like Thomas Paine, nobody will remember down the line. Whatever one thinks of Rifkin, after his two early books with revolution in mind, his career has taken a different tack. Few of the people associated with the economic democracy movement contiued to speak in revolutionary terms after the mid-seventies. But their ideas continued to be radical.

One of the founders of The Democracy Collaborative is Gar Alperovitz. Now I tend to identify as a lefty, at least in casual conversation with most Americans. But when I read an associate with the left online, at least in the more historically shaped leftist thoughts, I'm really not there. Alperovitz speaks my language, there's no party line or academic school one has to pledge fealty to.

I had my nephew take the political compass test which asks political opinions and then graphs them on two axes: left-right/libertarian-authoritarian. Not surprisingly he's no right wing authoritarian; he only plays one on Facebook. That's not quite true, he really does identify as right.

Perhaps in American politics today the winner will be the ones who can capture the generalized anger that's out there.

There are a few points I want to make in all of this. The first point has to do with collaboration across politically charged rhetoric. I think there's much more space for collaboration than is often thought.

The second point is during the sixties and seventies there was lots of talk about revolution from the left. Some of it had to do with a particular sort of revolution, but I think much of it is very much like the calls for revolution today coming from the right; it is more about people expressing anger about things gone wrong.

The third point is that since the 1970's many really smart people have been collaborating together to create ideas for positive change. This work has been much more practical and extensive than people imagine and doesn't fit neatly along the left-right continuum.

The forth point is it seems that there is a view that large scale change follows from local actions. Getting local can mean very local, like your home and block, but it can also mean regional issues like watersheds. The boundaries of local are not always political boundaries, but the attention is towards issues which are bounded.

In all the time I've know Christina she's been thousands of miles away. I think it is possible to collaborate across such distances. And I often wax eloquent in a cyber-Utopian sort of way. Nevertheless, I think that the insight about global change following local action is very important. People far away can be of most help with a focused local program. When people collaborate online from all over, the collaboration is best when there is a clear object. A good example is Flickr, people know what the site is about: posting photos.

I think Global Voices is a terrific example of online collaboration. But where it succeeds best is in making local and particular issues known to a broader audience.

Collaboration is best when it is specific, when it's locally oriented or object oriented. I bet that lots more Americans today know who Bab Basso is than know who Gar Alperovitz is. Still, I think it quite significant that so many working for social change in the sixties and seventies dropped the revolution talk and got down to practical work. There's a great well of experience upon which to draw that really isn't so easily poisoned by political propaganda as may be thought.

One of the pitfalls of imagining collaboration is imagining that political agreement is prerequisite for it. In politics divide and rule is the oldest game around. There is an advantage of a a group identity which has an targeted enemy. But the drawback out weigh the advantages. Basic trust building between people is more effective, I believe, than exploiting ideological difference.

Comment 5 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

#i4c Housekeeping: Bridging with Twitter

I would like to experiment with connecting this discussion and the many related conversations that participants here are engaged in elsewhere online. With intent, I have invited some people I really respect from my twitterstream, so building a bridge to Twitter seems in order.

Future posters to this thread: please help us build it as follows

If you have a Twitter ID, please use it to tag your posts.

Please use #i4c to connect this discussion with other related developments in your Twitterverse

There is now a wikispace at http://www.ned.com/group/i4c/ws/ _i4c/ where you can add your TwitterID on a consolidated list of others who are in multi-channel discussion about related sector developments.

I've edited the intro to this discussion to include specific Twitterbridging instructions.

Thanks!

@ChristinasWorld

Comment 6 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jill Finlayson said:

Think about what could go right - not just what could go wrong.

Thanks for sharing, Jill. Your comment prompted me to add a question to the intro:

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

Comment 7 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

This conversation topic has come up in the past, on Omidyar.net and here. I've offered thoughts on this that I'll repeat again.

I think that for their to be collaboration, someone has to step forward and define a purpose, or a reason, for people to begin to connect with each other. That could be larger or small, but until someone takes that role, there's not likely to be much collaboration.

Secondly, this is a process of invitation, such as open space that Michael Herman teaches. Just because you think you've identified a problem, does not mean everyone will be knocking down your door to join you in solving it. I've been building a network of people involved in tutoring/mentoring since 1975, and it has expanded to include people from around the world who are interested in poverty, workforce development, diversity, education, social justice, etc.

I send out email newsletters each month (and before the Internet I sent printed newsletters, but less frequently and to a much smaller network). In these I share ideas that I learn from other people, and point to others who I want to help, and who I want to help me. At this link are 55 web sites related to collaboration. http://www.tutormentorconnection .org/LinksLearningNetwork/LinksL ibrary/tabid/560/rrcid/13/rrscid /26/rrpid/1/rrepp/20/language/en -US/Default.aspx

Thus, you need to be persistent, and you need to find a way to "stay in the game". From 1975 to 1990 I had a full time job that paid my bills. Since 1990 I've had to raise the money from a wide range of private donors to do this work (thank you Christina for your donation!). If you can't find the money, and can't continue the process of invitation, and network building, it's not likely the collaboration around your idea will ever grow beyond informal networking.

Unless....

In the book titled The Spider and the Starfish, the idea of decentralized networks is explained. I apply this in my own thinking. I put my ideas on the web at http://www.tutormentorexchange.net and talk about them in a blog at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com

Anyone can take ownership of these ideas, and some do. They don't need to pay me for them (although helping me find the money to keep me paid would be nice). Thus, other leaders might be using their own time, talent and dollars to make these ideas come true, and I don't even know about it.

This is not formal collaboration, but maybe a stronger glue, because it aims to connect us around a common purpose, where each of us can "do our own thing" to achieve a common goal.

If we keep doing this, and keep inviting people to come together, this can lead to more formal collaboration not only between myself and others, but between the people who I connect to each other. I may not ever know that some of these are taking place, but again, that is my role in network building.

An example of this is that I first learned about Social Network Analysis from conversations on Omidyar. On Nov. 20 Valdas Krebs and Jean Russell will be presenting information about SNA during the Conference that I host in Chicago every six months. This coming together is a result of over 4 years of networking and sending invitations. It may lead to nothing more formal, or it might lead to me using donated software to map the network of the T/MC and use these tools to build more support for the vision we share. See http://www.tutormentorconference .org

How do we know what is happening? On-line documentation systems offer potential for understanding the impact of the collective efforts of many people, over many years.

We launched an on-line documentation system in 2000 that enables anyone who is working with T/MC to document actions that lead to long-term growth of tutor/mentor programs. Visit this at http://www.vattsystems.com/ohats /Home.aspx . You can log in using GUEST as the username and VISITOR as the password. The metrics charts link to Ning discussions where you can ask meaning, and "collaborate" with us to make this system work.

It starts with a purpose, and an ability to communicate that purpose on a regular basis to a growing number of people.

Is this easy? No.

Comment 8 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hey everyone, it's Dwight from InSearchofSanuk.com (Thanks Christina for inviting me to join this discussion.)

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

One of things I harp on is community building online and locally. One way to gauge our openness to collaboration is to examine how we welcome and nurture newcomers. Social change is expanding and will continue to become a popular topic among all types of people. In the same way all bloggers aren't tech nerds, all social change advocates won't be intellectuals or working at ngos. It's the responsibility of people who have been in this community longer to make sure newbies are able to jump in and find their role.

So this has to happen regardless of people's background or previous experiences and if we encourage the engagement of individuals passionate about social change, getting organizations working together becomes a lot more tangible. I'd like to see this continue in both structured and unstructured ways. Conferences and forums are great, but unless the conversation diffuses to the public we impede the type of global solutions we need for the systematic change we all hope to see. The same is true vice versa. My good intentions are lost if I'm not given a platform whereby I can connect to expertise, financing, and general support capable of pushing my ideas into fruition.

I'd like to see us more open and doing more to leverage the power of new "social change converts" and I hope in the future to work more on developing content to help people make the great leap from their intention to help to realistic, sustainable action in their respective communities.

~@insearchofsanuk

PS - thanks to everyone sharing valuable links and perspectives

Comment 9 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hi,

I am Sylwia Presley, and just wanted to add my thoughts - I think on-line collaboration is crucial to make a change, however like in offline world it need to be planned, managed and directed by a person or a team of people who ensure the collaboration achieves its goals. There will be a lot of collaborative activities that can be open source, however you will need to put them in the context to actually make a change. Even now, in case of Copenhagen conference, you need NGO's and other groups to specifically call for action in order to move crowds.

Sylwia

Comment 10 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dwight said:

One way to gauge our openness to collaboration is to examine how we welcome and nurture newcomers. Social change is expanding <snip> It's the responsibility of people who have been in this community longer to make sure newbies are able to jump in and find their role.

Dwight, I am so thrilled to have lured you here to Ned. This community is such a great match for you. I hope you'll stick around for a while and engage. The people who tend to gather here of of the type that love to help each other out. I visited another Nedster in Thailand about 2 years ago. She's currently traveling and meeting with a number of contacts she made through this community in developing her PhD thesis. As you're poking around here, be sure to connect with Linda Nowakowski - she's lovely and I believe she'll be headed back to Thailand at some point soon.

I completely agree with you about the need for newcomers to the social change space to be able to find help. One of the sector level challenges I personally find right now is that you are not easy to find. http://socialentrepreneurapi.org is a wonderful tool for finding social entrepreneurs who are already "pedigreed," but it's very difficult to know who and where the newcomers are who need help.

I've recently posted an article to the internet4change blog that offers some advice for social entrepreneurs who are seeking collaboration online. I hope you find it useful in understanding how to nurture the right kind of attention through your online presence.

5 pillars to uphold a new wwworld (1/4)

Dwight, do you have any ideas on making social entrepreneurs needs more visible to each other? My thinking is that if we can see each other better, then maybe more collaboration on start-ups would naturally start to take place.

Welcome to ned! I hope you love it here.

Edited to add Linda's profile link and add a more deliberate Welcome to Ned

Comment 11 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Sylwia wrote:

collaboration is crucial to make a change, however like in offline world it need to be planned, managed and directed by a person or a team of people who ensure the collaboration achieves its goals.

Sylwia, thanks so much for chiming in. Your point is well taken and logical. But I wonder sometimes if planning and management is really a driving force in achieving collaborative impact. Some of the most fulfilling collaborations I've participated in were very loosely structured - someone needed help with something, and others helped.

Dan Bassil Wrote:

someone has to step forward and define a purpose, or a reason, for people to begin to connect with each other. That could be larger or small, but until someone takes that role, there's not likely to be much collaboration.

Dan, that makes a lot of sense to me at every level. That role can eventually be taken by nations at something as large as Copenhagen, but at the beginning there was one person who stepped up and said: lets get the nations together. I think any social entrepreneur in a start up phase could begin to attract collaborators by saying "I have an idea for how we can work together."

Comment 12 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I can give an example of a collaboration, where the creative ideas of one organisation were sucked away and the intellectual property stolen, by a supposedly collaborating organisation. This organisation then used the ideas, found funding for them, implemented the ideas, which failed, as they had been poorly understood by the stealing organisation. This set back what were good ideas several years, as funders had noted the tried and failed.

Eventually the original organisation who came up with the ideas were able to persuade the funders to try it again and this time it proved successful (and is still successful). Essentially it required a social enterprise, not a charity or NGO, not a school or college, to implement, a social enterprise, which thought and developed policies with a social conscience, not, as is most common, selfishly.

So, therein lies the rub. Some organisations are incapable of collaborating for a common good AND some funders are insisting, nay forcing, organisations to collaborate in order to attract funding, which is in its own way, just as selfish, as the funder does not want to fund multiple organisations, as it increases its own exposure to risk.

In Africa, in particular, suspicion can come first and thus collaboration requires perhaps some "parallel-working" for a period, where neither is really in each other's pocket.

Trust and suspicion are justifiably important when considering collaboration. How do we mitigate these natural feelings?

The end of the first story I mentioned is a happy one. The stolen from organisation forgave the stealing organisation and the stealing organisation realised that perhaps the organisation they stole from was a worthy organisation and mutually beneficial collaboration took place, some fifteen years after the first incident.

So, it can take some time....

Comment 13 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

I wrote a piece and an accompanying slidecast that defined collaboration and proposed a way for thinking about how to improve it. What's critical to note is that collaboration isn't collaboration unless there's a bounded goal. In other words, it has a well-defined end.

We can talk about how to work together for better social change, but shifting to true collaboration means defining actual end points. Things like, "Have a great conversation about social change with lots of people" is a valid endpoint. How you frame these is critical.

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

One of my favorite examples of nonprofits collaborating effectively for social change is the Leadership Learning Community. I'm totally biased; I'm on their board. They are great at identifying opportunities where there is overlap and saying, "Hey, why don't we do this together?", turning potential competitors into partners instead.

Is collaboration more effective when it's structured or unstructured?

The answer is yes. :-)

Structure is great. The problem is when people impose structure too early. In a rapidly changing world, you rarely find models that you can replicate entirely as is. That means that you have to approach collaboration with a very open mind, honoring your previous wisdom and experience, but not worshipping it.

Does collaboration ever fail to increase social impact? If yes, what are the factors that lead to failure?

Let me throw in a sports analogy. There are teams that are shining examples of collaboration and yet fail to win the championship. And there are teams where the players barely talk to each other, and yet somehow, they manage to win.

Collaboration is not a panacea. Lots of things have to happen well in order to increase social good.

What are the biggest incentives for collaborating? The biggest deterrents?

I'm not sure you can generalize effectively, but I'll throw out one important incentive: Modeling. Time and again, we have seen that when a group -- however small -- models collaboration, those around them adopt that same spirit. There's actually good theory backing this up (cooperation theory and anchor tenant theory in economics).

In other words, change by doing. Don't wait to convince everyone to collaborate effectively. Model it.

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

I've been exploring this for a long time. I have a very rough, incomplete repository on my company's wiki. I'd welcome contributions and comments there, as that will give me a good incentive to add and refine the content there.

Comment 14 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Great discussion everyone!

I hope to add to it soon, but I'm still collected data.

;-)

Comment 15 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I think we are ready for the next stage.

Initially, we discovered the web and its potential. We got enthusastic about collaboration. But then also frustrated about what really came out. This frustration I share and I believe was the driving force to start this thread.

I think we need not to define what collaboration is, because it takes sheer limitless connotations. The challenges I see are:

1. we want to collaborate, but do not know how
1. we want to collaborate, but don't know how to find collaborators
1. we want to collaborate, but can't find matching projects
1. want to collaborate, but we run into money problems

For this to work, we need to clearly define what the goal is, as has already been posted. From this, inspire others or define work packages you need collaboration for. Building a house needs different collaboration than financing a local alternative energy startup.
How do I find collaborators? There are literally thousands of sites with relevant information seeking people. We need new methods and tools to find each other. I believe the net will evolve in this direction. The web now is a collection of singular efforts. It's time to connect these efforts. To think of a giant organisation maybe. How do we get aware of each other? I didn't know http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/, nor http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/, nor http://peacetiles.org before... and I am not going to be able to check them and all the other countless great sites out there.

An example: imagine a form. You enter a few details, and get a list of relevant collaboration possibilities. The clue: instead of having to register yet to another site, the net gathers all this information for you! Does it matter if it comes from xyz.org or abc.org? Or the other way around: you just push your information, which "magically" reaches to relevant peers!

see (b) Also, cool tools for new forms of working and investing are needed. E.g. a platform, you can start/join projects, you can invest currency in them, or contribute work, help in the administration - whatever the need. The profits from the project are redistributed according to a pre-defined key to investors and contributors. The project is finished and the organisation dissolves, freeing you to go on to the next project. Or it can continue if there are new requirements, or it's just worthwhile continuing the effort.
Finally, the biggest inhibitor for successful cooperation in my view is - money (do you agree?). For example, I don't want to be enslaved in a paid job never again. I have found countless ways of contributing, but most can't offer me more than food and lodging. This means I have to come up with travel expenses, etc - my reserves are already dried up. I believe in an economy of abundance, where we define the currencies we need ourselves, and create our own wealth. Then, we'd pay contributors in such currencies, and they will be a able to spend their currencies for other contributors, etc. In an idealized future multi-currency world, we'd be able to exchange such currencies and even be able to pay for food, etc. I invite you to look out for alternative currencies, they are spreading like mushrooms.

I am aware that this post just calls for new tools and puts an image of an idealized future instead of helping on imminent needs. However, this is natural I believe; a skyscraper couldn't be built at the time when only hammers and nails were available.

Comment 16 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Fantastic conversation, thanks.

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

Recently discovered Where Are Your Keys: The Language Fluency Game. This is an example of collaboration I admire on many levels. Evan Gardner studied to be a Spanish teacher. Doing his Masters work he became aware that Native people in the Pacific Northwest were keen for help in preventing the deaths of native languages. He had a brilliant idea of something to. That's his passion, but there's no money in it. He's gone back to school for nursing hoping that would be a way to support him so he could have enough to spend his time on the language project.

Willem Larssen got introduced to Gardner's methods studying a native language. He recognized that Gardner's approach was profound. They began collaborating to establish the method in an open sourced and viral way.

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

Eugene Eric Kim's comments really struck a chord. Partly because very recently I watched a video interview with him done by Beth Kanter. Digging around Kim's Blue Oxen site I saw that he's been hugely influenced by Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language.

Larssen in looking at Gardner's work immediately made a connection to Alexander's A Pattern Language. That's something that's engaged my thinking for more than 30 years so my ears perked up.

It's rather easy to get caught up in metaphysics when discussing a Pattern Language approach, but there is also an easiness about it.

When it comes to collaboration I think all of us are game, as long as it's not like pulling teeth! One of the blog post at Where Are Your Keys? is The Fluency Paradigm. While the method is specifically for rapid language learning, it's also a model for learning all sorts of things. The emphasis on "fluency" is quite relevant to online collaboration.

In the Beth's video she asks Kim about Simplicity and he related how he's inspired to look at how ants behave. They can carry a lot of weight and follow trails. He points out that simplicity scales and uses Twitter as an example. Small signals are hugely important. The short messages are enough information to decide if they want to follow those trails.

The Where Are Your Keys? model is a great example of online collaboration emerging. One of the key patterns identified in both the language model and Kim's work is simplicity. I wish I would take that lesson to heart ;-)

Comment 17 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I have been looking at collaboration from a marketplace physics point of view. I wrote about this at change.org (http://socialentrepreneurship.ch ange.org/blog/view/a_brave_new_w orld_of_social_impact_data).

What I said there was that in the social sector we tend to live in two disconnected markets. One that is defined by competition, mostly competition for oxygen or the resources an individual organization needs to survive. The assumption here is that competition strengthens us. (Topic for another post) It is easy to define a market in a competitive frame. Even in a context where the data is obtuse or unreliable a competitive market defines winners via their individual ability to accumulate through "selling". She with the most, wins.

However, a collaboration market focuses on the value that defines the transaction. Winners are created by strengthening connections. An effective collaboration marketplace would define the physics for value discovery, specifically the problem that Fabio describes above. The currency of a collaborative marketplace is impact or rigorous, measurable progress towards solutions. These currency exists in nascent and siloed ways.

I strongly believe that, if we are to solve the world's most intractable problems we must be strong enough to survive and innovative enough to collaborate.

Steve Wright @conches

Comment 18 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Taking the liberty of reposting @eekim's slidecast and the interview with Beth Kanter. Eugene, I found myself nodding my head at every point you make. Your framework is giving me courage to explain more about why I have initiated this discussion.

What Is Collaboration?

View more presentations from Eugene Kim.

Comment 19 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Zoom in! Let's get concrete

I am overflowing with things I want to say and ask in response to the last 3 posters here. Meanwhile...

What seems clear to me reading through the responses of people who have posted so far is that many of us see the nature of a nut that we'd like to crack in similar ways. Let's start cracking it, shall we?

With the aim of shifting more toward the concrete in this discussion, please also consider the following 2 questions:

What is in place online now that is already driving increased collaboration in the social change sector, and what do those collaborations look like?
What do we still need NOW to drive collaboration in the social change sector to the next level, and what will those collaborations look like?

Let's be specific ie, "we have platform x" or "we need a platform that will..."

Carry on!

Comment 20 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

What is in place online now that is already driving increased collaboration in the social change sector, and what do those collaborations look like?

http://www.gsix.org

http://www.w1sd0m.org/

http://www.IdeaEncore.com

http://www.springboardinnovation .org

http://www.socialentrepreneurapi .org

http://www.grantsfire.org/

http://www.stockpickr.com/

http://www.netsquared.org especially NetTuesday real world meet-ups

http://techsoup.org

http://www.businesscatapult.com

http://www.takepart.org

http://www.unltd.or.uk

social stock markets are starting to show up...

What do we still need NOW to drive collaboration in the social change sector to the next level, and what will those collaborations look like?

I'd like to see:

The Social Entrepreneur API expanded.
The Funding landscape mapped, matching software between social entrepreneurs and funding criteria of funders.
An open source database of service providers who provide pro bono, discounted, or customized services for social entrepreneurs and a Yelp feedback/referral system by social entrepreneurs rating/recommending those providers.
An open source database where opportunities, conferences, and funding deadlines and their related dates can be entered, filtered and seen by tags/slices (tagged for social entrepreneurship AND region, issue, population served, etc) on a calendar (including paper submission deadlines, early bird registration deadlines and the like).
A widget from Idealist for slices of jobs.

Each of these database needs to integrate (pivot) with the other databases and they need open source real time API access and widgets to make it easy for people to showcase the relevant slice of data for their community on their websites and various social media outlets.

Comment 21 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hey Jill,

your points about open source are great. And while we are at it, maybe some more suggestions:

Open source is an attitude, it's not just about software. If we want to collaborate we need to be open and trust. Get out there with your ideas, even if they are not yet clear! Someone else might be inspired by it and provide the missing link! If an open source idea is great, it will spread just by itself, benefitting countless. And open source provides the means for others (and yourself) to jump into opportunities and provide meaningful activity.

Open source is democratic, grass roots. Open source has the power to spread information virally into every corner of the world. It bears the promise of really erradicating poverty.

Comment 22 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Thanks for starting this discussion! I am really excited to have stumbled upon it. Before I get started let me say that I have spent the better part of the last year thinking specifically about how to encourage collaborative action for social change and for the last six months and I have been building a platform at http://www.group.io that attempts to integrate some of those ideas. Hopefully I am able to add something useful to this discussion.

As a preface, I think it is important to point out that there are at least two different trains of thought that have emerged from this thread, as is probably inevitable whenever attempting to pin down a singular definition around a concept as large as "collaboration in the social change sector." About half of the responses to this thread appear to be thinking of collaboration in terms of cooperation between two or more organizations. This idea here is getting various NPOs, NGOs, and social enterprises that are working on similar goals, to work together rather duplicating efforts and competing with each other for funding or resources. In contrast, the other roughly half of the responses are focused on ways to draw groups of individuals together around a cause in order to drive social change (particularly online). The underlying thought here is more or less how to move beyond "Facebook Causes" in terms of tools for bringing individuals together to effect change. While each of the these threads are certainly meritorious on their own, I think the tools and resources required to drive collaboration between two organizations are often very different than than those required to link and coordinate groups of individuals. In order to keep from talking past each other it is worth making that distinction explicit.

What we have been working to build at http://www.group.io is focused on the latter. What we have attempted to do is provide a platform for enabling distributed collective action, with the emphasis being on the "action" piece. What has been lacking, particularly online, are ways for people for to work together to take specific action in pursuit of defined goals. (I think Eugene framed this well with his discussion of organizing around defined "endpoints"). A skeleton framework for implementing a social change might look something like this:

Find like minded people and bring them together around a particular cause.
Discuss problems/ideas/approaches/goals
Formulate a defined plan of action based on the outcome of #2
Implement the plan
Revise goals/plan/approach then rinse and repeat

The problem with online collaboration at present is that it is is overwhelmingly focused on the finding/discussion steps, with very little collaboration around the remaining "actionable" steps. The tools for 1. finding/linking people and 2. driving discussion are fairly plentiful (Facebook Groups, Twitter channels, Amazee, forums like Ned, SocialEdge, Change.org, and numerous blogs). But tools for actually 3. planning and 4. acting are non-existent or not targeted to the needs of the social sector.

The result is that the internet creates a lot of talk but not much of action. What we have attempted to do at group.io is to shift the focus down the chain to the planning and hopefully the implementation steps. The first thing we have created toward this end is a project management tool that works like Basecamp or Zoho Projects on the front end, but is designed on the backend to be open, shareable and searchable. So instead of confining the project to a closed, private workspace, we offer the means to ensure that the project remains open and visible. As it stands, the site is something like Ideablob.com where project focus rather than an "idea". We believe the benefits of this approach are:

1. Action-orientation: Every group is immediately channeled into "action" rather than simply discussion. Discussion still takes place, but it is channeled within the context of specific, concrete tasks rather than vague, non-actionable "causes." 2. Transparency: The project plan and project progress stay visible to the public, volunteers, donors and other stakeholders. 3. Cumulative knowledge: Creating a record and database of past projects that can be mined and searched so that future projects can track best practices or find mistakes to avoid.

This is of course only one piece of a much, much larger issue, but we hope that some will find it to be a useful tool for collaborating online. I did not intend for this to turn into a pitch for the site, but I would be very interested on feedback on what we are doing from anyone on this page. The site is currently in private beta, but if anyone following this thread is interested in beta testing the site, just send me an email at info@group.io and mention that you saw this post on Ned/I4C.

Comment 23 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Fabio Barone said:: I didn't know http://www.tutormentorexchange.net/, nor http://search.socialentrepreneurapi.org/, nor http://peacetiles.org before... and I am not going to be able to check them and all the other countless great sites out there.

This reinforces my point about "networks of purpose". Unless someone is motivated to visit one of these sites, because they care about the purpose of the work being done, it's not likely that they will. And even if they visit one or two times, it's not likely that they will visit often, build relationships, get to know other people who visit there, and ultimately begin to work toward the same goal, either formally, or informally.

Comment 24 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jill,

thanks for posting your list. Do you maintain a library of these sites on your web site, or do you know of hubs that are collecting and sharing this information? On the sites I visited, I don't think I saw a links library, where they each were listing others doing similar work.

I do this at http://www.tutormentorconnection .org, where I point to other tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, as well as networks in other cities.

I host a conference every six months in Chicago and keep an archive of past workshops and speakers that other people can view to find people to speak at their own events, or to network with. If the funds/talent were available I'd expand this into the type of resource directory you have described, enabling people looking for trainers, consultants with tutor/mentor expertise, to find them more easily.

Someone else said "money is a barrier to collaboration". It is in many ways, but to me one of the most important ways it is a barrier is that if I can't bring money and resources into a collaboration, all I have to offer are my ideas and experience. Most of the time that's not enough to get others to want to work more closely together. In addition, if I'm not able to do the work of my own organization, or earn a living if I'm an independent, it's hard to participate fully in a collaboration unless it meets some self interest of my own organization or myself.

Comment 25 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

With regard to money, there is money about for "collaboration or "network" organisations. From my experience these are focused aroun "mapping" and "volume", rather than prioritising "purpose" and "quality". Although many may disagree, we have lived in a culture where accountability means numbers rather than social impact, across the three bottom lines.

I would also like to think we had purpose, a leader and and end product to "our" discussions here, as it will help mould the process.

Comment 26 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Ben says:

I would also like to think we had purpose, a leader and and end product to "our" discussions here, as it will help mould the process.

I would agree with that.

The only cautionary note I would sound is that we would then need to recognise also that this discussion has become a collaborating about a collaboration. Which is fine, provided we also recognise that collaborating about collaborating, as an earlier contributor reminded us (at 20.10.13 PDT on 2nd Oct)) is a useful precursor to collaborating towards action, but does not inevitably proceed in that direction.

Instead of advancing towards action, collaborating about collaboration is standing back or aside for a moment to take stock of what needs to be done. That can be a very helpful process to go through.

But in the same way that it might be wise sometimes to say what we mean by "meaning" before we pronounce what is the meaning of some particular phenomenon, this does not mean that it helps to regress indefinitely by asking "what do we mean by 'the meaning of meaning?'" and then "what do mean by 'the meaning of the meaning of meaning'?"

In other words you can collaborate on the definitions of things so much that all action stalls. I mention this only because many of the discussions where collaboration has been invited (mostly on sites other than <Ned>) seem to result at best only in discussions about action-focused collaboration about collaboration rather than on action-focused collaboration on action.

I hope this makes sense to others here (or even to just a single someone else might be a start!), so we are considering not only who is doing the collaborating and about what, but also to what end.

Comment 27 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Ben Parkinson said:

I would also like to think we had purpose, a leader and and end product to "our" discussions here, as it will help mould the process.

Ben, while I feel their is interest in generic collaboration, that could even lead some people to build platforms like the ones Jill has listed, I don't think people have submitted "causes" or "purposes" that would motivate people to come together in long-term cooperation, or collaboration.

In other treads there is a discussion of mentoring in Africa, and Internet in Urganda. In those areas leaders are talking about causes they are passionate about, and inviting others to become involved. It's in these sections that I feel our ideas and theories and commitments to collaboration should be demonstrated.

However, this is not as easy as it sounds. While the cause of mentoring in Africa may be hugely important, others may be equally focused on the same cause, in a different country. For them to meet in a common platform long enough to build trust, relationship knowledge, and to collaborate, some mutual benefit needs to be identified.

The reality is that most of the people coming to a forum like Ned have many different causes, and thus don't have time, or a purpose, for getting involved in those hosted by others.

That's ok. We just need to find ways to dramatically increase the number of people coming to a site like this, so there would be more people interested in each different cause. Maybe that's where we all have common ground.

Comment 28 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

While leadership is an awkward thing to proclaim in any conversation on this topic, I initiated this discussion and I did so for a couple of reasons.

I would like to offer http://internet4change.com as a blank slate with/at which "we" might consider collaborating to fill in some gaps in the online collaboration landscape.

Dan's note of too few links library resources is duly noted. Yes! But there is much more that we could possibly do to create a "collaboration for social change" resource site. I personally believe that pulling the many features of the collaboration landscape under one portal-like roof could be a highly effective way of helping entrepreneurs like Dwight, Fabio, Dan and others who are actively trying to figure out how to use the tools in cyberland to collaborate with others. This discussion was started in order to pull together a broad range of opinions on where "collaboration" stands now, and where "we" want it to go.

I personally have the will and the time allocated in my professional life to work toward creating such a resource for the sector, and I have many long-brewing ideas to bring to the table in addition to a domain. The social entrepreneur that I am does not believe, however, that I should or can attempt to create such a resource on my own. If our target is the sector, then I believe it's best chance for being effective is if it's collaboratively developed.

I am a great believer in the principles of OpenSpace events: Whoever shows up are the right people. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have. I have sent out a call for people to discuss collaboration in the Social Change sector. Now you know more about why I chose to do that. What happens next is up to all of us. If you see a way that your ideas could fit with mine, let's talk and see if we can't work together to piece them together.

#piece, peace and peas. For what it's worth, I am glad you are all here, and hope that many good things come!

btw - For those of you who do not know me well, my "herstory" as an online collaborator is on my Ned.com profile.

Comment 29 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Great to see some friendly faces...I mean names. And thank you for the invitation Christina. I enjoyed reading through the thread.

I am learning a lot about collaboration from Ken Homer.http://kenhomer.wordpress.com/about-ken-homer/ I was very impressed with the clarity he offered in Collaborating for Results - How Conversations Get Work Done which you can read about here: http://www.kenhomer.com/Courses.html Rarely do I see someone nail both the project management rational piece as well as the listening, leadership, and being piece of collaboration. Collaboration is not just about what you do together. So much is about how you are together.

So having some nifty tool to match us up by our overlaps and then refine it by our needs would be useful. And, we need to also allow for chemistry between people. Please give me enough access to the broader network to not only find collaborators of interest, but to then refine that by those I can BE with. Who do I want to be around that makes me shine and brings out my best? Who can I do that for? It brings energy and attention to collaboration.

Regarding platforms - the idea of a platform bugs me. Everyone wants me to come over to their house. But on the internet, I can actually be in many houses at once... A metaphor that has been appealing to me is "Umbrella" - what do we all operate within? How can we make broader umbrellas that allow for both overlap (on many different axis) and difference (where we benefit from connecting to each other).

Thrivability, I hope, is an umbrella big enough to unite better world builders - as well as a vision we can aspire to. We would love to point to other umbrellas holding space for social entrepreneurship. As we believe social entrepreneurship is vital to creating the dynamic and resilient world we want.

Comment 30 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Two very concrete examples of collaboration.

1) 1999 Seattle WTO Protests http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wor ld_Trade_Organization_Ministeria l_Conference_of_1999_protest_act ivity

2) Oprah and Black Eyed Peas "spontaneous" dancing http://www.facebook.com/home.php ?#/video/video.php?v=142124142037

In both cases, decentralized and user-centric.

Comment 31 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I liked a lot of the comments in this thread. In particular the one about being mindful whether we are talking about the collaboration between organizations or the collaboration between individuals.

I think there is another division in the train of thought as well. That is the difference between a collaboration on a particular project and a collaboration to increase our understanding of the problem so we can find better solutions. The four different trains of thought are of course all related.

the resources that existing organizations have derive from the ability to "sell" their approach to address a particular problem.

individuals need to make a living in order to pursue their passion around a particular social change.

to get more people involved in collaboration for social change requires more resources.

more resources potentially exist in organizations empowered with more effective approaches.

Some of you are familiar with my own views on this.

The problems we face are systemic and cannot be solved one at a time.

We change the system by making new choices at the most basic levels of the system - how we produce and distribute that which individual humans need to thrive.

I am working on collaborations on a number of levels. At one level Linda Nowakowski and I are collaborating on her PhD work and how I express my understanding of system function. At another level I am collaborating with groups in my community who are interested in 'local resilience'. And at a third level I am collaborating with Wael on his modular cell project (he is attempting in Palestine the same thing I am attempting in my community).

The point of all this is about each of us becoming more effective in the world. We do not do that by imposing our will on others. We do that by a better understanding of how the system functions and offering individuals better choices. Figuring out how to become more effective requires a collaboration around increasing our understanding so we can find better solutions.

Anyway, I am interested in platforms or umbrellas where we can share across interest and expertise - so I would also try and extend the collaboration beyond the 'social change sector'.

Comment 32 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I have not responded here primarily because I have been (and continue to be) totally overwhelmed academically. But I want to insert something.

I am becoming more and more convinced that real social change happens one person at a time. Even if you have a person who develops an organization, they had to have some personal transformation and they need to be in a position to enable that kind of change in the people they recruit whether that be new people to work with them or people to finance their ventures.

Too often I think that when "social change" organizations form, they forget about that required personal transformation. Recognizing that that personal transformation can go viral is important I think. Enabling or facilitating it is a much bigger problem, especially on the internet.

I think the most important factor in building to a collaboration is establishing trust. Trust is difficult face-to-face and even more difficult in this medium. I think that the reputation system is crucial. Sharing stories and who we are and how we feel - just opening up helps, but even that requires some level of trust. Certainly opportunities for face-to-face meet-ups helps to cement those relationships.

I have had the opportunity to meet a whole lot of the people in this community face-to-face or by phone. I know that these people are in meat space just as they are in cyber-space. Based on that, I can extrapolate to others and depend on the recommendations of others in the community.

O-Net was an incredible community and a turning point for me. It's not that I haven't done "social activism" in my life but in the place I was (culturally isolated in Thailand) I suddenly found a place where I could accomplish something. As an individual, I volunteered anywhere I could. I was empowered. That, I think, should be one of the primary goals of any social change community: empowering those who work with you as well as those you are working for.

I have worked on a couple of awesome collaborations since I came to this group of people who are now closer to me than my family: enabling African participation in a face-to-face meet-up; the incredible water project for the Q4 funding on Onet; Ben Parkinson's Butterfly project.

When I was in Denver I met a woman who is incredibly well connected. And those connections are important to accomplish the social change work that she does. The problem is that she was almost paralyzed with having to go here and there to maintain the connections. She felt crippled having to explain this here and then turn around and explain it again there. I could feel and relate to what she was saying. When you go to everybody's house you lose track of where your conversations are - who knows what. It is disorienting, frustrating and inefficient. Sure, I want to be able to visit different places. I love to go and visit my family but they are not a part of my academic life. Wow, my academic life is a perfect example here. I am working on a PhD at a university in Thailand. I am doing my research in the US and have a Thesis committee that is 3 people: one in Thailand, one in the US and one in the UK. I want to have a way that I can talk to all of those people together and I pretty much do, but when that conversation gets out of sync - what a nightmare. I don't know who knows what! Advisor A doesn't know what Advisor B has said.

A place to call home to hold those conversations is crucial in my humble opinion.

The last thing that I want to throw in here is the idea of a diverse community. That cross interest, cross expertise opportunity was, I believe, critical to the vibrancy on Onet. Seeing things from different angles can help you in so many ways.

I really do miss all of these things and I find myself trying to find them in my off-line life since I can't find them here. That is much easier for me now that I am back in the US. It is seriously informing where I will likely be in a year or so.

Comment 33 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Linda's point about building trust and David's point about building shared understanding are really important. This does not happen over night. Christina mentioned "open space". The person doing the inviting has to have the capacity, and persistence, to do this over and over for many years.

All of this relates to network building. I'm really pleased that Jean and Valdas Krebs will be speaking about Social Network Analysis concepts at the November 19 and 20 Tutor/Mentor Leadership and Networking Conference in Chicago. http://www.tutormentorconference .org/speakers.asp

If any of you are able to attend, please do. If you know of others in your network, who should attend because they already work with youth, or want to understand these concepts, or might become a resource provider, please reach out to them.

In the end, what will make this forum, my conferences, or the type of platform Christina is visioning, work for its users is that all of them are reaching out to their networks to increase the number of people who also use the platform.

Comment 34 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dan Bassill said:: In the end, what will make this forum, my conferences, or the type of platform Christina is visioning, work for its users is that all of them are reaching out to their networks to increase the number of people who also use the platform.

Wow, what a thread indeed! Thanks to Christina for the "invitation with intent". Jumping right in, I see collaboration today in the social change sector as being focused on the "low-hanging fruit". Dan's comment on "reaching out to their networks to increase the number of people who also use the platform" is a interesting one. The question I ask is the type of collaboration we seek, is it just from our collective networks or involving networks that have previously been excluded?

While it seems to me we need to motivate the networks which are closely situated by ours, radical social change (and this is what we are talking about), will not occur until we find a system of co-production. A system in which we actively seek out previously excluded groups i.e. recipients of charity, and promote a process to allow their capacity to be built and in turn allow our own capacity to be expanded.

Would it not be better for the recipient of these various collaborative efforts to reciprocate in a in-kind fashion? Would this not promote a process to get more networks involved in creating solutions to solve our collective social problems?

Thoughts?

twitter @cowashington

Comment 35 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hi Christina, Thanks for starting discussion about this topic. Collaboration is something I’ve been particularly interested in, seeing as I think it’s a great way for people to learn more about effective ways to drive social change, and it is a good medium for people to be introduced to methods of achieving social change.

To me, there are many different forms of collaboration. As an undergraduate student, I feel limited in what I can “collaborate” with others on in regards to the field I’d like to pursue – social entrepreneurship. I have found Twitter the best way thus far in connecting with other social entrepreneurs or SE enthusiasts. It is difficult to find others on my campus who are interested in collaborating for any SE-related projects – although not impossible.

One way of collaboration is via student groups (and/or organizations) coming together. For example, last year, on behalf of a student group I was in CalPIRG( California Public Interest Research Group, a grassroots student-run organization), I helped connect our organization with two other ones on campus: Suitcase Clinic and Cal Habitat for Humanity. We leveraged each organization’s resources, insights, and experience to collaborate on planning a conference on hunger and homelessness. For the most part, it was a success for our first year – we attracted over 100 participants, with at least half of the participants being from the community (and not just students on campus) and engaged in active discussion about homelessness in the Bay Area (and more specifically Alameda County). This type of collaboration seems to be an effective means in terms of on-campus collaborations.

I think that the term “collaboration” as viewed by most in the social change sector would be understood differently than “collaboration” as viewed by, for example, businesses and companies. Although both strive towards beneficial outcomes for both (or multiple) participating parties, the goals are different – in terms of collaboration amongst the social change sector, greater social impact; for the companies, collaboration is a means of achieving greater financial profit.

Here is something that I believe ‘social business’ can redefine the meaning of collaboration to bring together these seemingly conflicting views of “collaboration.” Something that I’ve come across through readings and some research is that collaboration amongst local BOP businesses/organizations and multinational corporations can potentially bring about the greatest impact (in terms of scalability and available resources). In this sense, I think that collaboration is absolutely essential in achieving greater social change.

As a student, I would definitely love to see more collaboration and mediums of collaboration for me to participate in. So far Twitter has been one of my main channels through which I can connect with other SE’s, but I’m hoping to find others on my campus who can work with me to develop projects!

Comment 36 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Linda's point about personal transformation was interesting and that theme seemed to resonate with a post By Duncan Green Faith and Development: What's the Connection. Green noted that at a series of seminars aimed at bringing the faith and development communities together he saw two contrasting views: One view emphasizes making people better to make a better society. The other view argued that people of faith had to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

I know the conversation topic has narrowed, but I did think that the specific subject of faith seemed relevant.

Comment 37 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

John Powers said:

Linda's point about personal transformation was interesting and that theme seemed to resonate with a post By Duncan Green Faith and Development: What's the Connection. Green noted that at a series of seminars aimed at bringing the faith and development communities together he saw two contrasting views: One view emphasizes making people better to make a better society. The other view argued that people of faith had to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

I know the conversation topic has narrowed, but I did think that the specific subject of faith seemed relevant.

Certainly many Christian organisations prioritise connecting with other Christian organisations, as there is expected to be some semblance of trust established through this common ground.

The concept of Christianity abroad seems to have been twisted to the nth degree and thus it is doubtful whether the same trust could be applied across these different Christian organisations.

Of course Christians need to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. The former idea is really an excuse not to do the latter and maybe the former is more lucrative too, which goes contrary to bible teachings AND social impact work, if it is given priority over the latter. Anyway, not to go off on a tangent...

I think John's point is very important, as an early focus on faith-based organisations, could demonstrate good collaborative practices.

Comment 38 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

John Powers said:

One view emphasizes making people better to make a better society. The other view argued that people of faith had to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty.

This is the type of issue that really needs to be explored if we are going to engage in effective collaboration and it is not limited to the 'faith based communities'. One of the assumptions that prevent us from creating the world we want is that 'someone else is responsible'.

When I say that most people think of the way we assign responsibility for the state of the world to government or 'the corporations'. But a more insidious form, in my opinion, is the belief that we cannot have a better world until we have better people. The easiest example is the 100th monkey theory, which holds that - as soon as we get the 100th monkey to understand (whatever problem we are addressing) all of the people of the world will spontaneously rearrange things so that problem is solved?

The way I understand it, everyone wants the same things and we adjust our behavior to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. If we want "better" people we will need to create better circumstances for people. Or: more places for more people, plants and creatures to fit in the system.

Effective collaboration will require being clear about which of those we are trying to accomplish. Thinking through that issue as a community might also form the basis for a collaboration that draws people of diverse backgrounds to a single platform.

Comment 39 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I want to take a moment to just say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to post here so far.

This morning I have printed out the 20 pages of rich perspective embodied in this thread already, to be able to read, re-read and try to work toward some level of synthesis.

It just so happens that I am physically working on that (and writing this note) at "The Hub" in Brussels, which is part of a global network of shared office spaces for social enterprise start-ups. My re-reading exercise has been punctuated by some very relevant conversations about exciting trends in the evolution of new and interesting global frameworks for collaboration.

Within the next few months, The Hub will be rolling out a new online platform intended to foster more collaboration between members (I've weaseled my way onto the Beta testing team, but haven't yet seen the online space.)

At the same time, ned.com is now complimented by the two Nedspaces for social enterprise start-ups in Portland. We're currently planning a face2face meetup between the online and offline ned communities in early 2010 to encourage more connection between the two.

Just yesterday I received an announcement about Ashoka's plans to launch "Ashoka Mindshare: a dynamic community of globally-minded entrepreneurs." The platform will be populated with quality content at Ashoka's new kind of "Globalizer" program event, before launching to the public: http://www.ashokaglobalizer.org/ public/55362

From where I'm standing, these new cyber-real collaborative ecosystems look very appealing and exciting. I love how the f2f element manifests in each model prominently but differently, and how the rollout of the cyber- and the f2f elements is timed differently in each model's implementation. I like the fluid feel of the new "norms" they are pointing to in how we can expect communities of changemakers to come together and interact across space and time.

What I'm left wondering is how those new cyber-real spaces will interact - if at all - with each other, and with all the Individuals out there who are not organizations but have the desire to work actively in collaboration for change. Will these new spaces extend the conversation to new groups, or will they become tomorrow's silos?

Thoughts?

Comment 40 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I've got poor impulse control! Jill Finlayson respondeded brilliantly to your questions and there's so much to expand on from that. But as usual my head is elsewhere and my wheels turning on the subject of collaborating across differences of politics and religion.

I saw a great quotation of Tocqueville to share:

“When [religion] is mingled with the bitter passions of this world, it is sometimes constrained to defend allies who are such from interest rather than from love; and it has to repulse as adversaries men who still love religion, although they are fighting against religion’s allies. Hence religion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity aroused against them.”

I got it from this post at Killing the Buddha. Previous to that post I'd read a post about "The Family" which is a religious organization I have an odd obsession with and the role they played in Somalia's General Siad Barre.

Obviously there are some people and organizations we may not want to collaborate with. It's not just on religious or political grounds either. Several blogs that might be lumped into the "development" category take an irreverent look at the perils and pitfalls of development work. The fact of the matter is that development work requires a great deal of knowledge, often about cultures very different from our own. so part of the decision about collaboration is about finding ways to collaborate that are a good fit.

It's a big challenge to try to piece together the knowledge parts that are relevant when people are always ignorant about knowledge important to the task at hand. One of the reasons why trust, and ways to build trust are so crucial is that collaborators must always be learners.

Linda makes the point:

A place to call home to hold those conversations is crucial in my humble opinion.

It's a great point, and the hubs that are emerging seem a good step in that direction.

I found Onet and find Ned Websites that facilitate learning well. I understand that Linda isn't feeling it now--she's still a homeboy to me. I prefer the tool set here to discussion boards, but most important is the social practice which is a legacy of Onet. The high standard of transparency assumed here helps to build trust.

Well Linda said it all so much better than I. I'm trying to grasp for my point. It's got something to do with homes--even Internet homes--where there are people you might not want to collaborate with for all sorts of reasons and yet are a part of home. Friction seems a necessary part of collaboration; or at least a willingness to take the heat or get out of the kitchen. A similar idea from a different direction is respect even across differences is essential to create a climate which fosters collaboration.

Comment 41 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

What I'm left wondering is how those new cyber-real spaces will interact - if at all - with each other, and with all the Individuals out there who are not organizations but have the desire to work actively in collaboration for change. Will these new spaces extend the conversation to new groups, or will they become tomorrow's silos?

Thoughts?

As I have posted before, my perception is that all of these spaces are great and visionary, but do not feature that interaction component you desire. Not that they are silos, but they simply do not have the means to interact in that way.

I think your comment about open spaces is very telling. I like to think we could recreate this spirit online. Create open virtual spaces. As many have noted here, collaboration takes different connotations in different context.

This leads us to self-organization. I think we need to be able to browse topics and people, like in an open space event, and commit to some work we most gravitate towards.

I am not sure how to realize this. One idea born 2 years ago can be seen here http://www.wiki-site.com/index.p hp/Co-DesignPlatform However, although different in design though this idea would not change too much.

I am currently thinking that what's needed is a sort of protocol to which such sites subscribe. Sites publish topics, and bots search the information. Think of it maybe as a Twitter which tweets topics in a more structured format, which contains the info on where the topic is being hosted and

Comment 42 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Organizing my notes from this discussion.

For clarity: these are points made (mostly) by other participants in this discussion. I have simply tried to put some order into them.

What is collaboration?

since the 1970's many really smart people have been collaborating together to create ideas for positive change

online collaboration crosses multiple borders

collaboration takes different connotations in different context.

Work on solutions that help the field as well as solve your problem

not necessarily a discreet action of initiative but an openness which enables awareness and future collaboration.

decentralized networks - others take ownership of ideas you put out there. not "formal" collaboration but a stronger glue which connects people around a common purpose

Collaboration isn't collaboration unless there is a bounded goal

Shifting to collaboration means defining actual endpoints

Two defining trains of thought: organizations who collaborate; individuals who collaborate

tools and resources required to drive collaboration between two orgs are different than those required to link and coordinate groups of individuals.

Organizations collaborate on particular projects - individuals might collaborate to increase understanding.

Social change sector: collaborate for greater social impact

Companies collaborate for greater financial profit

collaboration amongst local BOP businesses/organizations and MNCs can potentially bring about greatest impact.

collaboration is not a panacea

Patterns for successful collaboration

Collaboration needs a process and ideally a shepherd

needs to be clearly identified champions from both organizations

someone has to step forward and define a purpose

A process of invitation

You need to be persistent

Starts with a purpose and ability to communicate that purpose on a regular basis

approach collaboration with a very open mind, honoring previous wisdom and experience but not worshipping it.

change by doing - don't wait to convince everyone to collaborate effectively. Model it.

Small signals are hugely important. Short messages are enough information for people to decide if they want to follow those trails.

Real social change happens one person at a time

personal transformation can go viral

Twitter for connecting with other social entrepreneurs/enthusiasts

fluid feel of new "norms" in how we can expect communities of changemakers to come together and interact across space and time.

high standard of transparency helps to build trust.

respect even across differences is essential to create a climate which fosters collaboration.

challenges / What's needed for more collaboration

I want to collaborate but do not know how

Lack of links libraries / hubs collecting and sharing information about collaboration

New forms of working and investing are needed

Umbrellas holding space for social entrepreneurship

When you go to everybody's house you lose track of where your conversations are

A place to call home to have those conversations is crucial

We need new methods and tools to find each other

we want to collaborate but can't find matching projects

we want to collaborate but don't know how to find collaborators

leverage the power of new social change converts

difficult to know who and where newcomers are who need help

How to involve networks that have been previously excluded?

Co-production: a system through which we actively seek out previously excluded groups

Primary goals: empowering those who work with you as well as those you are working for

Need umbrellas across interest and expertise to extend collaboration beyond the social change sector.

databases need to integrate (pivot) with the other databases

open source real time API access and widgets

Two disconnected markets: competition versus collaboration

Organizations sell their approach to problems; more resources potentially exist in organizations empowered w/more effective approaches.

Hard to participate fully in a collaboration unless it meets some self interest of my own organization or myself

we want to collaborate but need money

individuals need to make a living

to get more people involved requires more resources

intellectual property can be stolen by collaborating organizations

collaboration requires parallel working first, where neither is in each others' pocket.

Open source is an attitude - we need to be open and trust

An effective collaboration marketplace would define the physics for value discovery

we need to be able to browse topics and people, like in an open space event, and commit to some work we most gravitate towards.

Tool to match us up by overlaps and refine it by needs would be useful. Allow for chemistry between people.

For people to meet ina common platform long enough to build trust, relationship knowledge and to collaborate, some mutual benefit needs to be identified.

Collaboration is not just about what you do together. So much is about how you are together.

Trust / reputation system / sharing stories / face2face meetups

Comment 43 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina lists:

to get more people involved requires more resources

intellectual property can be stolen by collaborating organizations

collaboration requires parallel working first, where neither is in each others' pocket.

Open source is an attitude - we need to be open and trust

as competitive factors inhibiting collaboration - which brought to mind the way I have been thinking about the last paradigm shift.

In the shift from the belief in magic to the belief in science, the practitioners of magic jealously guarded their intellectual property in order to protect their privileged lifestyles. They were overpowered by the believers in science who openly shared their growing knowledge base allowing more and more scientists to apply their superior knowledge to be more effective in the world.

We are now poised on the shift from a belief that life is about the struggle between groups for control of scarce resources to a more accurate understanding of the world as a cooperation (a single pattern of flows) for the production and distribution of value. We will not replace the old view by persuading the holders of the old beliefs. Another conference will not take us closer to the 100th monkey or the "tipping point".

We will prevail over the old belief in scarcity because we have the technology, if not yet the organizational skill, to produce an abundance of those things that individual humans need to thrive. An understanding of the interconnectedness of life is superior knowledge to the old understanding of struggle and scarcity. We can produce abundance for ourselves and the world if we understand that is our goal and openly share what we know about how to achieve it.

Comment 44 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Beth Kanter has a blog post Ant Trails, Autumn, and Placement of Fences:

How do you think about using social media effectively along the continuum of open/closed networks?

It's a smart post which expands upon Eugene Eric Kim's principle of leaving ant trails. A good answer to the question "Where to put the fences?" strikes me as a key ingredient to successful online collaboration.

Who knows how Google Wave will be received? But so far from the beta users I'heard something along the lines that it brings together the worst of email with the worst of instant messaging. I suspect that reaction has something to do with Beth's question, by drawing attention to the knotty problem of open and closed networks--of course it probably is a lot else too.

Christina your post organizing thought from this discussion is a real keeper! It really helps to guide further thinking. My first thought reading through the list was of John Seely Brown. I don't know enough, so that thought was more of a hunch.

Speaking of not knowing enough, over time in discussions with David Braden I've been confused about his use of the word "flows." Part of my problem is trying to be really careful when there's some physical property used as a metaphor for metal processes. Part of the impetus for my caution is because I'm so attracted to metaphors!

E.E. Kim's "ant trails" is a beautifully simple but profound idea. Probably missing much, but one of the reasons is that simple scales very well. In trying to understand David's use of flows I encountered Adrian Bejan's Constructal Theory. The Constructal Law states:

"For a finite-size (flow) system to persist in time (to live), its configuration must evolve such that it provides easier access to the imposed currents that flow through it."

Very simple, but has some pretty impressive success in predicting optimal physical structures. It's interesting to see work using the theory to study social dynamics.

I think it's a long way before scholarship matures using Constructal Theory in social dynamics. But the thinking is imaginative. I'm such a scatter brain that I'm drawing a black on the title or author a fairly recent piece in the New Yorker, there are a few articles on Bejan's Web site which give a taste of this sort of approach. I mention it because of Beth's use of the metaphor about here to put fences. According to the line of thought from Constructal Theory:

The constructal way of distributing the system's imperfection is to put the more resistive regime at the smallest scale of the system.

Comment 45 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I'm not sure how to upload an image to this discussion, so I have posted one that I hope you'll look at on my blog at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/ 2009/10/collaboration-portal-cro ssroads-of.html

Christina said "we need new ways to find each other". The Crossroads of learning portal offers and example of this. http://crossroadsoflearning.com/

Comment 46 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Wow!

Comment 47 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Here's another collaboration portal that is pretty interesting. It's not free though. As you click on the choices on the left, the people are clustered differently.

http://www.weavethepeople.com/we ave/basic?wn=316

Comment 48 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Daniel, the links you posted are both so very interesting. Have you actually used the crossroads of learning people map to find collaborators?

I've spent this week thinking a lot about some of the various points brought up in this thread, and mapping out some actionable ideas.

I find myself particularly resonating with what Dwight, Fabio and Christopher have said about finding ways to help newcomers to the social change sector, and including "beneficiaries" in collaborative efforts. Linda's point about the role of individuals is also important.

Thinking a lot about creating context.... what are the buildable elements that could create a context in which those who want to collaborate feel they can? Still chewing on some ideas - would love to hear yours.

Comment 49 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I have invited Steven Joyce ("Teaching an Anthill to Work: Collaborative Intelligence @ Work") and Greg Mortenson ("Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time") to this conversation. I do hope they will join.

Comment 50 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Thanks Linda - would so love to hear their voices here.

Comment 51 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

Daniel, the links you posted are both so very interesting. Have you actually used the crossroads of learning people map to find collaborators?

I go in every couple of months to see if there are people who I might want to introduce myself to. The Crossroads site focuses more on "paid" tutoring than volunteer-based tutoring so we don't have as much in common as the topic might suggest.

Like most on-line forums, I see a lot of people signed up, but not a lot of action in on-line forums. However, I think the technology and theory behind the site is really good. I'd incorporate this into my own site if it were available at no cost and I had the volunteer/tech talent to do it.

Comment 52 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

HOLY COW! just spent HOURS and hours creating a really long list of collaboration resources and CLOSED the window by accident - it's gone.

<sigh>

:-(

Comment 53 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

{{Christina}} I hate when that happens!

Comment 54 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Building on Jill's list posted here, and inspired by Dan's remark that there aren't many links lists on this subject to be found, I've gone through my own bookmarks and compiled (again!) a long and descriptive list of Online Collaboration Resources for Social Entrepreneurs in a workspace.

Eventually, I'd like to create a database at internet4change.com where new collaborative resources can be submitted as they are developed, and where users can also rate them. Until that happens, I could use your help:

Please add more links to the list if you see I've left any out, or if you hear of something new.

Please let me know if you have any ideas for organizing the list better. A couple of sites are currently listed in more than one "category." Should that be the case, or can you think of a better way to formulate the categories?

By all means, please share the list with your networks! Suggested twitter tags: #i4c #ned #socent Here's the full link: http://www.ned.com/group/i4c/ws/ collaboration_resources/

Many thanks in advance, and hope y'all find the list useful.

Comment 55 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I added Christina's list to the section of the Tutor/Mentor Connection library where I have collaboration resources and I added a new section to Christina's list on Ned so that others who aggregate this type of information might add their link.

Having the links library is just the first challenge. The next is finding volunteers who will go through these lists of links to learn what each site offers, and to find the "contact us" button which can be used to introduce one resource to another.

This is the network-building role and can be done by students, volunteers, or anyone who wants to take this role. Here's a link to a blog by students at DePaul University who are learning about tutor/mentor programs in Chicago, and sharing what they are learning on the blog. http://jhickey50.wordpress.com/

Imagine if this role were adopted in every high school and college in the country/world by people who were doing something similar. Would be like putting a 500 degree fire under the network building stew that we're trying to create.

Comment 56 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Perfect, Dan. Thanks for adding the new section. At the end of my exercise I found another long list that I didn't know what to do with, so now it has a more logical place.

LOVE the idea of "introducing one resource to another." Wonder what would happen if I invited them here... or does it merit a new thread? Any opinions?

Comment 57 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Here are a couple more.

http://network.dreamfish.com/wik i/Main_Page

http://www.socialimpactexchange. org/

The idea of introducing one recource to another is an interesting idea. I guess I would say inviting them here in this, or another thread, would work. One would imagine (much like setting up a blind date) the invitation might also include some form of idea as to what the two resources might be able to do together?

Comment 58 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

dropping this here quickly so I don't forget to go look more thoroughly http://www.crowdsourceapp.org/

off to London for the weekend!

Comment 59 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I wanna go to London for the week-end...or a week...or even a month.

Comment 60 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Come to Wales!

Comment 61 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Inviting "others" here is one idea. Joining them where they are hosting their own discussions is another. I try to do both because I'll never get all the people who I want to connect with to come to my space. I need to spend time in their space, too.

If enough of us do this, we can be connectors, or network builders, linking every network to all others.

Comment 62 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I debated about putting this here or in my own 'Living in Place' thread. As Daniel says, it is important to both invite people to what we are doing and to participate in what they are doing if we are going to 'bridge' across existing barriers. Another point is the ramifications of 'think global, act local' or, in my words, 'local organizing and the planetary mind'. We can design a better world at the planetary level but implementation is necessarily local.

Saturday was a good day for me in terms of potential local collaborations. First, there was an open house for a new aquaponics greenhouse being developed by one of the groups Linda interviewed while she was here. Second, was an article about agriurbia which is a company, located in Golden, doing commercially what I have been working on from a community organizing perspective.

We can focus on planetary awareness of the problems we hope to solve, as in the 350 events going on, and we can collaborate across interest and expertise to implement those changes in the way we live that are necessary to a sustainable (thriving) future.

Comment 63 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Here's an example of how we might cross promote and draw attention to the work of each other. David, I hope you don't mind me posting information about your work on my web site.

http://www.tutormentorconnection .org/tabid/645/articleType/Artic leView/articleId/427/Default.asp x

If you can build a list of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Denver and suburbs, you might add them to your newsletter distribution and enlist some of them as users of your ideas.

Comment 64 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I love to find Dan everywhere. In a sort of related vein, I find myself putting stuff up online lots of different places--partly that's a response to my scatter brain like having many pairs of reading glasses. But another part of it is just feeling a bit shaky about online protocols and etiquette.

dana boyd is a great scholar of online social networks. In a recent post Some thoughts on Twitter vs. Facebook Status Updates she wrote:

Different social media spaces have different norms. You may not be able to describe them, but you sure can feel them.

I don't always trust my feelings. I added Social Earth to the workspace. I wasn't quite sure it fit, or where. It's a bit newsy in comparison to others on the list. What I really wanted to do was to post a page 10 Twitter Tools for Nonprofits, Social Entrepreneurs and Activists at Social edge. I got that page via a retweet by Literacy 'n' Poverty Project. The obvious thing to do would have been to retweet it so that maybe Christina would pick it up in her Twitter feed. But I'm not sure I've really got the norms for Twitter down.

I really do appreciate that coming in new to Ned is hard to figure out what goes on her. I'm not sure how to help. I've thought to make a screen cast, but that's something new for me; i.e. I don't really know how to do it.

One of the great strengths of Ned is that it's a safe place to share, "I don't know how." And I think that "I don't know how." is a huge, but rather unspoken barrier for online collaboration. I need to think about it, but sense that some sort of running thread here at Ned that explicitly addresses "I don't know how" issues would be good. Probably the beginning is simply to address how to use Ned...That brings me around to the idea of screen casts. Does anyone have experience with Screenr or other sites to make screencasts? What should I include?

Comment 65 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

David and Dan, I agree that it's useful to participate in a number of spaces, but I find it very difficult to manage that process. In Having conversations at more than one site I've tried to propose creating an interactive "profile" that could aggregate the discussions one is participating in. Dan, I wonder if you might share tips on how you keep track of your various conversations online.

John - using hashtags on twitter makes it easy to group resources. If there's something you feel is relevant to this group's discussions, please tag it with #i4c (although posting it here is also fine :)

Comment 66 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dan Bassill said:

David, I hope you don't mind me posting information about your work on my web site.

Not at all - I am honored.

If you can build a list of volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs in Denver and suburbs, you might add them to your newsletter distribution and enlist some of them as users of your ideas.

Blue and Yellow Logic is the name of the company that is developing the aquaponics project. They are working with 'communities of color' on developing environmental awareness including the awareness to participate in the green economy. (Hence the name, 'it takes more than one color to make green'.)

The principals of the business are extremely well connected in the political community and therefore have access to both business and charitable resources. I volunteered to be on the steering committee and hope to help them see how using the resources of the community to support the aquaponics project and using the resources of the aquaponics project to support the community increases productivity of the system by increasing the number of value flows to which it is connected.

I am not particularly good in 'sound bite' political situations because I am asking people to look at things in a different way - but, at the level of details, this is about including more people, plants and creatures, and most people can see the individual opportunities. I think you're right, Dan, that these projects have a lot to offer tutor/mentor programs. The key for me is to find the people who already have credibility with these organizations and use their connections - I think.

Comment 67 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

Dan, I wonder if you might share tips on how you keep track of your various conversations online.

I struggle with this myself. One way is that I post links to some of the forums I post comments in on the T/MC web site. Another is that I do a "google search" from time to time, to find places where I've commented, but not visited in a while.

I have a few core sites that is visit once or twice a week, just to see what is going on, and where I might contribute. Ned is one of those places. I visit more often than I comment because most of the discussion here does not focus on tutoring/mentoring, or poverty in Chicago. However, collaboration and capacity building is relevant, which is why I keep coming back to this thread.

In all of my networking, I'm pointing people to web sites I host, sort of like how advertisers point people to their stores. When someone visits my site and leaves a comment, or emails me, I respond and this helps build our relationships and progress toward goals. In this way, I don't need to worry about following all of those who have not responded to my messages. I only need to focus on responding to those who do.

Most of my comments relate to the mission of T/MC so while I'm in lots of places, it's not hard to keep track of my line of thinking, because it's always related to progress toward goal, or some form of network building.

I'm trying to find ways to map this strategy, using the concept maps on my site, wikis and social network analysis tools. Finding manpower to do some of this work is what slows me down. I can't do it all myself.

Comment 68 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

David Braden said:

I am not particularly good in 'sound bite' political situations because I am asking people to look at things in a different way.

The power of the internet is that you can put "complex ideas" on a web site and anyone can spend as much time as they choose looking at these ideas. I'm constantly looking for ways to make the ideas I show on http://tutormentor.blogspot.com and http://www.tutormentorexchange.n et more easily understood, so that those who do visit the site will not only repeat their visits, but will use the information to help build and sustain volunteer-based programs that mentor kids to jobs and careers.

The networking we do points people to the ideas we each share on our various web sites, or on collaborative sites like this.

Comment 69 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Joan Boyson just posted this link on facebook.

Comment 70 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Joan Boyson just posted this link

http://www.soact.net/about.html

on facebook

Comment 71 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

GMTA.....hahaha

Comment 72 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hi All, At last a conversation on Ned.

I'm back here to report a small achievement which I''d like to relate to the context of collaboration, or lack of it.

Back in October 2006 we put a copyright protected development paper into government channels, both the US and Ukraine's and we've been observing the impact since. The "offer" was to use past experience of leveraging US funding.

We proposed childcare reforms - rehab centres for disabled orphans, increase of adoption allowances, wholesale deployment of family type homes - microfinance - affordable broadband rollout and a social enterprise investment fund with a new faculty for SE in a national university.

What was delivered were the childcare reforms and as a result last week we learned of a success story in the increase of domestic adoptions.

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nat ion/detail/51172/

The affordable broadband component was intended to underwrite the cost of social reforms. That was grabbed by PeopleNet a spin off from PrivatBank.

The social enterprise investment fund and SE faculty got substituted by a new USAID foundation. We subsequently approached them for $25K funding assistance for a pilot of the proposed rehab centres. They stonewalled on the 30 day response and we forced the issue, with a letter to "head office" after 100 days. They had "insufficient funds" we learned

Meanwhile on Google, a smear campaign of more than 3 year duration continues. It's an ongoing denial of the harm being done to disabled children in care. They, a would-be politician whose anonymity is protected by a barrister, aim to undermine our efforts by claiming that we intend scamming US government for a billion dollars. In this I'm glad to say they have failed to prevent progress at least in the case of domestic adoptions.

Shoulders are shrugged at this point.

There will be no reference to us in anything you read about this, no endorsements awards or fees.

This is what I must get across, especially to Jill. The world of awards to social enterprise is one in which organisations compete for funding and donors. It is by no means a collaborative environment. By this token, a database of social enterprise based solely on awards, which tend to be oblivious to grassroots efforts outside the MBA school circle, will not be one of collaboration. it will be one of successful competitors and self endorsement.

Comment 73 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Good to hear from you Jeff. I agree about the reliance on top down approaches. Would like to talk to you again about applying the bottom up approaches we are working on in my community.

Organic Landscape Design and the Community Investment Enterprise

Comment 74 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Interesting paper worth sharing on "The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change" from the Centre for Social Innovation (Canada) http://www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downl oads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf

Hi Jeff - nice to see you here. I've alerted Jill to your comment in case she might have some related views to share.

Dan, I really appreciate your sharing of multi-conversation management strategies. With the hope of broadening the strategic thinking on that, I've started another thread about that over here: http://www.ned.com/group/i4c/new s/4/

Looking forward to hopefully hearing about other folks' strategies as well.

Comment 75 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Re: "This is what I must get across, especially to Jill. The world of awards to social enterprise is one in which organisations compete for funding and donors. It is by no means a collaborative environment. By this token, a database of social enterprise based solely on awards, which tend to be oblivious to grassroots efforts outside the MBA school circle, will not be one of collaboration. it will be one of successful competitors and self endorsement."

If you are referring to the social entrepreneur api - the "awardees" are selected by funders who fully research and vette social entrepreneurs. Most are not "competitions" but rather funders who are seeking the most impactful, scalable innovative solutions. I agree at this time, the organizations included are primarily at the mezzanine level rather than smaller grassroots organizations. (Keep in mind many if not all social entrepreneur ventures started grassroots and grew.)

That said, the social entrepreneur api is designed to scale in multiple ways - including addition of other feeds of vetted social entrepreneurs. We are also discussing including finalists and possibly entrants as well. No doubt, someone will also mash up the social entrepreneur api data with an interface that will allow people to self-identify as a social entrepreneur. This would allow people who wish to expand their search beyond "vetted" social entrepreneurs to do so.

Comment 76 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

Interesting paper worth sharing on "The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change" from the Centre for Social Innovation (Canada) http://www.lcsi.smu.edu.sg/downl oads/MarkSurmanFinalAug-2.pdf

Thanks for sharing this. It describes some of my own ways of working with people. When I think of "networks" I think of how we each are part of different groupings, like solar systems, planes with their own moons, or gallexies of stars. They are all held together with various forms of gravity. Each is at the center of it's own constellation, yet is part of the gravitational pull of many others.

To me, one thing that makes this Canadian model work is that all of the NPOs in the group share a broad common purpose. What has made it difficult to get traction in Omidyar, then Ned, and other places like Facebook, is that most people have different agendas and purposes.

I'd like to learn more about the intermediary groups that facilitate this process. Seems to be more than a typical "community organizer" role.

Comment 77 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jill, Let me offer an illustration of where I see exclusion in the process of foundation based vetting. Our own example which began in 1996 with a paper on reforming capitalism with an alternate paradigm.

It delivered proof of concept in 1999 when deployed to source a development initiative at own cost in Russia for USAID and we brought it to the UK in 2004 to begin the work I described above and the impact in Ukraine.

I signed up with Social Edge and began describing our efforts in discussions the same year, as did my colleague and founder, author of the model for people-centered economics posted on the web since 1997. To my knowledge the only attempt as yet, to define such a model.

In April this year, a conference was held in the Said Business School to discuss 'A New Form Of Capitalism' and "the top names who are shaping this new economy".

http://oxfordhub.org/oxsef

Clearly the pioneers, those who'd been deploying the concept for a decade and had described their work on Social Edge, were not 'visible' to this foundation.

If we depend on foundations to vet social enterprise, I see no mechanism which prevents intellectual property being attributed to others and their projects being diminished as a consequence. Our efforts in Eastern Europe raising awareness of vulnerable children in state care, difficult as this is in being obstructed by organised crime, is hardly helped by any foundation which paints us out of the picture with regard to our own ideas and achievements.

Jeff

Comment 78 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

There are few "social enterprises" that would pass my vetting process and many ruthlessly impose this "50% earned income" fiasco for social enterprises, which clearly are enterprises focused around creating social impact, but may earn less than the 50%.

Basically people have a different view, depending upon how "business-orientated" or "charity-focused" they are and everything in between. In theory vetting is a good idea, but in practice I feel that in order to do this, one should be a little more understanding of the various viewpoints. If you're too understanding, the vetting becomes irrelevant.

Anyway - it's a tough one. If it were me, I would be more interested in a psychological profile of the directors of the enterprise, rather than some complex assessment of the enterprise itself, which people will not be able to agree on.

Comment 79 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dan Bassill said:

What has made it difficult to get traction in Omidyar, then Ned, and other places like Facebook, is that most people have different agendas and purposes.

Yes, Dan, it's usually true that most people are pushing their own organizational agenda. This goes back to what others were saying earlier about needing new tools to identify our overlaps. What I sense right now is that the proliferation of interactive platforms tends to isolate us more, in some sense. I see social change agents investing time all over the web to promote their own org or point of view. What's missing, perhaps, is time and less fragmented space to connect on a deeper level cross-dimensionally, where we are able to look beyond organizational reach and survival issues to identify areas where we can come together and do more.

With regard to the comments on foundations and vetting, the truth is that there is no universal vetting process. Vetting systems are complex and necessary when it comes to anyone investing large (or even small) sums of money. Clearly when a foundation decides to give someone $100,000 then they need to be reasonably sure they are investing in something that is real, that aligns with their own purpose, and that will yield results. Making info available about orgs that foundations have vetted according to their own unique processes is - to my mind - not at all equivalent to saying that nobody else is good. It simply says that here are some organizations who have developed a complex process of finding people they believe enough to invest in. Do with that info what you will - partner, invest, study, resent... You might choose to develop your own personal decision-making process, and that's fine! What I don't see is the "bad" that comes from sharing the info. Would it be better if the info wasn't publicly shared? Or should foundations looking to invest simply not vet at all?

I recently found http://greatnonprofits.org/ - a new site that uses a very grassroots method of vetting nonprofits. Will be interested to see how it develops.

Comment 80 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Yes, that's it Christina. Only an organisation's own processes and perceptions. It should be presented as such rather than create the impression of a definitive achievers list. Those investing their own resources so far would not feature.

Another illustration from the UK where the Royal Bank of Scotland solicits registration on a social business directory. The emphasis being on turnover, audits and statements of purpose. One fills in the questionnaire and that's the end of the dialogue.

http://www.se100.co.uk/rbs-the-i ndex.php

When presented as the "Top 100" index of social business, there's a public illusion being created that these are those achieving social outcomes.

Earlier this year, I withdrew from membership of the Social Enterprise Coalition. After numerous attempts to pass on news of our work and progress, responding to solicitation to participate in research and surveys. My point, that being disregarded could be achieved at no cost from other organisation. I wasn't going to pay for the privilege.

I'd also tried to participate, by offering a suggestion to the government SE consultation here earlier this year. My suggestion deleted from the discussion forum on which it was raised.

http://www.box.net/shared/ckzbep 5h26

Something on similar lines was suggested at the consultation, I learned later.

My impression from this and many similar experiences is that social enterprise in the UK context is more about excluding others from media and public recognition than simply failing to collaborate.

Jeff

Comment 81 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I attended a high school drop out summit in Illinois this week, organized by the Americas Promise organization, and its member business leaders.

These are people who share some of the same goals I share, but who are working in their own circles to solve the same problems. I created a map showing people I met at this event, and illustrating how some of us had connected previously and others were new to me.

While the leaders who organized this talked about connecting networks for a common purpose, their own strategies have not done this very well in the past. Hopefully, with new technologies we can help this happen in the future.

My blog articles are at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/ 2009/11/network-building-expandi ng-choir.html

Jeff, I often feel as though I'm a voice in the wilderness that no one listens to. However, by being consistent about my message, others do pay attention, and some pass it on, just as Christina did by starting another discussion here around a comment I posted.

With the Internet we can create our own media and distribute it via YouTube. I think you have been doing some great work with kids, but I don't know much about it because most of what you post seems to focus on how others have not given respect to that work. This may be true, and it does seem unfair.

However, it happens. I think that if you spend more time talking about what you do to help kids, and pointing to the programs and work you've been doing, that might build a network of supporters who help you do it.

You may need to be doing that in forums of other people who are also working with kids, where more people might be interested, thank might be the case on Ned, but if you find these groups, the people there may already be more inclined to want to know about your work, and help with it, or borrow ideas from it for their own work.

That's what I've been trying to do.

Comment 82 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hi Dan,

Dan, if I may, please let me describe the background which gives rise to so much frustration. Ideally I'd be situated in a city but I had to give up on London, sell up to yield funds to keep things going. That leaves me in an isolated rural location with a colleague overseas who cannot visit the UK because immigration have blocked him and politicians refuse to assist.

I spend most of my time, it seems, describing what our efforts are about on social networks. Youtube would be ideal but there is nothing to film here in the UK and we have had no success in gaining entry to children's homes there. The smear campaign hosted on Google impedes our efforts to find work to support core operations and vandalism and constant deletions on Wikipedia ensure that we are kept out of the picture.

We are nevertheless making progress in the overall aim which is of greater scope and there's good news to tell in that what we've done has been instrumental in increasing domestic adoption, getting affordable broadband rolled out and giving reason for USAID to open a new foundation to promote CSR and support community enterprise.

These are somewhat profound impacts and difficult I think for most to take in, that leverage is being achieved by reasoning and making the case for social change.

http://people-centered.net/About .aspx

Just recently we learned that Crimea where earlier economic development advocacy had been focussed is now identified for action by the EU. If that happens and they fund social enterprise, our advocacy for economic development will have been 100% successful since sourcing a microfinance initiative in Russia in 1999.

These are positive things to tell, but they're hard for most to comprehend.

In recent months I have actually found an organisation who are pleased to collaborate and include us a partners in their efforts. It's a group which will launch next week known as the Charter for Compassion. I use the vehicle of their discussion forum in my explanation of how I see it as congruent with their aims.

http://charterforcompassion.ning .com/profiles/blogs/peoplecenter ed-economics

Jeff

Comment 83 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dan, This is where I could do with some help, collaboration. I can almost be certain that my contribution to Wikipedia will be vandalised. I draw on references to web archives with the disclaimer that I have since become associated with the founder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inc lusive_capitalism#Critique_of_In clusive_Capitalism

Comment 84 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jeff,

It seems you have a local-global message, as I do with Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection.

On one hand, you've "been instrumental in increasing domestic adoption". On the other hand you have ideas about economics and capitalism that are expressed in "people centered" information you share.

For me and people working with kids, I might be interested in learning more about what you've been doing in the area of adoption if you posted links to this information. However, the ideas on "people centered economics" are far above my mental capacity, or my day-to-day attention-span.

Thus, by giving me links to the one idea, and not the other, it does not help motivate me to spend more time getting to know what you've been doing, or sharing this with others.

In building networks of purpose, it's important that the purposes be clear, and of interest to others, or there won't be much of a network, or much activity and interaction within the network.

Comment 85 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I recently read an incredibly insightful piece by Margaret Wheatley. I have posted it in my news as I want to refer to it in a couple of places here. I would welcome your comments and opinions.

Comment 86 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Dan, If you examine the stages beginning with activism to raise awareness of childcare conditions, you will see that it's followed by an economic argument. Specifically, the case that wholesale adoption and creation of small family type homes is weighed against keeping children in institutions which cost more and permit funds being siphoned by organised crime and a raft of exploitation. There's a strong link in this argument between the humanitarian and economic case. This leads on to examine the root cause of children being abandoned to the state and tacking the vicious cycle of poverty which perpetuates it. The follow on strategy paper makes several recommendations which are adopted as government policy and the net result is a swing toward domestic adoption. All this is in the links of the About page above. Here's the start:

http://eng.maidanua.org/node/581

Linda, I think the piece by Margaret Wheatley is on the "same page" in a lot of ways. For example in my blog, where I describe the essence of making "we" rather than "you or me" our shared objective in this people-centered approach.

http://www.ecademy.com/node.php? id=132188

Jeff

Comment 87 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Something else in the context of the Margaret Wheatley piece. Jacob Bronowski from a 1970s TV series which may be unknown in the US. He uses the illustration of the Holocaust to convey the need of humans to touch each other.

http://charterforcompassion.ning .com/profiles/blogs/the-principl e-of-tolerance

Comment 88 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Thanks Linda, for posting Margaret Wheatley's piece. I'm going to need to take more time to read it. I created a pdf a few years ago, titled "role of leaders" which illustrates what leaders might do to draw their members into these learning circles, and to places where they might be directly involved in providing time, talent, dollars.

http://www.tutormentorexchange.n et/images/PDF/Role%20of%20Leader s.pdf

It is from this on-line learning and direct involvement that people build their understanding of an issue, and their ownership. That takes a lot of time, and consistent facilitation and leadership.

Jeff, thanks for posting your article. It starts out by telling the story of adoption, then builds to a more complex understanding of the problem. I do the same thing.

Tutoring/mentoring by itself will not solve the problem of poverty. But getting adults who don't live in poverty personally involved, so they learn more about the problem and ways they might be part of the solution, is a way to help solve the problem. One program serving 70-80 kids and engaging 100 volunteers each year is great, but too small. Hundreds of similar programs in every big city, is a much larger force, if the programs can be connected to each other, and all of them can get the consistent resources needed to constantly improve.

For this to happen people need to thinking of a much larger strategy, as you point to in your own writing. However, we will always need to be getting the few people who are already involved the support they need to stay involved so they can grow to be leaders who help others get involved.

Comment 89 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I've got a need for collaboration right now which involves friends in Kampala and someone in need. We've gather together in the past for the cause of funding a computer and I'd like to do something similar. I can't talk about it in public space, it's a question of personal dignity.

Am I on my own here?

Comment 90 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Hi Jeff - can you fill me in further? Shoot the info to me here.

Comment 91 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jeff, you can send me a PM too. Or, if enough people are interested we could also set up a private Ned group

Comment 92 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Include me please

Comment 93 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Wanted to make sure that those of you following this thread are aware that a Ned.com "unconference" has just been announced for Feb 5-7 at Nedspace Portland. The theme is Beyond Social Media: Collaboration and Getting things done.

The invitation with more details is over here. Would love to meet up with some of you there!

Comment 94 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Jill Finlayson has just put up a Holiday Gift Guide for Social Entrepreneurs - tagline: Give the gift of knowledge, and the list of collaboration resources that came out of this discussion (http://www.ned.com/group/i4c/ws/collaboration_resources/) got a nice mention :-) Thanks to everyone who has contributed to that! You can see Jill's post at SocialEdge here: http://www.socialedge.org/discus sions/social-entrepreneurship/ho liday-gift-guide-for-social-entr epreneurs-2009

As I responded to Jill there, this conversation really helped me to shape and hone my ideas for developing Internet4change.com. Thank you to everyone who has participated so far for that beautiful gift!

Comment 95 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

I was part of that Social Edge discussion too. The article on Philanthropy 2.0 is worth reading.

Comment 96 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Christina Jordan said:

There's a lot of talk lately in the Social Change circles I hang out with online about "collaboration" and the need for more of it in our sector. But are we on the same page about what collaboration means?

The American Heritage Dictionary defines collaborate as a verb meaning To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort.

That definition resonates with me to a certain point. Yes, it is extremely useful to think things through together, and to learn from each others' experiences. In this connected day and age, I'd even venture that it's silly for change agents not to seek intellectual input on their ideas. But I find myself wanting more action in how collaboration in our sector pans out. I want collaboration in our sector to mean taking cooperative, collective action for greater social impact.

Am I alone in wanting that? Is that asking too much? More importantly, perhaps, what does (or could) that desired definition of collaboration actually look like in practical terms? Will greater social impact be achieved if collaboration is intentionally better defined, structured and incentivized in the new social economy? Or is collaboration that's more loosely structured (ie, thinking things through together) as far as we need to go to see our impact as a sector increase over time?

I'd love for us to explore this.

What does the term "collaboration" mean to you when it's applied to your thinking about Social Change?

Can you share good or bad examples of collaboration in the Social Change sector that you've participated in or admired?

Is collaboration more effective when it's structured or unstructured?

Does collaboration ever fail to increase social impact? If yes, what are the factors that lead to failure?

What are the biggest incentives for collaborating? The biggest deterrents?

Is there a pattern of factors that lead to successfull collaboration?

I look very much forward to reading your thoughts.

Christina,

You have asked excellent questions. Each one deserves a thoughtful response. I was fortunate to receive a $3M HHS Community Partnership grant to focus on many of your questions. We went after "what does collaboration, partnership and alliance building mean, how does it actually work, can it be replicated, how can it become a practice, what matters, and how to measure meaningful results. All of this work was done in Santa Clara County, CA with very diverse populations with very different issues.

The term collaboration was being used a lot in the United States and our group did not know what it really meant, past getting people to a table...We wanted to know a lot more about how it worked with real communities, addressing serious community issues.

Among other things, we wanted to know if collaboration was sustainable, how issues of power and control could be handled, what about conflict, could you plan for collaborative results, how can we evaluate it?

We used some of the grant money to put together an intermediary organization, to answer these and other questions. We looked at the subject for 5 years.

Here are a few critical results:

Leadership: need a champion of the issue who pulls other people
The core leadership group needs to make sure the initial invitations include, not only supporters, but those that will make trouble, if they aren't included from the beginning
The issue has to be compelling or people won't come back.
An image statement which is bigger than life, but imaginable, is absolutely necessary, must be wordsmithed or people will disengage at that point
It does require structure, process, planning and outcomes to effect in social change
The planning process must be action oriented and move fairly quickly
Leveraging resources matters, as does sharing credit and leadership
Planning with results in mind is not only a great process, it sets up the evaluation process with the group
Writing up the story, making it concrete and giving it to the group is essential
Creating capacity, throughout the collaborative process, is purposeful, ongoing and always leaves the group better off. If we do a good job of teaching and capacity building, the group will be empowered and go on without the facilitator
Effective collaboration models need a neutral facilitator to get going

I could write about this for a long time. I'm sure other people can add to this list. We were working towards best practices, found some, and like so much work, can get lost as time goes on.

I have found this work to be continually relevant, very useful and effective in many settings. I used this work to evaluate all of the innovative Community Policing grants at COPS in the Justice Department, to help a CA town solve a major problem and am now applying this work to effective social networking models.

I hope this was helpful.

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Comment 97 on Defining Collaboration in the Social Change sector

Andrea,

Congratulations on finding the money to do this work. That's one of the first challenges.

Have you heard of the "Constellation Model" of collaboration? http://www.socialinnovationexcha nge.org/files/event/attachments/ Constellation%20Model%20Descript ion%20June%209%2706.pdf

I like the concept because it offers freedom for innovation for individuals who are connected in a "recognized" collaboration. However, I'm not sure what someone who has found significant funding would think of this model.

I feel that network building is essential for relationship building and collaboration. I've posted links to a couple of articles by Valdis Krebs and others on my blog at http://tutormentor.blogspot.com/ 2009/12/network-building-underst anding-tmc.html

I first connected with Valdis a few years ago and recently he was a speaker at our Nov. 09 confernce. This was a result of conversations and relationships that started on Omidyar.net and continued here on Ned.