
How  Non-Profits Can Think Like Startups - salmonet
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/03/advice-for-startup-nonprofits/
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thefastlane
"new nonprofit organizations should not think all that much differently than
their for-profit peers when it comes to growth. [...] Even if you are a
solving a big problem, you must find a way to measure it in real time"

finding a cure for leukemia is not the same as writing a chat app.

solving truly big problems -- such as the example the article mentions: curing
a disease -- requires large swaths of time, deep thought, reflection,
curiosity, imagination, hard work, more had work, and then even more hard work
. . . and it also means giving people room for that hard work to consist of
exploring rabbit trails, failing, and hitting dead ends. such endeavours
cannot properly proceed and unfold as they should in the kind of growth-and-
metrics-obsessed, MBA-ideology-driven, strait-jacketed environment such as
that which this article is proposing.

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tvanantwerp
The "self-imposed fundraising deadline" doesn't make much sense to me. I've
never seen a nonprofit that didn't have a dedicated fundraising team that was
always building and maintaining relationships with donors. Saying "we're only
going to raise until date X this year" is like saying "we're only going to
sell product until date X this year". Unless your product is entirely
seasonal, there's no sane reason to do that.

~~~
randall
In an early stage startup, building the product is just as important as
fundraising. In a non profit, the product is not the good feelings they give
donors, it's the impact they have on whomever their mission fulfills. If they
spend all their time fundraising their product is the good feelings they give
donors, which will dry up really quick without accomplishing their mission.
Full time fundraising is appropriate at a scale that is not < 10 people, for
sure.

~~~
mentat
Are you bringing some professional background to this assertion?

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soneca
I worked for 7 years on NGOs, then the last three on startups. I made the
transition exactly because of that. And I plan to go back, with a lot of
useful things learned.

But I was not thinking about these general guidelines. It is more about how to
achieve growth. Make something people want/love is a great moto for non
profits. Only in this case, the people are not customers or users, but the
beneficiaries. Well intentioned people building things not knowing if they are
solving a real problem or if their approach is the right way to solve it, it
is even more common than with tech startups.

The same thing with "get out of the building". Just so many social problems
are "solved" at air conditioned rooms. People don't talk (or don't listen) to
the people they are trying to help.

And the growth mentality, through iterations, is a much better for a lot of
problems. Specially social ones, the ones fighting poverty, urban problems,
advocacy.

Following this principles, a lot of good advice on how to grow, how to impact
more people, how to do product development can be used by non profits with not
much adaptation.

Sure, as much as in the for profit world, not all problems can be solved by
the startup=growth model. Medical research is a good example. But medicine
distribution could. Some issues (lots of them) demand public sector
participation. But advocacy, public awareness, could benefit from startups
practice.

Also, I must say that most non profit would benefit better from the
"bootstrapping startup" model than from "VC startup get huge or die fast"
model.

~~~
cuchoi
There is a problem for NGOs. You have a user (beneficiaries) that is is
different from you paying customers (donors). That is one of the many reasons
of why it is easy to get derailed in the way.

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quadrangle
What we really needs is the other way around: How startups can start thinking
like non-profits (i.e. having a true net-positive impact on the world and
public-interest values rather than focusing on "capturing", "monetizing", and
"exit")

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ProAm
Like a start-up? More like a normal business plan.

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hackuser
I read in the last few days that 'innovation' and 'think like startup' has
become exhausted, overused cliche in the non-profit world.

Also, the vast majority of startups fail. Do I want non-profits providing
essential social services to fail at a rate of 90%?

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paulddraper
I think so.

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calibraxis
I'm sure that many nonprofits are very non-introspective (like most companies
I know). But some nonprofits totally blow away any company I know, like
listing their mistakes and how they'll improve:
[http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings](http://www.givewell.org/about/shortcomings)

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vtlynch
a great way to start thinking like start ups is to find ways to circumnavigate
pesky laws that may be inconvenient for you and to lie about the effectiveness
of your product/efforts. I think there will be a great case study published by
Zenefits about this.

