By Anil Patel
sharsies
Sharesies logo
Recently one of our advisory board members [Dan O’Grady] sent us a copy of Seven Principles of Breakthrough Nonprofit Branding by Jocelyne Daw and Carol Cone. Jocelyne began writing this book when she was VP of Marketing and Community Engagement at Imagine Canada (an organization Framework shared office space for over five years). I was fortunate to work in proximity with Jocelyne’s team during that time and before the official launch of her book. Jocelyne shared some early insights about what makes for a breakthrough branding strategy. Highlighted, were the attributes nonprofits exemplify in their ‘breakout’ branding, including a fundamental shift from organizational silos to integration; a concept we have embraced through our Sharesies model. (A complete list can be found on page 23 of the book)A number of concrete ideas have solidified for me since reading Jocelyne’s book. Specifically, Framework has been experimenting with new approaches to reduce administration, improve collaboration and increase transparency using low cost and highly scalable technology. It’s a breakthrough idea of sharing often and widely.Our core hypothesis was to explore how to ‘create relevant information once, distribute it widely, and access it anywhere.’ The guiding principle is that this sharing model had to simplify our increasingly complex work. It also had to help us collaborate more effectively internally and amongst like-minded organizations. The hypothesis is derived from mounting evidence that modern non-profit management reinforces all the poor habits that Jocelyne points out as ‘Traditional’ and not ‘Breakthrough’.In the last year or so, we have made a very significant decision: everything that we consider non-confidential will be made public. Everything. At first, detractors said we are just sharing information for information sake; and no one is going to look at any of this stuff, and we are exposing ourselves to too much criticism.At first, maybe they were right. We posted capacity document “X”. Strategic plan “Y”. Marketing framework “Z”. Funder report template “A”. Risk Management framework “B”. Social Media strategy “1”. Theory of Change model “2”. Fundraising strategy “3”. However, there was nothing simple emerging from the exercise of sharing all this information. In many ways, it was adding layer upon layer of information, process and administration.We now have built-in time to discuss the things we are learning and doing versus spending time creating and/or maintain documents. Back in January, it hit me like a ton of bricks: great things happen to organizations that share. We – as a sector – are actually terrible at sharing current content in real-time.This is the elephant in the room and, we argue, is the new thinking the sector needs to embrace.The concept of Sharesies is simple: we share what we think might be useful for other organizations. To take it a step further, we encourage other organizations take, borrow or steal our templates and working documents.Here is a concrete example: In 2010, 46% of all the printing we did was through a social enterprise, and 13% of all our catering went to three social enterprise catering companies. Not only do we want to let the world know how we’re sharing, but it is our hope that others will start to share who the social enterprises are that they support, and increase the purchasing power across the sector. In developing the brand framework for Sharesies, we hope other organizations take up the cause that great things WILL happen to organizations that share.In close, our new roomies, CanadaHelps, and new partners TechSoup Canada are working together to co-create workshops and other programming related to Information Communication Technology (ICT) adoption. It will make our Timeraiser and Civic Footprint programming more relevant over time. We will generate more significant mission-related results while the generative aspect of our work in ICT develops.Thanks Jocelyne and Carole. The Breakthrough Brand Framework has been a catalyst for Framework. - Anil Patel and the Frameworks Foundation p.s. we will supply the mugs, if you supply the coffee (click here)