Bursting the Bubble

I’ve just finished teaching a class on trends in the nonprofit sector.  I have found that most students get so charged by this class as they come to understand the importance of being mindful of the world around them—not just the world around them in their slice of the sector, but the larger world of the whole sector and beyond.  These current and future leaders realize that we don’t monitor trends so that we can jump on each and every bandwagon; we do so to challenge our thinking and our ways of doing things.  In that process we can then determine which trends to adopt, which to consider further and which don’t fit or matter.  But this process of awareness, discussion, selection, and, with some, implementation, is what keeps an organization alive and vibrant.

A recent conversation with a client who had just returned from Israel made me think of nonprofits and trends.  Every year, for many years, he chaperones a group of special needs young adults on a Birthright Israel trip.  The purpose is to introduce young adults, ages 18 to 26 to Israel, through a free, multi-day trip that shows them its wonders.

On this client’s trip, his family joined him at the end of the 10 day Birthright Israel experience.  I asked how each part of the trip had gone, and he started talking about the “Birthright bubble.”  He spoke of the contrast between the totally protected (Birthright groups get their own armed soldier) and scheduled Birthright tour and the unscripted movement and wanderings that took place with his family.  This is not a criticism of Birthright, as the trip for him is pretty much the same— for him each year.   I couldn’t help likening this to so many nonprofits:  they live in their own bubble rather than exploring on their own.  Monitoring (is a combination of watching and reflection) trends takes nonprofits out of their bubbles.

Another reason why I love teaching this class is that once I finish exposing the students to those trends that I think they should be aware of, each then exposes her/his classmates and me to the one trend that piques them.  There is no question that our biases influence what each sees as a trend worth watching, which is why organizations that are serious about bursting that bubble need to spread the responsibility for monitoring trends throughout the staff and board.  What trends one person elevates from awareness to watching may totally bypass another person’s radar.  Thus, if multiple people at different levels of and places in the organization are watching trends, that organization should get a pretty well rounded view of what is ebbing, flowing or being integrated into the permanent landscape, and what the organization should pay attention to now, what it can afford to keep on the watch list and what won’t harm them to drop from any list.  But we also learn so much about one another from what each raises to the top of their lists.

Here is just a sampling of the trends students saw as important and worthy of mindfulness.

• The only male in the class decided to research the gender wage gap. Sadly, we still pay men more than women for doing comparable work—even in the nonprofit sector.  Millennials, however, would suggest a new trend in an old problem.  Upon first entering the workforce, millennials have a gender wage gap of a “mere” 5%, due in part to a decrease in salaries paid men; however, the gap widens over their careers, beginning, it seems, when women start having children.   Not a new trend, but a real distress call:  when are we going to stop penalizing women for having children?  And, shouldn’t the nonprofit sector be the one to change that?
• Virtual reality has arrived at some nonprofits. But will it make it big in our sector?  How best to get people to understand the realities of the worlds in which we operate, the problems we address?  We’ve been telling our story since the beginning of time, first using words, then pictures, and recently videos.  Now, some that can afford the mega price tag— and estimated $100,000, just to produce the film (but the price is dropping!).  Then you must add the cost of viewers.  But, according to Nielsen, one in four Americans between the ages of 18 and 54 say they are likely to use virtual reality technology in the coming year.
• Volunteerism has reached an all-time low, and even corporate push for skills-based volunteering isn’t turning that around. In fact, the biggest drop in volunteerism is among the educated, which has those who watch volunteer rates really worried, as education has always been the best predictor of volunteering.
• Text messaging is moving from a tool used for fundraising to a tool used for successful advocacy and awareness raising. Eighty-eight percent of Americans have a mobile phone, thereby reducing or eliminating, according to some, the digital divide.  Those with household incomes of less than $30,000 send twice as many texts as those with incomes over $75,000, and those with less than a high school degree text twice as much as those with advanced degrees.
• The buzz for a while has been to talk about big data, when perhaps we should be talking about drowning in data. One of the things that always strikes me whenever I go into an organization to help them design an evaluation system is how much data each collects and how little of it gets used.  So many nonprofits are drowning in data!  But, as we know, funders require data, and too often it is not the same data or not wanted in the same format; programs require data, which, too often, doesn’t align with the data funders want.  So, more and more data gets collected, but does it get used in ways beyond reporting back to funders?  “The State of Data in the Nonprofit Sector” reported that only 40% of nonprofit “professionals” use data in their decision making.  And, though obvious, it must be stated:  60% do not!  Seriously?

How much attention does your organization pay to trends and how do you respond?