Presentation at the Sektor 3.0 conference in Warsaw May 29, 2019.
A better model for using volunteers to carry your mission forward
Distributed Leadership Networks
How to implement the model
Distributed Leadership: A Better Model for Using Volunteers to Carry Your Mission Forward
3. 45 Minutes of Your Time
•A better model for using
volunteers to carry your mission
forward
•Distributed Leadership Networks
•How to implement the model
26. What is the Snowflake Model Good for?
•Grow fast
•Grow cheaply
•Go global
•Go Grassroots and local
27. It’s Not for Everyone
Are you willing to….
•Change how you deliver your programs?
•Let go of brand control?
•Let your community drive the work?
•Be in service to your members? TRUST
your members?
38. Treat Different People Differently
“We have the choice to
treat [our supporters] as
individuals. Not only do
they need different
things, but they offer
differing amounts of
value to you and to your
project.”
- Seth Godin
42. Working WITH Failure
• Set goals, not process + procedure
• Design redundancy into your program
• Be okay if things don’t happen
• Avoid deadlines
• Minimize reporting
• Set a low bar for success
44. Act Like a CEO
• It’s your job to set goals and
values.
• Don’t get stuck in
implementation details.
45. Architecture of Participation
• How can you make it easy for
people to contribute?
• What ownership can you
give?
• How do you encourage
activity you want?
AKA User Experience (UX)
46. What are the Benefits of Participation?
•it’s NOT about your cause. People
participate for a mix of selfish and
altruistic reasons.
•68% volunteer because it improves
their own well being and makes them
happy.
•50% volunteer because they want to
meet new people and make friends,
and to develop new skills and
experiences.
47. Conversation and Food Keeps People InvolvedConnections and Food
Sustains Participation
49. Learning More
• Mobilisation Lab: Beyond the First Click: How
Today’s Volunteers Build Power for Movements &
NGOs
• Matt Price: Engagement Organizing: The Old Art
and New Science of Winning Campaigns
• Percolator Consulting: The Engagement Pyramid:
A Primer
50. What Can You Do?
•Share your experience with others
(You’re smart! Why not show off and give
back?)
•Join meetups (Find your Tribe!)
•Start your own group! (Nothing will be
better for your reputation. I promise!)
Hi! I’m Eli from Vancouver!
For last 18 years I’ve helped manage teams of volunteers who manage themselves. Today I want to talk about how distributed leadership communities work and how you can create your own.
I appreciate your attention today. Especially in a second language!
So, what do I know about community? Here’s my experience.
Folk Fest.
2000 volunteers. 20 crews. 40,000 attendees.
1 volunteer to 20 attendees ratio. Very high!!
I managed the 150 volunteers on the site crew. We built a small city every year!
The work was totally worth it! A four day moment when my city came together!
We didn’t actually like Folk Music. We liked getting together in a field!
Now I coordinate a global network of #Tech4Good meetups.
120 chapters with over 300 volunteers.
But the role is all about people management.
It’s a special kind of volunteer management, because everyone is working remotely and almost completely independently.
It’s more of a mentorship and trainer role.
I spend half of every day on Skype coaching local leaders.
Looking back at the last 20 years the common theme of my career has been Community and bring people together to create something bigger and more meaningful than they could create alone. I believe in The power of getting together. A special magic. I think you agree because you’re here today. If all you wanted to do was learn you’d read a book or watch a webinar.
Community is the best work there is. It’s my social outlet, my school where I learn, the place I go to get re-energized.
Interactive element. After Net2 intro.
Where do you go to learn?
What is NetSquared? What does it look like?
It has four core elements.
Why does NetSquared exist? To bring people together.
Being a nonprofit techie can be lonely work.
The tech topic is the bait, but the real value comes from the creating networks of trust and learning.
But specifically, here are a few examples of NetSquared groups with photos from actual local meetups.
Some are discussions in a courtyard.
Or a lecture, like our meetup in Istanbul.
Or perhaps it’s a hands-on event like a Social Media Surgery. This comes from my home group in Vancouver. We pair Hootsuite coaches with local nonprofits for 30 minute consultations. No agenda - the expert is there to answer any questions.
Or perhaps it’s a working group, where a team collaborates to solve a problem like fixing a Wordpress website for a local nonprofit.
Going to a pub and complaining about our boss over beer!
What organizers do? Everything!
Find the venue. Select the topics. Market their events. Coordinate the local team.
What didn’t you hear?
How is this different from other volunteer roles?
We don’t tell people how to host their events. Or select their topics.
And we avoid asking for things that volunteers hate doing, like reporting back. :-)
KEY: Local Organizers operate independent chapters. We provide guidelines, but that’s it. Like the military platoon - able to react to changes, rather than asking leadership at every step.
The “boots on the ground” are in charge
We trust the wisdom of the crowd.
Wisdom of the attendees, who drive content themes
Wisdom of the local organizers, who plan events
Wisdom of the local experts who create the content for events
And the organizers are also creating the body of knowledge that acts as best practices for the community.
We don’t know what local organizations need (especially when we’re operating in 41 countries). So each group sets their own topics and event styles
It’s also the wisdom of the crowd that makes the events valuable. Gives people the opportunity to share their experience and knowledge with peers.
It’s also the wisdom of the crowd that guides local events. We share this in our wiki.
All our curriuculum, event ideas, best practices, and templates come from the community.
We are in service
Build on the work of others.
Wikis are terrible. Except for everything else!
Training is done by local volunteers. Which is WAY cheaper as a way of program delivery. Delivered 500+ events last year for almost 10,000 attendees!That’s like holding 14 of these conferences – but delivered almost entirely by volunteers.
But by being volunteer-driven we can’t deliver on measurable KPIs in the way a standard grant-funded program would require… But that’s okay because this model is so cheap to deliver!
Events have been held in 41 countries during April 2017- March31, 2018
10,603 attendees
999 events
128 cities
41 countries
You’re like - how can MY organization create a meetup-style network?
aka distributed leadership network.
Independent cells.
You’ll find it in community organizers like anti-poverty groups; foreign missionaries, political campaigns (esp. USA) and unions.
I love communities that are built to scale by distributing leadership to the end nodes.
Most orgs only have envelope licker roles. We definitely need role. We definite the when and how of the role… Generally unskilled.
If you need tight control over your brand and how the work is done this distributed model isn’t for you.
But if you want to create a movement and scale your impact, this is the best way to make it happen without buckets of money.
Walk through example of crews
You’ll see the ratio of direct reporting never gets too big. Nobody ever had more than 10 people reporting to them.
And no long decision-making chains. Crew-leads didn’t have to get approvals for most decisions from staff. Crews were given budgets and areas of responsibility and as long as they didn’t extend beyond mandate and seriously impact OTHER crews they could do as they wish.
Ie. Want to change shift times? Want to change vendor? Want to change menu? Do it!
I do orientation interview to weed out crazy people and help set organizer on path. But then they are in charge of event logistics.
Once I set chapter up and give organizer basic I have zero interaction with the 57,000 meetup members. No approval of event topics or venues or co-organizers.
Ambassadors - local knowledge, know topics and venues; host training events for organizers, plus webinars. Also compliment my language gaps and time zones.
Here’s another view of the Snowflake model for NetSquared that won’t hurt your eyes as much!
Hey nerds! Are you ready for a geometry lesson?
Specifically, we’re going to be talking about the triangle.
Triangles are the strongest and most stable shape. Use them to grow and manage your community!
Shape 1: the funnel AKA the sales funnel.
Snapshot of last quarter, which had more (but lower quality) leads for a recruitment campaign I ran with meetup.com
I run each potential volunteer into a multi-step process.
And I don’t know who will turn out into a good candidate.
A LOT of people applying… I have LOW barriers to entry. But I invest almost zero time in most people. I don’t know who will be a good candidate! Give people the chance to engage… Or fail.
To manage the volume you need email templates, automatic follow-ups and reminders, and a clearly defined sales funnel. Where are people and how do you get them un-stuck at different stages in your funnel?
Need to track who you talked them, what you talked about, set reminders and triggers for first event support and anniversaries, and identify inactive groups that need a poke.
No, CRM aren’t fun. They aren’t sexy.
But rigor and structure are required.
Any Customer Relationship Management tool will do. Some are pretty inexpensive. But move past the spreadsheet. You can’t keep it all in your head, and it you can eventually you’ll be run over by a bus and all that knowledge will be lost.
Why You Need a CRM? One day you might be run over by a bus.
Getting my work into a proper CRM made all the difference. Otherwise you’ll lose people and forget to follow-up. Process = victory!!
A huge increase in the number of groups launched once I started using CRM to set activities.
Triangle 2: Now let’s turn that funnel upside turn to create a pyramid.
This is a reminder that most people are never going to engage.
So your job is to create multiple ways for people to engage that matches their interests AND HELPS YOU SORT THE CONTRIBUTORS FROM THE LURKERS
So don’t put deep effort into them.
Rather, find ways to determine WHO is going to get involved.
Sorting and prioritization is important.
You might briefly feel like a jerk for not treating everyone the same, but we aren’t. People want to engage at different levels, and the Engagement Pyramid reminds us. I find this Seth Godin quote helpful:
“we have the choice to treat them as individuals. Not only do they need different things, but they offer differing amounts of value to you and to your project”
The other way to use the pyramid is Groundwire’s classic engagement pyramid.
Mapping your work on an engagement pyramid helps you answer the questions:
Do we have ways for our members to engage at each level?
Do we have a way to move the most engaged people into higher levels?
We all gap gaps - helps identify where we need to do more work to give our supporters a smoother journey.
Mapping NetSquared to the pyramid. WALK THROUGH THE DIFFERENT GROUPS, STARTING AT BOTTOM.
Our gap: at the bottom. What’s BETWEEN attending an event and becoming an organizer? How do I identify and convert? What if they DON’T WANT to host events? What else can they do?
The pyramid shows that you’re going to lose MOST people at each As you can see most people NEVER make it to hosting a group.
And I can’t reliably predict who will make it through the process.
SO START WITH A LOW BARRIER. In my case it’s just a simple web form.
Next barriers:
Did they schedule me for a call and complete interview (30 mins max)
Did they send me event proposal? (this filters out most!)
Give people a chance to try and fail. After orientation interview I ask people to find a venue and commit to three events to start BEFORE I create a group for them. But as you see prospective organizers never get the event details to me. Because it’s hard!
I WANT highly independent and motivated people. So I don’t help them besides a brief guide! I don’t be there to help them!
You’ll fail more than you succeed. So make sure you create programs that fit the modelInstead of staff-led model where they define WHAT needs to be accomplished and HOW create programs that delegate decision-making.
People want to help. Let them!But they want to help on their termsLet go!You’re the CEO. Set goals and values.But don’t let go too much!People need models to use and reject!Or they float about. Structure is helpful. Open structure!
What is your architecture of participation?
Web 2.0 term from Tim O’Reilly. How can you make it easy for people to contribute?Now we’d call this the UX or User Experience model.
Give ownership
Remember it’s about the relationships (and food) as much OR MORE than it’s about your cause or mission
Do you have volunteer-friendly roles?
Do you multiple LEVELS of participation? Think back to the Engagement Pyramid. Do you have roles for people at every level?
Do volunteers talk about THEIR project or YOUR project? - Encourage ownership.
Reward super engaged volunteers and give them MORE responsibility, inside access, or other privileges.
So be clear about the BENEFITS of volunteering.
It’s not about your cause
Volunteers want to meet people. Create social opportunities.
Give them a chance to build skills
Ie. At NetSquared much of my orientation call is identifying motivations and incentives that will keep people in the role.
1/3 are consultants. Others want to build reputation. Or lonely nonprofit techies.
Relationships and food are what will keep people coming back
So I challenge you to fo forth and create community!
Share your experience with others
You’re smart! Why not show off and give back!
Join meetups
Start your own group!
Nothing will be better for your reputation. I promise!
And there’s #Tech4Good meetups here in Poland too, hosted by our friends at Sektor 3.0 and NTEN