Lex Leifheit

“And I need you to be better than me

And you need me to do better than you.”

—Thao With The Get Down Stay Down, “Know Better, Learn Faster”

Over a week has passed since the 50^th Anniversary Summit, and what a whirlwind week it was. Back at SOMArts Cultural Center we closed out an amazing turnaround year. We more than doubled our gallery attendance, revived our intern and volunteer programming, launched a website, renovated our lobby and office spaces, invested in long-overdue equipment upgrades, fought to protect our city funding, and lived to tell about it.  And yet, in many ways we are just catching up. There’s so much to do and it feels like the more we succeed, the more people we connect to who have urgent needs and high expectations.  Such is the life of a thriving nonprofit.

At convention, I connected with peers who had similar stories. We’re all exhausted. So we sat in the audience and listened to panels talk about new models, veering between skepticism and hope.

I came to convention still stubbornly hanging on to the idea that a “new model” was a structure I could study and apply to my organization—that magical combination of for-profit innovation, technology application and nonprofit altruism.

I left convention having reached the conclusion that we need to stop treating “new model” like a noun, in panels or anywhere else, when what we’re talking about is changing the system. We’re asking how we can achieve dramatic organizational change necessitated by the factors mentioned above, but succeeding via thoughtful communication and a process of enrolling (vs. influencing) stakeholders in one’s vision.

What feels new to me is the transparency. For the first time, we can look around us and see extremely detailed examples of where and how for-profit companies are recruiting and enrolling. There’s an online component for almost everything. And for the most part, small and midsize nonprofits are still hesitating to invest as much in the process as they invest in the product because, as one panelist put it, the means for enrolling (aka outreach, aka new audience development, aka getting feedback) “doesn’t feel like an internal organ of the organization.”

The most resonant statement at the convention came from Keri Putnam, executive director of the Sundance Institute, who said, “Nonprofits are too focused on product. If you are not constantly considering how to reach out and engage with the public …”. That was it. No answer, no question. A jumping-off point.

Her point was echoed in the panel “Technology’s Impact On the Future of Traditional Arts Delivery Systems,” where Tim Svenonius producer of Interactive Educational Technologies at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, warned us to “stay away from the edge” and figure out how the masses decide to utilize cutting-edge technology before investing scarce resources in that fancy new app. We talked about the importance of transitioning from monolithic undertakings (cd-rom, anyone?) to bite-sized and consistent streams of content.

At “Testing New Nonprofit Business Models,” the idea of investing in the process was again echoed when Cheryl Ikemiya of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation talked about the Innovation Lab, a program that provides facilitation and funding to help organizations design and prototype innovative strategies.

One of my favorite “ah-ha!” moments was when Dewey Schott, senior manager of leadership services for the National Alliance of Media Arts and Culture, espoused the significance of enrolling versus influencing at the “Leadership and Influence” panel. It takes a special type of courage to put excitement about one’s own ideas and work front and center, a quality more often found in artists than administrators. Some of the most influential organizations I’ve worked with are still resorting to fear and force tactics, aka “if you don’t do x for us then we will do y, the economy will collapse even further, arts workers will lose their jobs, doors will close.” I’m not saying that doesn’t work, but this is an area that could use some new thinking.

Enrolling is more about excitement than power. It’s about joining a group that could be as small as a classroom or as big as an army, but it stands for something. Which is good, because as a strategy, leveraging communities and passionate perspectives plays to the strengths of the arts sector.

So I’m back home in San Francisco, and when I look around at what for-profit organizations are doing to enroll people there are some interesting case studies. This week, my inspiration is Coffee With Square, and ForageSF: Should the Market Get Bigger. I wrote a little about them both below in the hope that others would share their own enrollment case studies in the comments section.

Case study #1: Enrolling Amidst Adversity

Coffee With Square

A square is a credit-card processing device that allows one’s smartphone to collect payments. It was created when a glass artist Jim McKelvey couldn’t accept payment for his goods and proposed a solution to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The idea caught on fast, so fast that the company quickly ran into legal and production issues.

Inspiration: to update people about the company’s progress, Square launched “Coffee With Square,” a low-key Friday webcast with employees.  The first one featured Dorsey and had 1300 views. The Square homepage is also all about enrollment—there’s very little info and the most dominant element on the homepage is a big blue button that says “Get Started!”.

Case study #2: Meaningful Membership.

ForageSF: Should the Market Be Bigger?

Iso Rabins was having a hard time getting his foraged food into Bay Area farmers markets, so he started the Underground Farmers Market at a friend’s house in the Mission District. The Health Department came calling, and Rabins found a loophole: membership. People who want to attend the market are all members, the only requirement of membership is that you sign up for the email list.

Inspiration:  Rabins could have treated membership as a red-tape necessity, but instead he uses the large membership to his advantage, explaining decisions such as whether or not to move to a larger venue and asking for meaningful feedback. As a result, ForageSF’s popularity has exploded, including an upcoming feature in the Times Magazine.