My Two Cents_09B

I define outside-outsiders as organizations or individuals who may be willing and able to take on outsourced work from organizations in the CP arena, but who don't have any prior commitment or connection to it.

Here are three types of outside-outsiders (whose members, incidentally, will "do their thing" for either little or no pay):

• Pro bono professionals. Think legal, marketing, HR, etc. pros who donate their services to social change organizations. Example: Taproot Foundation acts as an intermediary between nonprofits and pro bono workers. 

• Freelancers. Two subcategories here: virtual assistants (organizations post tasks or projects and VAs complete them to spec; example: see MobileWorks) and gig /small service workers (workers proffer specific services that organizations buy; example: see Fiverr) 

• Students /academics. To come.

Are you utilizing this talent pool? If not, are you really maximizing the effectiveness of your organization in pursuing its mission?

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Inside-outsiders, by contrast, are would-be workers (service providers) who have a personal stake in how well or poorly our kids fare. While they don't currently work in or for our organizations, they may be familiar with them. They're part of the neuro disorders community.

Here I'm thinking almost exclusively of parents and family members of kids with CP or other neurological disorders or conditions.

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These two talent pools differ in significant ways. For now, I just want to touch on a few of the potential advantages to outsourcing to inside-outsiders, i.e., parents.

• For one, you get their passion. And, with it, trust-based relationships. Do these things lend themselves to creative problem solving? I'd say so. To innovation? Perhaps. 

• You also get their huge numbers. There are 14-18 million kids in the US with neurological disorders. Consider this: The average association executive probably works about 2000 hours in a year. If we could enlist a-half-of-a-percent of the parents of those kids to work just two hours per month (doing outsourced work, in service to our nonprofits) we could add over a million man-labor hours a year to help us in our fight. Who wouldn't want to try to put that to productive use? I sure would.

One other thing you get when you outsource to inside-outsiders is the increased likelihood that they will be transformed in the process...into pure insiders.

ROUND THREE: What CP Parents Are For (Part D.1)

I'd like to see us make our collective way to a time and place where and when CP is flat on its back receiving the ol' ten count from a million of us referees: One. Two. Three...

To get there, though, we'll no doubt have to do a voluminous amount of knowledge work. We'll have to develop innovative ideas, come up with new answers to old problems, make difficult choices from among imperfect options, engineer products or services, and more.

So let's get busy.

I mentioned in Part C that the Net makes it possible to selectively find in the masses the exact knowledge or expertise one needs. Our orgs are already doing this. I want to see 'em really ramp things up, though, and that's the subject of this post. I won't go into the challenge of accessing and attracting full-time help for full-time pay. That seems not to be much of an issue for those that can afford it. Instead, the focus here will be on low- or no-cost online solutions to acquiring expertise. 

Let's start with using social technologies for finding volunteers. 

Several of our nonprofits say somewhere on their sites that they're looking for volunteers. They typically have a "Get Involved" page that typically expresses a need for fundraising or event-specific help. Rarely, however, do they go further. Let's Cure CP posits a short list of "professional skill sets that can benefit our foundation." (including database development, legal or tax consultation, medical and counseling expertise, and copywriting) But it doesn't go into detail. It doesn't specify what any of the projects on its "to do" list are. And it does little to motivate potential volunteers ("What's in it for me?") to act. I'm not sure why. Nor am I sure why no one seems to be aggressively using social techs like Twitter and Facebook to do those same things.

Note to self: Why couldn't businesses seek volunteer help, too? Isn't it conceivable that a CP parent who wants to help out would be quite willing to share his or her skills with a CP-connected business -- let's say for example Advanced Muscle Stimulators, in Rochester, NY -- that has social as well as private aims?

PRO BONO may also be a powerful alternative for nonprofits, for completing projects of almost any kind and scope.

"Every year, for-profit business professionals donate over $15 billion in pro bono services" for nonprofit marketing, fundraising, HR, IT, board development, legal and strategic planning support. That's according to Taproot Foundation, a nonprofit that makes business talent available to organizations working to improve society. It's a resource nonprofits in the CP arena need to tap if they want to realize their full potential. I encourage ours to visit the site for tips and tricks related to getting pro bono support.

We've got to be smarter. Rather than do more with less, we've got to do more with more.

One particular (relatively small) communications project has been on my mind.

In May of this year, Cynthia at Reaching For The Stars informed me that she was working on "an article highlighting the most promising research areas and what that will mean for people with CP." We're almost in September and to the best of my knowledge it still remains to be written. 

To produce a piece like the one I suppose she has in mind can take a lot of time and thought. No doubt she wants it to be thorough, accurate, inspiring, etc. I also know she's swamped with other work. So the fact that it's still on the back burner is perfectly understandable, forgivable, excusable -- all those things. 

But what a darn shame. 

Her article-to-be goes right to the heart of what RFTS is trying to do. It's mission critical. And the would-be contents, in my opinion, are vitally important. This thing could have been in circulation for three (3) whole months by now getting: passed around...dissected...re-presented...and acted upon. Those THREE MONTHS LOST matter to my daughter.

Someone else could write the piece.

If pro bono copy writing isn't available through Taproot, well, then what about Fiverr.com? "Fiverr, stylized as fiverr, is a global online marketplace offering tasks and services, referred to as 'gigs' and micro-jobs beginning at a cost of $5.00 U.S. per job performed." (per Wikipedia) At Fiverr, there's no shortage of writers making offers like this one: "I will write an article up to 450 words about any topic for $5." It's all legit. It employs a reputation system like eBay's. It's worth a try.

An assignment like Cynthia's could even conceivably be broken down into smaller bits, i.e., into its component parts, and worked on by several people (parents). Or, as an alternative, we could use social technologies in entirely different ways to get her messages across. 

More on options along these lines in the next post.

Our CP community may very well be under-funded, under-appreciated, and under-other-things. But those of us in it don't have to be under-ambitious, under-clever, or under-hard-working. Avenues like the ones above are ours for the exploring. We owe it to our kids to check 'em out.