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.
