At first glance, it appears to be a strange question, yet it is a critical one as how we answer it has massive repercussions. One way to look at NGOs is through the intermediary or missionary model - a group of people in one part of the world wanted to help a group...
Desired public private partnerships can sometimes feel like a flash in the pan – be quick, be gone. We want a quick fix, a hit and the private sector to foot the bill. We view ourselves as the ‘good ones’ in the relationship so of course they will line up and we...
Social organisations collect a ridiculous amount of data. We rarely know why or how well we use the data, we just collect it. We build systems, business processes around this data. We hire staff because of this data. But we rarely stop to ask if we actually need...
Did any of you actually read all the GDPR cookie consent pop up forms before clicking them to make them disappear? Did you feel that you had any choice in the matter? Did you actually understand what you were consenting to, what data was being collected, what...
Cards. Hands down. No question about it. Everything is mobile, smartphone or feature phone, it doesn’t matter, everything is mobile. R.I.P. cards. So why are many NGOs still investing in cards?
Weirdly, simple or different perspectives or common sense in projects using technology are rarely discussed. Equipment is bought and viewed as being ‘owned’ by a project and not viewed as an office or programme asset that can be ‘rented’ out to multiple different...
Liquidity and cash flow are crucial for any merchant or small business and even more so at the last mile. Getting cash to beneficiaries assumes cash exists locally to ‘give’ to beneficiaries. Additionally, if organisations use vouchers but merchants can’t ‘cash in’...
“Why don’t NGOs have R&D departments?” Good question. Unfortunately the answer is because we decided to compete on administration or overhead costs, not impact. We have conditioned the general public and donors to this framing – admin and overheads are bad, money...
Recently, Seth Godin wrote a short little blog post about non-profits and innovation. He argues that due to the fact the organisations are not profit driven, in order to please shareholders they have a higher responsibility to be relentless in their focus on...