It seems to me that most Nonprofits and charitable organizations are founded because an individual or small group is passionate about a cause (now, I don’t have any kind of hard data to back me up on this, so consider this a mere observational claim). This seems logical: I care about Mongolian orphans > I start an organization > I convince other people to care about Mongolian orphans. But what if we turned this around? What if we started with a group of people who are passionate about a cause and created an organization to fit that demographic?
It’s well known that the greatest innovations come from fulfilling a basic want or need. The best selling products are those that carry great demand. Why shouldn’t the same logic apply to nonprofit organizations? It seems to me that much of the tedious work that nonprofits do would simply disappear if an organization began on the premise that people already wanted to give their money to them. Of course this approach requires founders to adopt a more business-centric mindset in place of fanatical passion for a cause (which is not to say that it’s not possible to have both).
I realize that this is probably not a new idea, nor is it one that can be widely applied to every organization or cause. I’m sure that there are organizations out there now that have followed this very model, as well as those who are fighting for less popular causes that need more support. In any case, I would love to hear more opinions on this, or about organizations already using this idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment