Blogging: A Theory of Change

It should be painfully obvious: walk the walk before you talk the talk.  But these days, with the countless ways to broadcast ourselves, it is perfectly possible for social entrepreneurs to spend all their time marketing themselves online (whether or not people are actually listening).  As such, it must be said that taking action to maximize the effectiveness of that organization, product or service MUST come before talking about it. 

…when I see someone who purports to be starting a nonprofit venture spending their entire day blogging, digging, and tweeting, I’m gonna get suspicious about your motivations.  Organizations are built through action.  If you aren’t spending 90% of your time implementing, you shouldn’t have that much to talk about.

So as the hype factor around transparency grows, we all need to remind ourselves that transparency is a complement to our actions, but never a priority over it.

- Kjerstin Erickson, Lesson Five: Without Action, Transparency is Just Another Form of Egocentrism, Forging Ahead

It is rare that a day goes by without me asking myself whether my urge to blog is some outgrowth of uncontrollable egomaniacal narcissism. After all, I share a lot of the same sentiments expressed by Kjerstin – I’m extremely skeptical of many of the nonprofit startups that I’ve seen that seem more interested in fame than impact. To be fair though, I understand why many of the nonprofit startups (especially student startups) do spend so much time on marketing – the hope is that with good press coverage and a frequently updated blog, prospective volunteers will be more likely to join (after all, isn’t that why nonprofits usually have a section of their website devoted to press?).

I once was a “social entrepreneur.” And I failed. Even though I think the idea had a lot of merit (at some point, I’d like to spend some time writing up the post-mortem of my experience in the spirit of this interesting proposal to reward failure), like many nonprofits, failure may sometimes, but is not always, an indication of poor execution or a bad idea. Rather, market failure may be to blame, where the supply of capital doesn’t get allocated to the best ideas (though, in retrospect, I have to say that there were plenty of things I could have done better).

The reason I mention this is because I believe documenting your experiences as a social entrepreneur and being completely transparent about not only your organization, but your individual experiences, is immensely useful since it helps others learn from your mistakes – (I wish I had access to that kind of information when I was working on Solutions Magazine). While I’ve learned to ask better questions of the social entrepreneurs I do meet and have discovered the incredibly interesting stories that aren’t covered by the mainstream press (the challenges, the frustration), I’ve only been able to learn these things through private conversation. Transparency, on the other hand, would enable more people to have a more accurate picture of what the social enterprise world is really like (and would have enabled me to make better decisions when starting a social enterprise and mentoring others in their social enterprise startups).

I also consider blogging, in its Platonic ideal, to be a form of due diligence, especially important for early stage ventures. While some blogs look like PR campaigns, I think blogs can be a great way to test ideas and get critical feedback (but only if they’re intentionally designed to capture critical feedback!). In this blog, I’ve gotten some great feedback from friends and colleagues on the current social venture I’m thinking about doing and some of the theoretical ideas I’ve been writing about. If more early stage social entrepreneurs blogged about their organization before jumping into action, then fewer would find themselves caught off guard in between a rock and a hard spot.

But most importantly, I think blogging is important because of its storytelling ability. In my blogging, I hope that my own decision making and analysis provides others thinking about similar things a sounding board for their own ideas. Just the other day, I was super shocked, surprised, and touched when someone at the SoCap Mixer introduced herself and told me that she reads my blog. Similarly, the most popular search terms that have led people to this blog have been “mba vs jd” and “phd vs jd” suggesting that others thinking about their graduate school education are finding this blog possibly of use. Though I don’t in any way profess to be an expert on life decisions, I do hope that by blogging I can offer my own thoughts and experiences as anecdotal data points (once an RA, always an RA).

And finally, a quote for thought:

Although we value scholarship for its own sake, this book is written with an instrumental purpose: to improve the effectiveness of your philanthropy with the ultimate goal of making the world a better place. Our theory of change is that this book will help readers who are already strategically oriented become even better and that it will whet others’ appetites. Doubtless this is a speculative and somewhat optimistic belief. After all, for every thousand books written with the hope of making a difference in people’s lives, let alone society at large, at most one or two succeed. But we think of our effort in terms of expected return just as we do “big cube” philanthropy: the probability of impact may not be high, but the potential magnitude of success is tremendous.

- Paul Brest & Hal Harvey, Money Well Spent (48)

Update: Like Lauren below, I would also like to thank the many people who contribute to the blogosphere and publish their thoughts so that those like me who are curious can peek in and see a tiny glimpse of their life and learn from their successes and failures. But most of all, my thanks goes out to those who have taken and continue to take the time (whether through blogging or other means) to engage with me in conversation. I am forever indebted and thankful and offer in return (to anyone) the knowledge that I am always up for an authentic conversation.