Skip to main content

Strategic Thinking and the Bandwagon Effect: Or Why the Effort Doesn't Always Match the Need

Unless things have changed in recent years, teen boys commit suicide and engage in high-risk behaviors at much higher rates than teen girls. For purposes of this strategic thinking post it doesn't matter why. Good strategic thinking only requires that those concerned about addressing the needs of troubled teens are really put most of their resources where most of the resources are needed.

This isn't always how things work out, and not only when it comes to preventing teen suicide and drug use.

The bandwagon effect is dangerous tendency to do what other people are doing, because that's what people are doing. I don't mean to imply that copying other organizations is a bad practice. Funding organizations like programs that seemed to have worked in other places at other times. Want to help keep kids out of trouble? Use the self-esteem and decision-making lessons that have been used in 255 other schools in recent years.

Even in such cases, copying isn't always a good idea. What if everyone is focused on teen girls while teen boys have at least as many issues? Sure, helping girls is good, but boys commit suicide at a much higher rate. The disparity continues while most of the money and volunteer time goes to helping girls navigate the emotional and psychological trials of adolescence.

In general then, the resources devoted to an issue should be proportional. Most of the money goes where most of the affected people are. Most of the free tuition offers go to the people who need the most help.

Someone who wants to start a program for troubled young people needs to consider where there is really a gap in services and support or where the real issues are. Don't just copy what others are doing, as a way to say that young people are "getting help".

Before you decide to start a new program or project ask if there are enough of those now? If not, then maybe you have found something important to do! Either way, try thinking of the issue in different ways:

Is suicide prevention the right focus?
Is low self esteem a contributing factor AND something that needs more attention?
What other factors that contribute to teen suicide are there and are they getting the attention they deserve?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Five Nonprofit Branding Tips

How do you establish a distinct identity in the minds of potential supporters? I’m glad you asked.   The Fundraising Fundamentals blog at http://www.andrewolsen.net/mark-cubans-advice-for-your-nonprofit/blog )   offered branding tips from entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Here are the tips(My comments are in parentheses): 1. Don’t make educating your donors the focus of your communications. Meet them where they are – not where you want them to be. (Don’t tell them what you want or what your mission is or what you need. Concentrate on explaining how donations or volunteering will benefit them in some way. The most obvious way to do that is to show people how their support will reduce domestic violence or clean up the river.)   2. Forget the witty, brainy, philosophical branding campaigns that are designed to “make donors think.” They don’t want to think. They want to help. Show them in simple terms how they can help. (Take the direct approach. If you are the only nonprofit supporting mic
1 comment
Read more

Steering Your Brain Toward Better Program Ideas

This is a post about asking good questions whenever you think you have a good idea for a program or program improvement. You probably knew that great ideas still need to be examined, questioned if you please. That's what this post is about, sort of. Mostly, I want to offer a few comments on Brainsteering: A Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas by Kevin and Shawn Coyne. Brainsteering offers a disciplined approach to asking, and answering, questions about product ideas and business ideas. The process also works just fine for program ideas. The book starts by describing some generic questions to ask about a challenge then goes into creating logic trees. A logic tree works by stating a question and breaking it down into subquestions. Simply asking and answering questions might lead to some valuable new ideas. Brainsteering And that's as far as I have gone in the book. I can say that there is a chapter on making your own brainstorming efforts more effective. Other chapter
Post a Comment
Read more

Try This Simple Process for Attacking a Social Problem

This short article outlines a technique you can use to focus your efforts to solve social problems through advocacy, public education, program design, or social marketing. What follows is a framework for thinking about how best to attack a given social problem This process should be helpful whether you know what your options are or not. You'll answer a series of questions about the issue starting with the most obvious question of all.  What is the problem? What is the challenge or problem you want to tackle? This is a broad social problem, like domestic violence or climate change, or something a bit narrower. Avoid stating that the lack of a specific thing is a problem - no playground in the neighborhood, no soup kitchen in the neighborhood, and so on.  There are a few reasons for not including a solution in your problem statement. First, you were probably assuming too much about the social problem in question. You will never look at other, better ways to address hunger or bullying
Post a Comment
Read more