The Creative Activist

If you want to solve a problem, have to stop and think about the problem first. Logical, right?  Whether you want to tackle racial inequality, gun violence, climate change, or homelessness in your city you need to explore the challenge. Take notes, ask questions, do some interviews, reflect. This post introduces a couple of techniques you can use to focus on a new (to you) problem. You can use the tools here to help you shift your focus, or reevaluate whether you're focusing on the right thing.  Say your interest is climate change. Maybe you've decided that getting people to consume less stuff is the key to reducing the effects of climate change in the future. If you don't know much about the problem, here are a few key points: 1. The world is warming up with alarming speed, mainly because of human activity.  2. We may not be able to prevent some major changes like a 1-meter rise in sea level and permanent drought 3. Some would argue that adapting to those changes is more...

Genership 1.0: Beyond Leadership Toward Liberating the Creative Soul by David Castro describes some tactics for approaching social innovation in a creative, collaborative way. This post introduces three specific ways of thinking collaboratively, or individually, about social change efforts. Castro offers much more detail on using leverage, systems thinking and design thinking. Three Approaches to Thinking about Social Change : Whenever a group of social entrepreneurs gets together to plan or problem solve, they can choose to adopt one or more modes of thinking about the challenge at hand. The three modes of thinking that Castro mentions each deserves a book or two, but an introduction is easy to supply: 1. Looking for Leverage - This is a social change approach I’ve advocated for in previous posts. Activists should look for places they can intervene in society to produce the most benefit for the resources invested. A deep familiarity with the problem might be enou...

How many students, including adult learners, need some extra help to communicate effectively in writing? Across the United States, this number reaches into the millions. a picture is worth ... is a unique book produced through collaboration between I-LEAD Charter School in Reading, PA and Threshold Collaborative, a teaching, consulting and capacity building organization. Reading has one of the worst performing school systems in the nation. Students wrote and recorded personal essays in a project that combined writing with modern technologies to teach the vital skills of literacy, critical thinking and communication. The 16 students who contributed essays used their skills in essays on school, family life and personal struggles. The book includes links to audio recordings of the essays and QR codes that allow access to the audio files on mobile devices via QR reading apps. a picture is worth … came out of a partnership between two organizations. Threshold Collabo...

Last week's mass shooting stirred up talk about gun control, school security, mental health, and our supposed culture of violence. Here are my thoughtson how to craft effective policy responses. Maybe some nonprofits can take up the challenge and turn my line of thinking into a new lobbying effort or public education campaign. I like to write about tools nonprofits and activists can use to generate better ideas. Two of those tools come into play here. Firstly, new ideas often come from simply asking questions. Secondly, promising ideas tend to get knocked down by "common sense" objections that reflect personal biases more than fact or logic. Sometimes asking why things happen, then asking why again and again can lead us down a trial to a good idea. Here is a crude presentation of how asking why can lead to new ideas: Why do mass shootings happen? Because crazy people have access to guns. Why do crazy people have access to guns? Because gun laws are not...

Some random thoughts on fundraising plans. Well, the thoughts are not entirely random, being inspired by Edward De Bono's book Serious Creativity - read it if you get a chance. If you haven't read the book, you'll still be able to learn a few things here. De Bono's Thinking Course is another recommended read, and a shorter introduction to De Bomo's ideas. The first step in fundraising is, obviously, to make a plan. You know the basics of making a fundraising plan or marketing plan. Here are a couple of things to think about before you go beyond the planning stage. 1. What is the overall objective of your fundraising effort? 2. What specific objectives do you need/want to achieve along the way? 3. What are the aims/purposes/goal of your organization? 4. What fundraising methods might support the organization's purpose? Make sure you take notes. Spend a few minutes thinking about each question and taking notes. Deciding how to actually raise the mone...

Random thoughts on starting and funding new programs or projects. A poster to a LinkedIn forum described a plan to re-forest a mountain in AZ. He was asking for advice on how to finance a nursery to grow the trees that would go on the mountain later. I asked a few questions that I want to repeat here, in generic form: Do you have a registered nonprofit organization? Do you have a track record of success with fund raising and/or programs? If you can answer 'yes" to both questions, then grant money might be available. That's one funding option. If you are really new, your fundraising options are a bit more limited. There might not be any point in pursuing grant money, or using snail mail to ask for money, or using the Web to raise some money. You have to network first, and raise money from locals. The old-fashioned tactics for raising money are still available to you. Be original though. Everyone holds car washes and sells candy. What else can you sell, or do for ...

Last time I promised to write more about creative fundraising, among other applications of creative thinking. There are many obvious ways to raise money. So, what place is there for creative thinking about fundraising? Your staff and volunteers are probably busy enough as it is. The urge to stick with traditional fundraising methods is probably strong for just that reason. Traditional steps like applying for grants and courting businesses and writing fundraising letters work fairly well most of the time. So, here is an way to escape the normal fundraising pattern, without too much fuss. Take a few minutes to think about your specific fundraising goals. Be specific and be as comprehensive as you can be in just a few minutes. Now take a few minutes to note which fundraising goals really need money and which could be handled by assembling volunteers or getting donations of goods and services. Repeat for the other goals. As you look over each fundraising goal and think of ways...

The blog fell into disuse while I was involved in other writing projects: starting a freelance Web writing business, studying screen writing, and job hunting. In addition, I found time to study grant writing and work on a couple of small grant proposals. Now is the time to get a useful, daily blog running for nonprofit staff and social entrepreneurs who want to make their organizations more effective and efficient. I hope you will want to follow along, or at least review some old posts. The older posts dealt mainly with using various brainstorming and problem solving techniques to make nonprofit programs and projects more effective. More of the same is coming up, but with more attention to marketing, fund raising, and earned income. The new focus reflects what I think are bigger issues, or bigger opportunities, for nonprofits. Building partnerships with businesses, other nonprofit, colleges and universities, and trade/professional associations seems like a good strategy in man...

Good questions are the foundation of any fundraising plan. The same could be said of any other initiative your nonprofit might undertake. So, this is a post about questions that you can apply to fundraising challenges. The questions also work for other challenges, like program design and marketing. To get started we need a challenge to ask questions about. Here is one fundraising challenge that’s confronted many nonprofits: “In what ways can we use our Web site to raise more money?” Many questioning techniques could be applied to that challenge. For now, let’s just focus on something simple – “why”? Why do you want to use your Web site to raise more money? Because we have lots of traffic. Why do you want to use that traffic to raise money? Our most pressing need is increased funding from some source and the Web site seems like the logical place to look for more money. I think you get the idea. Try asking “why” and recording your answers. Do it again and again until you get an answer th...

Raising money is a perennial challenge for nonprofits. The Great Recession has made things tougher for some and nearly impossible for others. Your nonprofit may be working hard to deal with fundraising challenges. Traditional thinking about fundraising might lead to thinking like this - “We need to raise $600,000 more money third year. What do we need to do to make this happen?” A discussion of grant writers, fundraising consultants and mailing lists follows. There is nothing wrong with this approach. At least some of that discussion needs to happen. But, new thinking might also be needed. Lateral thinking may help you get better results. Lateral thinking is (from Wikipedia) “solving problems through an indirect and creative approach.” The point of lateral thinking is to move “sideways” to new ideas and different ways of thinking. The point of this little essay is to point out another way of approaching the subject of fundraising. Lateral thinking itself suggests a broader approach to ...