11.16.07
One Word: Don’t Think. Just Write.
One Word. Don’t Think. Just Write.
The philanthropic landscape is littered with remnants of failed attempts to quantify the impact of nonprofits’ activities. High-impact models, quantitative measures, improved business management– these are just some of the tools bandied about. Much has been written about the failure of these systems to adequately capture and track the cumulative value of resources for good; and worse, the harm they can wreak on social change efforts.
How about envisioning a new way of doing this: using words rather than numerics to understand core competencies and stakeholders’ perspectives about value and impact?
If you could express in one word the impact of your most treasured nonprofit or mission-based social enterprise, what would that one word be? Write that one word down in the comments section below. And then start composing your impressions of that word– the meanings it connotes for you. You have sixty seconds to write about it. Don’t think. Just write.
Edward Vielmetti said,
December 15, 2007 at 4:51 am
organization: assistive media, ann arbor mi http://www.assistivemedia.org
one word: search google for “assistive”. we are on page one of that.
looking at the page one of Google for that word for me, I see lots of information about “assistive technology”, but we’re only one on the page who looks at the set of things that you need to think about when you’re designing and delivering media to people with language, literacy, physical, or cognitive impairments, and I think that’s something really special about the organization.
the other nice thing about the word is that it gets away from negatives like “hanidcapped” or “impaired”. everyone welcomes some assistance when they are dealing with a challenge, and the same things that make it easier for people who are stuck needing that assistance for whatever reason can be also empowering for people who don’t have any nominal deficits per se but who can go beyond what they are currently doing by adapting tech from the assistive tech community or adapting media from the assistive media community.