Once the service is up and running it will require minimal support, and leave users to exploit the information contained within as best they can. The costs will be off-set by the benefits in terms of grantee and our own effectiveness within a year or so, and accrue year on year.

The potential for growth is clear, but to begin with we are starting simple, and on the premise that knowledge is power best shared within philanthropy.

“P-CED places people at the center of economic development. P-CED takes the bottom line one step further: to people, past numbers. Enterprise profitability and economic success cannot be fairly measured in terms of gains of money capital alone. Profit is redefined in human terms rather than pure quantitative analyses that remove human and social concerns in the name of profit. ”

http://www.p-ced.com/1/

In the manifesto which was the core argument froom his original paper, there’s a clear warning of the impending economic crisis. 12 years before it happened.

http://www.p-ced.com/1/about/background/

I know of Jeff’s work and like it … and know some of his practical experience. The process of change to make the world a better place is not easy, but unless people try, there will be an even worse mess.

As I develop my own work it becomes even clearer how the owners of any form of competitive advantage feel obliged to retain that advantage for themselves. It is a nasty reality of a market economy where the metrics are only about money profit, and value for society is totally discounted. When money profit is the only measure, then Goldman Sachs is a hero … when the impact on society is incorporated into the metrics, then they are the devil. If the accountancy profession had not excused itself from its responsibilities a couple of decades back, then there might be a rather different view of how “profitable” these money instruments really are. Social responsibility … value adding … is a critical component of a sustainable society.
Peter Burgess
Community Analytics (CA)

“The greatest initial social and economic risk of the Information Age is in creating two distinctly different classes of people: the technological haves and have-nots. Those who have access to information and information technology have a reasonable expectation to survive and prosper. Those with limited or no access will be left out. This holds true for individuals as well as nations. The key to the future is access to free flow of information. To the extent that the free flow of information is restricted or diminished, people will be left to endure diminished prospects of prosperity and even survival.

“In order for economic development to take place in any given location, the very first thing required, before anything else can possibly happen, is information. This information includes first and foremost where to look for the necessary resources to do anything. If new businesses are needed, knowing they are needed and finding funding for them are two very different things. The first step is to locate possible capital resources in order to move forward, and this step is no more and no less than information. Once resources are located, the next step is what terms and conditions are involved in obtaining those resources — more information. Once this is known, paperwork must be completed, business plans made, market research and due diligence conducted, and all of this compiled and forwarded to the appropriate parties. Again, nothing more than information. In fact, most of the work involved between identifying a need and solving the problem is information acquisition and management: getting and developing information.

“As Alvin Toffler predicted in Power Shift, where once violence and then wealth were dominant forms of power, information is now becoming the dominant power. Those nations with the greatest freedom of information and means of transmitting it have now become the most powerful and influential, and the strongest economically. Toffler also predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union would come about due primarily to its authoritarian control and limiting of information. Unfortunately for Russian citizens, this old habit has continued for them beyond the collapse of the former Soviet Union and will at the least make an interesting case study on the survivability of a once strong nation which still remains committed to limiting and controlling information. In the opinion of some, the outcome is already set and “Russia is Finished.”

“By going with the normal flow of free-market enterprise and the emerging replacement of monetary capital with intellectual capital as the dominant form of basic enterprise capitalization, it becomes easier to set up new companies primarily on the basis of invested intellectual capital. (See Post-Capitalist Society, by Peter Drucker). In plain English, socially responsible and forward-thinking companies can be set up quickly and cheaply–and these companies have indefinite potential for earnings and localized, targeted economic development. The initial objective is to develop model enterprises and communities, then implement successful strategies from those models into surrounding communities regionwide or nationwide, as needed. “

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusive_capitalism#People-Centered_Economic_Development

Our work in Eastern Europe including business plans and strategy papers was conducted in full public view. We now retain copyright on these plans simply to prevent theft by those who would not commit the profit to a social objective.

To offer an illustration of the difference, whereas Coca Cola is secretive about their recipe, our openness has provided former CEO the opportunity to create his own variant of our model of inclusive capitalism.

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/presscenter/viewpoints_isdell_connected_capitalism.html

The challenges to broader knowledge sharing seem to boil down to some combination of time, turf and trust – at the tactical level for individuals and organizations. That is, good strategic intentions (to share) will nearly almost always lose out to the tactical tyranny of the urgent reinforced by the system of incentives.

Specifically, while most individuals and organizations recognize the greater good that could come from sharing promising practices and tools, the daily activities of most busy nonprofit professionals is driven by more mundane trade-offs of what deadlines does my ‘boss’ or my ‘board’ focus on me meeting. As long as the benefits of sharing accrue almost entirely to “other” organizations, it will be the rare ‘boss’ / ‘board’ who will reward individuals and organizations that take time to share. So the issue of “time” is often the most critical barrier.

This opportunity cost, as Dan and Steve pointed out is the practical limit to the argument to that the cost of sharing information is approaching zero … and, therefore, the price should be zero. To be sure, the marginal cost of sharing (with one more person/organization) is VERY low. But there are many very real costs (to name just a few) to having that information available to be shared:

1) Putting information in a form/place that is re-usable,
2) re-purposing that knowledge to make it easier to learn from,
3) making that information easily findable,
4) curating and providing context for that knowledge,
5) and refining that knowledge based on feedback and re-sharing it.

The issue of making widespread nonprofit knowledge sharing happen is primarily one of aligning individual and organizational incentives so the “right” tactical trade-offs are made to maximize the benefits to society. As Gabi rightly points out, that might mean (partially) subsidized knowledge intermediaries. It also might mean giving the “content producer” (sharing) organization a piece of the value they are creating for society.

Through our online nonprofit knowledge sharing marketplace, we attempt to fairly and efficiently allocate value between content producer and content consumer by allowing content producers to set a reasonable price for their knowledge. For most, this earned income is aimed at cost-recovery and sustainability of their sharing objectives. When the content consumers feels the value they will gain (saving time, saving money, avoiding implementation risk, etc) is greater than the price, they are willing to buy that knowledge. And the reward reinforces the initial sharing investment.

Scott Bechtler-Levin
IdeaEncore Network
http://budurl.com/TP0227a

I agree that unlike in the for-profit sector, information sharing in the nonprofit sector does not have a negative impact on the information-creator’s ability to achieve their goals. However, there is still an opportunity cost for organizations to package their knowledge and transmit it in a form that will reach and be actionable for other actors. Foundations may have the resources to engage in information sharing if they think it will advance their mission, but for most nonprofits, investing the time and financial resources to share their data or knowledge requires making cutbacks in other areas.

If a nonprofit staff member is directed to evaluate a program and capture information on how it can be effectively replicated, the time spent on that task is time not spent on providing direct client services or fund-raising or training new staff, etc. If that staff member then has to find a way to distribute that information so that others in a position to act on it will find it, that’s more time not spent on other mission critical work. Yes, the time spent on capturing and disseminating information may ultimately do more to advance the organization’s mission than whatever other activity was superseded, but unless the organization is confident it can make that case to its supporters, that’s a hard call to make.

That’s very much like the way that many corporations act in the best interest of their executive suite instead of in the best interest of shareholders. I think your point helps explain one of the reasons information is not shared freely, but it is a type of corruption.

That said, it doesn’t mean that the nonprofit with the “intellectual property” is doing the best they can with it, and competition should be a good thing in the long run. Capitalist fundamentals in order to advance social welfare, apparently…

Thanks.

–David

My interest in information is simple. I want to see very much better metrics about the state of society and the performance of society. The corporate world has figured out how to report profits … in many cases rather creatively, or I would prefer to say fraudulently … and there are metrics for stock market price increases and for GDP growth. But sorting out what is valuable from what is merely profitable is not a part of the system of money metrics. Community Analytics (CA) addresses this by looking at socio-economic progress and performance from the community perspective and not from simply the organization view. CA also embraces value as well as profit … including the difficult task of quantifying value.

A charity that does things of high value should be favored over a charity that does things of lower value … metrics of performance matter in good works, especially when the available resources are scarce.

Issues like secrecy may increase corporate profit as they do in the case of Coca Cola … and in the CA methodology that may be weighed against the lost value for society because the proprietors are constraining the normal market competition. Many corporate entities have figured out how to maximize profits and society be damned … but when the CA social impact metric is in play, the profit performance is counter-balanced somewhat.

CA builds on the idea that what gets measured gets done. Until we have measures in play for social impact, the corporate world will simply maximize profits … and almost certainly put society at ever increasing risk of “who knows what!”

Peter Burgess
Community Analytics (CA)