David Wilcox

I’m delighted that NCVO and RSA have come up with a way to explore the future of membership organisations in a world where people may feel that paying subscriptions isn’t always worthwhile if they can easily get information, advice and connections online.

It’s an issue that Simon Berry and I started to pursue with others through The Membership Project, with initial RSA and NCVO support. We generated a lot of discussion, but found it difficult to follow through without more funding. We were both interested in working on specific practical projects, and our partners were more interested in a research-led programme.

That’s now come to fruition with a consortium approach under which 20 organisations are invited each to contribute £5000. Megan Griffith Gray writes:

Involving people in supporting and creating social change is a central tool for charities in the 21^st century. Given the scale and nature of the social challenges facing charity leaders today, such as global security, climate change and creating equitable and sustainable food systems, we need to be able to make the most of people’s desire to come together to change the world. And in a difficult funding context, the financial and volunteering support that members bring becomes increasingly important.

Megan adds:

By working together we can address collectively these strategic issues on a larger scale than would otherwise be possible, share our expertise and lead debate across civil society about how we can rise to the challenges ahead of us.

… and then explains that consortium members will get a range of benefits, including being invited to join a Think Tank, scenario planning and other events, with dinners for the chief executives.

My initial thought was that it would be better as a more open initiative … not least because in order to understand the changes that social media may bring it is important to explore and learn first hand. Receiving research reports on what is happening “out there” isn’t enough.

However, I know Megan and the Third Sector Foresight team at NCVO are well aware of that from their past work in the field, and I should think they’ll offer opportunities to the consortium members once everyone has got settled in.

If you spend most of your time in the fairly open, collaborative social media field, as I do at the moment, it is easy to forget the institutional realities of the nonprofit world. It is a pretty competitive place, and I can understand organisations wanting to ensure any money they spend appears to give them some clear advantage. If some of us believe a different approach is better, I guess we need to come up with some convincing arguments, or see if another group of organisations would like to try an open approach in parallel.

I’m working on a couple of projects with organisations at present who might be interested in that, and know of some others, so we might be able to promote some early exchanges of thinking. Consortium members would, of course, be welcome to join in to. I suspect there is no one right way of exploring these issues … just try a number and see what works.

One other thought … when I interviewed Clay Shirky recently he suggested that best way to explore social change and social media was to look for stories about what hasn’t worked as a route into what might. I like the idea of an (escaping from) worst practices consortium.