45 Billion Well Spent? How to be more effective in social good by involving the people you seek to help

There is an urgency to do social good.  And there’s an openness to doing it using different tools - through for- profits, nonprofits, government action.  Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan became poster children of this new movement of “do-gooders” by establishing the Chan Zuckerberg LLC.   The LLC is to manage the multiple ways they plan on doing social good.  

I hope to read a headline 100 years from now that their 45 billion was well-spent.  

In my experience,  one key determinant of social impact - regardless of whether you are donating to a nonprofit or investing in a social-good for-profit -  is whether the do-gooder listens to the community that they seek to help.   So often hearing their stories and experiences and making investment decisions through their lens.  

Community Insights

One of the lessons I learned from the Hurricane Katrina relief and rebuilding efforts in New Orleans is that those who are effective - whether it was a business, or a nonprofit - were those who listened to the people they were trying to help.

Numerous local nonprofits and churches walked the streets and helped people get what they needed - getting shelter for their entire family or helping a man living in his car with an injured foot get to a doctor, for instance.   In the business sector, Walmart gave their local managers permission to do what was needed   For instance, in Waveland, Mississippi, a local hospital needed critical medications and the Walmart assistant manager broke into the store’s locked pharmacy to get the supplies.  

That bottom-up, community-led efforts contrasts with the top-down efforts of FEMA, which was widely criticized for their ineffective deployment.

Many social problems need to be tackled using the same bottom-up approach to making decisions that affect people we seek to help.  

Make It Personal

From a donor/investor’s perspective, the “community insights” approach is one way to concretely think about how to allocate your money.  

Start by proactively identifying the community you want to help and their needs.

1. Determine who you want to help. Who do you want to help and are they in your city, in your state, in your country or internationally?   Be as specific as possible.   You are interested in homeless people in your city, abandoned dogs in your city, Syrian refugees, children with diabetes nationally, seniors who need food in LA, black youths who face police violence in Chicago, or the natives in Alaska who see their homes disappearing because of rising sea waters.  

2. Walk A Mile In Their Shoes.  How do you best help people in the community you’ve identified?  Often communities are unique with local conditions of culture, geography, language, infrastructure, or politics.  To figure out what is the best way to help your target community, talk to the people you want to help.   Listen to their stories and experiences.  

Take a walk in those neighborhoods.   Make conversation with a local coffee shop owner, or a parent at the playground.   Volunteer with a nonprofit that works with those people you seek to help.  Attend one of many events that nonprofits have in the community - student graduation, or holiday potluck.  

When you meet people in the community you want to help, this issue won’t be so abstract to you.   And you will better understand what are the needs of this community,  what are the products or services that people want.   Donating or investing will be less of an abstract question.  It’ll become personal.   It'll become real.

3.  Work with organizations that engage your community.  Many ambitious projects have faltered because they failed to gain the input of local people they were trying to help.  So ask the people you want to help - who currently are in this community, and listens to you and helps you?   For environmental issues, talk to the local people most affected.  

Perhaps the organization that people trust, and find useful is a nonprofit.  The nonprofit might provide a school lunch program that the students really like, and it can be expanded to food for their families.  Perhaps it’s a tele-health company providing birth control for low-income women.   Talk to the people you want to help - ask them who are in their community, who do they talk to, who do they prefer to work with.  

Work with organizations that have community support, and which continue to engage their communities.  

Listen to People You Seek To Help

In short, listen to the people you seek to help.  They have a wealth of experience and insights about their own lives, their families and their communities.   

One easy motto to remember “Do nothing to us, without us”.   

Regardless of your choice of working through public, private or nonprofit sectors - a bottom-up approach of listening to the people on the ground, involving those communities in the decisions that affect them - will increase the likelihood of successfully making a positive impact with your social investments or donations. 

I'm excited that the Zuckerberg Chan LLC may invest or donate through nonprofits, for-profits or government.   If done in a responsive,  community-insights approach, their effort could further effective solutions to the urgent social problems we face.  

- Perla Ni is the Founder of GreatNonprofits.org and CitizenInsights.org both of which raises the voices and insights of people in the communities, and helps donors and investors find solutions from the perspective of people in the communities.