For my first interview, I was joined by Selene Biffi, co-founder of Youth Action for Change, a global online platform inspiring and empowering young people to become affective changemakers in their own communities. In a previous interview to i-genius.org, Selene stated:
Young people account for half of the world’s population, yet they are the most untapped resources to date. However, for the first time in history, the have the chance to do something themselves, without having to wait for their governments or other institutions.
And this is what really struck me the most, from our conversation as well. I invite you all to listen to it here below!
Last night I got together with my friend Lachlan, to talk in quite general terms about organizational structure and organizational design. What came out of it was our first podcast.
The organization we occasionally refer to is SPEED (Student Platform for Engineering Education Development), the nonprofit startup we’re both working on and in which Lachlan is in charge for shaping its organizational structure, hence his presence in the podcast.
I hope you enjoy listening. We’re also open to suggestions for future topics and remarks on our discussion, just leave us a comment!
A recent comment to my previous post by abenamer made me realize that the words “international nonprofit organization” or “international NGO” might mean different things to different people. He wrote:
I tend to define international NGOs in a developed world/undeveloped world relationship. I tend to think of it as the facilitation of resources from the West elsewhere. I guess that’s my hangup.
His words reminded me that associating the concept of international NGO/nonprofit with the concept of global voluntary/charity/humanitarian/development organization is pretty commonplace for everybody I talked to about the subject.
Since this blog focuses on international nonprofits, I think it’s worth clarifying the issue, once and for all.
Long answer, 40000 is just the tip of the iceberg. Wikipedia says that ”The number of internationally operating NGOs is estimated at 40,000″: the source is ‘Global Civil Society 2001′ (Anheimer et al., 2001), containing info about international organizations and the location of their secretariats (together with other useful stats like links between international organizations, nationality and membership of international organization leaders, breakdown of international organizations by purpose, etc.). However, Wikipedia continues, ”National numbers are even higher: Russia has 400,000 NGOs” and “India is estimated to have between 1 million and 2 million NGOs”. Counting governmental nonprofit organizations too, the number might be way bigger. Another source, for example, reports that “According to the NCCS Table Wizard, there are currently nearly 1.4 million nonprofit [i.e. governmental and non governmental alike] organizations in the United States.”.
Regarding international nonprofits, however, unfortunately no conclusive data can be found on the Net, perhaps because (strangly enough) it’s hard to define what “international” really means (international activities? international membership?) and it’s also hard to find your way through the variety of nonprofit types registered/recognized in the different countries of the world.. Idealist.org supports that point by stating that “there just aren’t any lists that include all nonprofits. There are, though, many websites that offer access to specific types of nonprofits or nonprofits that are active in certain parts of the world”.
Coming back to my first question… My guess is half a million. What do you say?
Very often, when a nonprofit is being established, many of the people who get involved and try to get things running will either already have a job/career of their own, or perhaps some other major activity they’re focusing on in their life (e.g. involvement in another nonprofit, perhaps). The resulting effects from this situation vary from lack of new people willing to contribute to your cause, to demotivation of people who already contributed and think they’ve done their share in the start up phase, thus going back to their original occupation: your start up project loses capacity to attract and retain human resources, or simply starts with a very low one. This is understandable: starting a new organization is a risky business and nobody wants to give up the golden goose, abandon or limit involvement in activities they feel more than comfortable with, and turn instead to a project that, especially in our case, doesn’t provide any financial security (at least on the short run), or a guarantee of success.
Your battle, as founding member of a nonprofit organization, is to have as many good people as possible cross that thin line that separates them from seeing the new project as “just another hobby” to seeing it instead as a new serious commitment in their lives. The goal should be bringing the number of skilled and passionate people willing to contribute to your cause to a high enough critical mass, that will allow the organization to thrust its way through the initial development and open the doors for the consolidation of your nonprofit in your organization’s environment. You want to make those barriers for involvement low and you want to make sure that, once new people get involved, their involve-o-meter goes one way only: up.
Organizations are not created in a vacuum. They are born and grow within a network of meaningful connections to people and other organizations that allow them to develop and flourish. Sometimes, controlling part of that network and turning it to the organization’s advantage is a more than worthwhile endeavour: this is when advisory groups are established.
There are two main types of blogs related to nonprofit organizations: one category includes blogs of nonprofit organzizations, that come to life, as most commentators suggest, mostly as a communicationandmarketingeffort, driven by a desire to better relate to one organization’s target audiences, be it customers/users, donors, media or others; the other category includes blogs about nonprofit organizations, where managers, leaders and administrators share their insights on their industry and on the “arts and crafts” of starting, developing and running such an activity.
This blog takes place in the latter category, with a few distinctions that we hope will allow us to play a specific role in the nonprofit blogosphere:
our stories and related insights are generated by our experience ”from the field” of establishing a nonprofit organization; good stuff, bad stuff and all in between will have its right to be presented here at our blog
due to the nature of the organization we’re currently establishing (i.e. a global student nonprofit organization), this blog will focus on issues faced by international nonprofits around the world; many blogs in English have been focusing on the American reality of 501’s, IRS’s and state laws: we’ll try to avoid any national or regional bias and think truly globally (but still in English, for the time being)
this blog will start by focusing on how to start up an international nonprofit organization; there are no long-term goals, we’ll just see how it goes from there
Nonprofitist.org provides insights on how to start up, develop and run a nonprofit organization, with a particular focus on international nonprofits and youth organizations.
For my first interview, I was joined by Selene Biffi, co-founder of Youth Action for Change, a global online platform inspiring and empowering young people to become affective changemakers in their own communities. In a previous interview to i-genius.org, Selene stated:
