COMMUNITY SERVICE

What is "The Wheel Is Invented?"

The N2R "The Wheel Is Invented" is an interactive site where nonprofit managers can go to share good ideas or to hunt for ideas that might help improve service to their clients.

What is the purpose of The Wheel Is Invented?

To provide a convenient, virtual place for nonprofit managers to come to learn from the success of others. Building upon the success of others doesn't necessarily happen "automatically" the way it does in the for-profit world. In the business world, good ideas are copied because customers can be lost if a business doesn't improve. The pressure to improve service isn't the same in the human services sector. These managers are't, generally speaking, motivated to attract more

Why is it difficult for nonprofit managers to find the time to improve methodology?

Burnout. In the for profit sector, activities are focused around the single job of making money by providing a service or product. It's very efficient to spend energies on a single activity. In contrast, human service managers must divide themselves into two jobs. They serve their clients and, then, they must raise money to provide that service. Their young, dying, infirm, or disabled clients will generally not have the funds to pay for the services. After a day of serving at either the frontlines of human pain or developing the funds to continue doing so, the manager may feel that the challenge of researching new and better ways of doing things is yet a third job. Nonprofit managers are stretched even more as community needs are escalating and available funding is harder and harder to obtain.

Are there good ideas nonprofit managers should be sharing with one another?

Yes. Lessons learned in "model programs."
To understand this answer, it is helpful to know a little about the reality of nonprofit funding through grant making institutions such as government, foundations and corporations. These funders may seem to be in the enviable position of having the power to say "yes" to human need. However, the day -to-day experience of a funder is that of saying "no" most of the time. One staff member in a foundation described his job as "trying to reroute Niagara Falls with a garden hose." Far more nonprofits petition for funding than can be funded. The simple truth is that human need is far greater than funder resources. Aware of their resource limitations, funders try to leverage their impact by funding "model programs." These are new program ideas which can be replicated for others to copy. These programs "invent the wheel." The funder then implements the desired leverage by requiring that model programs entail a plan for spreading the word to others. Given that the funded organization has limited resources to spread the word, the reality is that good ideas go uncirculated. Seattle may have found a statistically significant approach to reintroducing homeless into the workforce but our region doesn't hear about it. Communities everywhere spend time reinventing the wheel over and over.

How can the WWW help share model program ideas?

The WWW provides a cost-effective opportunity to build upon existing knowledge by creating a virtual library of model program results. N2R's interactive site is a start at building upon existing knowledge via telecommunications technologies.

When will the WWW really take off as A virtual library of model program results?