Guest Post: Steal This Nonprofit

(Photo by Niklas Wikström) 

There shouldn’t be intellectual property in the 501c3 sector. Many economists agree that patents and copyrights kill innovation, and the 501c3 sector needs to be innovative now more than ever. Nonprofits are literally designed to disrupt. Their mission is to change the way things are and make them better.

You shouldn’t be able to patent a soup kitchen process, copyright a clothes drive or call an after-school math program worksheet a trade secret. But in a world where philanthropy is steered more towards ideas and not outcomes, the most valuable currency is a good idea. Even untested, new ideas often trump the expansion of working and well-run programs. This pushes nonprofits into the for-profit, start-up culture.

Imagine you start a soup kitchen with remarkable efficiency – the food is excellent, more people are served, and you have board members from the fast food industry who have shared their operational expertise. Let’s pretend your kitchen team would make Gordon Ramsey proud.

A neighboring soup kitchen has all the same elements: staff, food, space, tools, etc. But they are having problems serving as many people as efficiently as you can. As a result, people are turned away and food is wasted because their operational plan and programming design has many flaws.

In the business world, this means you have a competitive advantage. You might even open another soup kitchen across the street or buy out the soup kitchen and impose your system. But while this may work in the world of profit margins and aggressive expansion, does it work in the nonprofit world?

If you have created the most efficient, effective soup kitchen operations and programming plan, why not give it away if it means more people will get fed? Who is really winning and losing? The answer is that no one wins when a food kitchen is turning people away or wasting food.

Nonprofits should look at the open source software model. Open source software is free. It can be updated, customized, and a countless number of programmers can work to improve the software.

So how do those leveraging open source software get paid? Implementation. Third party specialists who are experts with open source software set-up shop locally and help install, customize, update the software while training users to operate it. They are not affiliated with the software itself – they may have a certification in it, but that’s it. While it’s hard to quantify how much money various open source software models generate, it has pulled $60 billion out of the traditional software market, while saving companies that choose open source software hundreds of millions of dollars.

If nonprofit leaders and program designers made their operational plans and program designs open-source where anybody could access and improve them, then new nonprofits can get to market faster, cheaper, and do it with the best plan available. Plans could be shared on Google Docs or even Github, a site designed for programmers who all work and improve code together, which is reaching out to non-programmers to use to for non-computer programming work.

So when everyone has access to the best plans available, the skill sets of nonprofit leaders to drive outcomes based on the same plan is now where the competition lies. Nonprofit leaders would have instant access to years of experience, trial and error, and research. All they would need is the will to set-up a soup kitchen in their town and download the best plan available for them. This stops them from being forced to reinvent the wheel, spend time and money figuring it out, failing, making mistakes, wasting food and turning away the people who need the service.

There are over one million nonprofits all competing in the for-profit mindset for funding. In a way, nonprofits should all be collaborative. If every soup kitchen shared their operational plans, their recipes, and their program design, they would all learn something. Something to help them reduce costs, increase food production or increase serving speed.

Funders should also realize that they are funding the repetitive reinventing of programming design. Every time they fund a startup they are reinventing the wheel. In the open source model, funders know that the program design they are funding is tested, working and that there is a network of users and implementers out there constantly making the plan better. A nonprofit leader can tell a funder that they want to download and implement the “Open Source Soup Kitchen” plan and run with it (given experience and a team.) The funder just has to evaluate the skills and background of the implementation expert because they can trust the plan.

So, if you have an idea for a nonprofit that can help people and you actively keep it a secret, you’re passively hurting people. If you’re waiting for the right time to do the right thing, ask yourself what’s happening right now to the people you want to help. On the other side of the equation, as a successful nonprofit, what if you could get your plan into the right hands? You should be sharing your ideas with as many people as possible. Publish them as a Google Doc, share it on Github, post your presentation on slideshare, put all your research in your public Dropbox folder. There are many ways to get your idea out there and maybe a Texas billionaire will come across your podcast and fully fund you.

What’s happens when someone steals and implements your nonprofit idea? People get the help they need.

Image via Niklas Wikström

Tivoni Devor has spent his entire career in the nonprofit sector. While working for diverse institutions in many roles, Tivoni has often found himself developing earned revenue models and designing strategic partnerships. Tivoni currently works as the Manager of Partnerships and Outreach at the Urban Affairs Coalition, where he helps social entrepreneurs leverage fiscal sponsorship to jumpstart their nonprofit endeavors. Tivoni Devor lives in Point Breeze with his wife, Jennifer, daughter Ava and dog Dominic. You can follow him on Twitter: @tivonidevor.