dallas social venture partners

My dear friend Stacy Caldwell, Executive Director of Dallas Social Venture Partners (whose 10th annniversary is being celebrated with a BigBang!), has launched a rather ambitious exercise to create a children’s fantasy documenting the way that the nonprofit sector is changing.

I have been in the sun all day, so here is the best I can come up with — an “imitation piece” based very largely (in fact, 90% of the words come directly) from Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland”:

——

Jeremy was beginning to get very tired of sitting in a cubicle in a bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice he had peeped over the cubicle wall onto the computer screen his coworker was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, ‘and what is the use of a screen,’ thought Jeremy `without pictures or conversation?’

So he was considering, in his own mind (as well as he could, for the long day made him feel very sleepy and stupid), whether the pleasure of photo-copying a picture of his backside would be worth the trouble of getting up and going to the copy room, when suddenly a White Rabbit with rose-colored glasses ran close by him.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; after all, the company held large investments in various chemical and food companies, and Jeremy was always wading through large crowds of malnourished protesters on his way into the office. Nor did Jeremy think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” (when he though it over afterwards, it occurred to him that he ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it seemed all quite natural); but, when the Rabbit actually took a grant proposal out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Jeremy started to his feet, for it flashed across his mind that he had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a grant proposal to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, he ran down the aisle after in, and was just in time to see it pop down a large mail chute behind the water cooler.

In another moment down went Jeremy after it, never once considering how in the world he was to get out again.

Thus began my foray into the Land of “Non,” where nonprofits thrived despite the most ludicrous of circumstances.

To be continued.

Thanks to Stacy Caldwell at Dallas Social Venture Partners for connecting me to the Megacommunity Movement:

http://megacommunities.com/

From the site:

The megacommunity recognizes the necessity (and power) of business, government, and civil society working together on global issues.

A megacommunity is a new approach to solving problems which span business, government and the communities in which we live.

A megacommunity is:

the space in which complex problems exist, and are addressed
an collaborative environment where leaders interact according to their common interests, while maintaining their unique priorities
a lens through which we can examine a complex problem in a new way
determined by the existence of tri-sector engagement and an overlap in common interest

A megacommunity is not:

another form of public-private partnerships
another name for corporate social responsibility or philanthropy
another variation on conflict resolution
another international/intergovernmental forum
a really big community of interest
a collection of like-minded actors

The objective for each organization operating in a megacommunity is achieved by optimizing its interests instead of maximizing, all participants gain. Best of all, operating in a megacommunity is not a zero-sum game

The Critical Elements of a Megacommunity
There are five critical elements. The first two, tri-sector engagement and an overlap of vital interests, can be thought of as preconditions.

Tri-Sector Engagement must be present in any megacommunity; the noticeable difference between megacommunities and other public-private partnerships is the civil society component, and the ‘open nature’ of the engagement – specifically, not focusing on just the elements the parties can agree on to tackle together, but also those areas that they may not have common ground to work in tandem
Overlapping in Vital Interests describes the aspects of any particular issue of which all members have an individual interest – hence necessitating their involvement in the megacommunity

The other three elements, convergence, structure, and adaptability, are critical features of the megacommunity design. An initiative that takes them into account has a far greater chance of success than an initiative that ignores them.

Convergence is the commitment to mutual action that all members must work toward; no member can exist in a megacommunity with the intent to disrupt or undermine the effort
Structure describes the set of protocols and organizing principles that must exist to allow for converged commitment on the overlapping vital interests – this structure resembles a scale-free network
Adaptability is necessary for the megacommunity to function effectively and make progress on the issue itself, and on the individual interests of the participants – adaptability allows the network to be scalable and flexible

The Land of “Non” — an imitation piece

Megacommunity Thinking

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