NGO 2.0: wikinomics and the future of the non-profit sector

Last week I gave a speech to a group of leaders from some of the world’s largest non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) including World Vision, Oxfam, CARE, The Nature Conservancy, Red Cross, and others. The group was assembled to assess the possibility of putting together an industry standard for project design, monitoring and evaluation (DM&E) that could increase the transparency and effectiveness of the sector. My role was to provoke debate about what the future of the non-profit sector might look like in five to ten years time given the forces of wikinomics.

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One of the issues we discussed at length is the growing call for NGOs to embrace greater openness and transparency with regard to how they spend donor’s money and how they wield influence in developing countries. Organizations such as Intelligent Giving are giving donors more information, while others like Global Giving and Kiva are giving people the option to bypass established NGOs and provide micro-loans directly to local entrepreneurs and small businesses. The trend toward increasing transparency is putting pressure on NGOs to find new ways to maximize the impact of their efforts to address issues like poverty alleviation and climate change.

Growing transparency, in turn, means NGOs need to work smarter and harness opportunities to collaborate with all of the key stakeholders in the ecosystem, including their donors, their peers in other sectors, and the ultimate recipients of their aid. One can easily envision dozens of opportunities: from InnoCentive-like marketplaces that connect solution seekers with problems solvers (see the UN’s Solution Exchange, for example) to Digg.com-like forums where participants in the development community suggest and rank projects that require funding. Virtual worlds like Second Life could provide donors and recipients with a venue to build virtual mock-up of their projects, while e-Bay-like development auctions could provide governments, communities and individuals in the developing world with the ability to bid on the “development products” of aid agencies and NGOs. All of this NGO 2.0 activity would need to transpire in an environment where organizations worked harder to share knowledge and coordinate their activities through clearinghouses and other mechanisms that my colleague Dan Herman can elucidate.

Perhaps the biggest challenge for the sector is accepting the newfound political responsibilities that come with their growing size and influence on the international scene. New geopolitical realties have created an opportunity — and some might say responsibility — for NGOs to play a larger role in governance at local, national and international levels. Decades of participation in local and international development efforts have shown that NGOs can be effective change agents and make important contributions to decision-making with a blend of effective leadership and adequate access to information and resources. Governments have even come to rely on NGOs in many cases to help create and implement policies that better reflect the needs and aspirations of citizens. But, as with governments, NGOs will face significant challenges fulfilling their new roles competently and responsibly.

Got any NGO 2.0 examples? Let me know.