As part of our new Citizen-Centered Solutions blog series, where we are exploring programs that ignite and embrace public participation, I caught up with Marnie Webb, TechSoup Global’s co-CEO, to ask about how public participation works at NetSquared, and what the project has gained from such an open participatory model.
For nearly four years now, NetSquared has been hosting competitions that bring technologists together to work on nonprofit problems. The process is an open one. Each year, NetSquared issues a challenge in a particular area of nonprofit technology. Projects submit publicly, and there's lots of opportunity for public comment.
Eric: Why not just have experts help develop ideas and directly fund them?
Marnie: There are many people — universities, foundations, private individuals — who find experts, give them resources to develop amazing and elegant solutions and fund them. That’s a model that has been around for a long time and, like any model, it has its strengths and weaknesses.
We wanted to do something different with NetSquared. We wanted to build something that really helped to generate a community response of interest and support. With the NetSquared Challenges, the community identifies workable solutions to problems they think need to be solved. And they have a clear mechanism for supporting and engaging with those projects.
Honestly, we think there are enough problems — and enough solutions — that there are room for both methods.
Eric: What have you done to make your competition stand out above the rest?
Marnie: Well, I believe that we have invested in building a community of participants who are beholden to one another and not to use. This manifests in all kinds of ways. In Joe Solomon, a project owner in N2Y3, sharing advice from the previous year’s participants. It manifests in comments, like this one, from Ben Rigby in which Ben says:
Moreover, given NetSquared’s awesome organizing efforts and attitude, even the 'losers' have a lot to gain. I for one lost one year, but made a ton of connections and got great advice/input on what was then just a rough idea. The next year the idea got a little less rough and I entered again – this time with a partner who I met as a result of some the previous years’ Net2 related activity… and that year we came in 2nd. And the prize money allowed us to bootstrap the much refined idea into something viable.
We’ve tried to use the expertise and engagement of the community to make the pie bigger, so to speak, in NetSquared. We aren’t there yet. Not by any stretch of the imagination. But we’re getting closer. With a lot of help, we’re getting closer.
Eric: How do you balance giving up control to the public with the need to fund a quality program that will lead to real impact?
Marnie: I don’t think it’s a trade off. Not at all. We believe – at TechSoup Global, in general, we believe — that you have to give up control to end up with a quality program that will have real impact. The people outside our walls, the people doing work on the ground. They are the ones who know what is needed to make change. It is up to us to listen, to try and build systems that provide appropriate support, and to make sure that we do so in a way consistent with our own values and mission.
In our annual report, we write about the contribution economy. We believe that we — foundations, tech activists, corporations, and NGOs — are contributors to social change. We all have something important to offer. Our role, at TechSoup Global and with initiatives like NetSquared, is to help establish a place where those contributors can act with confidence that their contribution will have the desired impact.
To that, we have to (we absolutely have to) be willing to give up an element of control. Actually, we have to give up a lot of control. That’s the only way that projects can work at a community level.
Eric: How do you measure and evaluate the impact of the process and the projects funded?
Marnie: If anyone knows the answer to this, please tell us. I mean it.
We are only in the third year of NetSquared Challenges. This is just enough for us to start thinking seriously about impact. Before this, we were busy getting the challenge model down (it isn’t done yet, not by any stretch of the imagination but it’s better, getting better). And now we have three cohorts of projects that have gotten funding and other resources from NetSquared. We want to understand the impact, not just of the funded projects, but of the projects that don’t receive funding. And we are trying to understand the best ways to do that.
About NetSquared
NetSquared sponsors an annual global Challenge, calling for submissions from around the world of innovative applications for technology that support social change. Previous Challenges have focused on mashups (combining existing tools to produce something new), mobile applications, and more. Project submissions are open for public comments, with top projects invited to NetSquared’s spring conference. Winners are selected based on popular vote among conference attendees.
About Marnie Webb
Marnie Webb is the co-CEO of TechSoup Global. To help address the nonprofit sector’s systemic technology challenges, Marnie works towards optimizing TechSoup Global’s popular Web resource, TechSoup, and its Knowledge Services program, which includes projects such as Healthy and Secure Computing and MaintainIT. She is one of the driving forces behind the NetSquared Initiative.
A sought-after speaker and writer on nonprofit technology, she understands both challenges and technological possibilities facing the sector. In 2008, The Nonprofit Times included Marnie on its list of the 50 most influential leaders in the U.S. nonprofit sector.
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