or a short time, I worked on the cutting edge of technology, investing in tech companies and putting technology to use in ways that were ahead of my peers. But honestly, today I find myself more focused on maintaining and deepening human interaction rather than technology interaction.
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While I can’t predict the future of technology, I do know that we must get better at balancing technology and human interaction. In the nonprofit sector where I now work, I see some trends with implications for how this balancing might play out. Donors and nonprofit watchdogs, for example, increasingly demand that nonprofits interact with their clients or beneficiaries—let’s call them constituents—to deliver services more effectively and with greater impact. And technology has a big role to play. Constituent engagement is a challenge for most social sector organizations, perhaps in the same way that listening is a challenge for most people. For nonprofits, it is often unclear what the best strategies are for eliciting useful input, much less how to take action based on it. Moreover, few can imagine involving constituents in deeper ways, like developing and redesigning programs. However, there is increasingly good evidence from education, healthcare, and neighborhood revitalization that
the future of technology constituent perspectives (“local knowledge”) blended with research (“technical knowledge”) can lead to better programs and greater impact. Let me cite two examples. Friendship Public Charter School
Friendship Public Charter School, a $72 million charter management organization that runs six charter and four turnaround schools (previously non-charter public schools converted to independent public charters designed to achieve a dramatic and comprehensive intervention in a low-performing school) in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, demonstrates how integrating technical knowledge with local knowledge can help overcome big challenges.1 Friendship initially drew upon research-based strategies to increase student achievement: longer school days, double doses of math and reading, team teaching. By 2006, student achievement gains had flatlined, prompting COO Patricia Brantley to search for new ways to get better results. Friendship ultimately decided to enlist its primary constituents – students and parents – as well as teachers, to serve as co-developers of a new approach to performance management that would enable continuous improvement. Friendship gathered input from students and parents to cre1 The paragraphs that follow are derived from two sources: an essay by
Patricia Brantley in Leap of Reason: Managing to Outcomes in an Era of Uncertainty, by Mario Morino, 2011; and a Bridgespan interview of Patricia Brantley, February 8, 2013.
nten: CHAnGe · MARCH 2014 · pAGe