December 8, 2020
What the tech sector could learn from the charity sector
There’s a prevailing narrative that the charity sector could achieve more if it was prepared to learn lessons from the tech sector.
Local Welcome is a charity that’s built on principles from the tech sector like agile, lean working and human-centred design. But even for us this prevailing narrative can feel a little exhausting.
It would be churlish (and ridiculous) to suggest that charities have nothing to learn from tech. There’s a whole world of examples of how tech is helping charities to make positive change.
But maybe the relationship could benefit from some healthy reciprocity?
Here are some thoughts on what we’ve been learning about the sometimes uncomfortable relationship between charity and tech. And how, maybe, tech could achieve more if it was prepared to learn lessons from charities.
The tech sector is obsessed with growth
Earlier this year, we met a venture capitalist who funds organisations in return for an equity stake. We wanted to find out whether they had any ideas about how to pitch Local Welcome to tech philanthropists.
It was a great conversation. Tech people are smart humans.
We talked about how proud we were to be bringing new types of people into community leadership, and that a third of our leaders had never led before. The venture capitalist was impressed that we weren’t going down the easy route of finding the same old faces to run our meals, the people that pop up again and again. They loved that we were making leadership possible for people who are busy, less confident and from more diverse backgrounds. Even though it takes us more time and effort to do this.
In the end, inevitably, we asked the venture capitalist to be honest with us about pitching to tech philanthropists. The answer was blunt.
Tech philanthropists will be puzzled about why you aren’t taking the easy route to growth. They’ll encourage you to give up on making leadership possible for people from diverse backgrounds and they’ll ask you to harness the same old faces that pop up again and again. Because they’ll feel that your current approach is leaving unused growth on the table.
It was honest, insightful advice. It was exactly what we asked for. But it left us feeling deflated because we’re not willing to go for growth at any cost.
Growth at any cost is a problem
In our case, growth at any cost would mean ramping up the recruitment of the same-old same-old types of community leader at the expense of doing the extra work it requires to bring in different people. It’s not hard to see why systemic problems like racism are so hard to tackle when cash is poured into what’s easy rather than what’s right.
The growth at any cost approach has bigger social consequences too. Look at what we’ve spawned in the last twenty years. Social media behemoths who are part of a new system that is complicit in election tampering, fake news and industrial scale bullying and harassment.
If the tech world only cares about growth, not how growth is achieved, all it’s doing is perpetuating a broken system. Or creating something even worse.
Investing in values is different to betting on growth
The prevailing myth is that because tech has all the money, tech must have all the answers. We’re not so sure this is true.
Imagine, for a second, if tech was prepared to learn from the charity sector:
Tech could learn about the values and vision that drive us and why you don’t drop them when someone waves money in your direction.
Tech could learn about collectivism rather than individualism and how charities operate within an ecosystem not a marketplace.
Tech could learn about generous leadership and how to share resources rather than amassing power to dominate a space.
Imagine, above all, a world where venture capitalists and tech philanthropists stopped betting on growth and started investing in values. Imagine the types of people and organisations they’d fund. Imagine the changes this would make to our broken systems.
Yes, there would be failures. But venture capitalists are great at accepting failures. It’s as central to their creed as growth.
We’re (still) hopeful that tech can help build a better world
We won’t stop learning lessons from the tech sector. We’re grateful for the parts of agile, lean and user-centred design we’re using to build Local Welcome. We’ll always be thankful for the inspiration.
But we think that the tech sector needs to start learning lessons from civil society too. We’re not sure how much more election tampering, fake news and industrial scale bullying and harassment the world can take.
And, although it seems like a small thing, at Local Welcome we want a world where community leaders come from all parts of the community. It matters to us. A lot.