Momentum: Igniting Social Change in a Connected Age

The following exerpt was taken from this Case Foundation website: an interview with Af Allison Fine’s author Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age. My comments are in italics.,

Allison is a successful social entrepreneur and writer dedicated to helping grassroots organizations and activists implement and sustain social change efforts. She is a senior fellow at Demos, a network of action and ideas based in New York City. She is the founder of Innovation Network, Inc. (InnoNet), and the former CEO of the E-Volve Foundation. Currently she serves on the board of directors of Just Vision. She lives on the banks of the Hudson River with her husband, Scott, and three sons, Jack, Zack, and Max. Join her interactive conversation on social change in the digital age at http://afine.us

Allison: When I’m talking to people in an organization to see how they’re doing with social media, I don’t look just at the technology. More important to me is how they talk about the way that they work. For instance, are they having a two-way conversation with people outside the organization, or are they just broadcasting messages? Is their website a place for real, open, side-to-side conversations between people inside the organization and outside, or is it just brochureware? And even blogs, which allow for comments, can be just pretty words that are meant to tell the world how great and invincible the group is, not letting people inside help figure out strategy and even struggle with the hard questions all organizations face.

Patricia: I agree totally. We want to get as much input as possible in whatever we do.

Allison: Technology is not a panacea for the hard work of developing relationships face to face. Social media, interactive digital tools, are very inexpensive, and when used well are great ways to enhance, deepen, and strengthen those relationships. Imagine that a group meets locally to discuss a clean water strategy. They can then go online and create a wiki to share documents and lists together. They can also create a listserv and a blog to keep everyone informed of progress and discuss strategy. All of these tools are cheap and easy to use. Now think back to the pre-social media days when everything had to be done by snail mail. Which way do you think connects people more to one another and the cause? Some folks make an assumption that using social media is a zero-sum game, that it replaces face-to-face relationship building. That’s absolutely not true. But again, leaders have to want real, meaningful participation to involve people in solving problems regardless of whether it is happening mainly online or on land.

Patricia: This is so important! And the community gathering will provide the face to face contact—make it much easier than trying to make appointments with people with busy schedules. For example, since all community gatherings will be open to anyone—although they will be attended mostly by their own neighborhood—there could be one going on every night of the week, and even some during the day. People can more easily meet—using the gathering as a foundation. Also, if someone meets on line, then they have a safe place to meet. This is also going to be a great place for Meet Up groups or even folks who want to meet in person who are on myspace, facebook, zaadz, tribes, or other social networking.

Allison:“It is counterintuitive but true; the more decision making we push away from the center, the more powerful our social networks become. That’s the power-to-the-edges concept. We need to let go of the message and the messenger and encourage activists to participate in real, meaningful ways in shaping and implementing strategies.”

Patricia: If you study Open Space Technology, you will see that people are empowered to self-organize and follow their passion and inclinations. Strategies reveal themselves as small groups come together to plan their part of the puzzle, and communication takes place between groups.

Leveraging Social Networks:
Allison:”Social change happens through social networks. Social media provides the fuel to reach out and activate these networks at a scale and speed never seen before. We need to think about our ’stickiness’ within our ecosystems. Who are we connected to and how? How can we create stronger, more authentic, connections within our network?”

Patricia: Authentic is a key word here—that is why Non-violent Communication is going to be so important. This consciousness of honest, empathic communication will help people connect on a deeper level. We will also encourage in various ways a culture of trust building. People will learn the importance of, and being empowered to-be in integrity so that we have a culture of trust worthiness.

Also, we want to make it safe and easy for people who meet online. If someone meets on line to deepen the relationships and help build trust. This is also going to be a great place for Meet Up groups or even folks who want to meet in person who are on myspace, facebook, zaadz, tribes, or other social networking.

Trust builds stronger, more authentic relationships.

Allison: I use a cooking analogy in the book to say that social change using social media is cooking and not baking. By this I mean that success can’t be prescribed for activists — there are some core ingredients that need to come together, like a big gumbo, to make something delicious. Technology, both the gadgets and the know-how, is one key ingredient. But so are leadership, planning, and meaningful participation by a community of people. We need all of these things, but how they come together, in what order, and in what combination, are unique to every organization.

Patricia: The Community Gathering is designed so that leadership is mainly focused on helping people create a shared vision and carrying it out, as well as defining personal goals, and getting help to carry them out. I feel hopeful that this format can be easily applied to any organization in order to enrich their participation.

Allison: In order to be successful, activists need to move from a state of powerlessness, of doing what others want them to do, to a place of powerfulness or what I call “self-determining” in the book. The balance comes from creating plans for measuring that everyone agrees on that have short-term and long-term mileposts to tell us where we are and how we’re doing along the way.

Patricia: We will develop a strategic plan as small groups define their goals, and then communicate with other small groups. As momentum builds, and people become familiar with the Open Space approach, we will also schedule longer events, including 2 ½ day Neighborhood Visioning using techniques such as Open Space Technology or Future Search

A big part of the leadership comes from the Community Facilitator who has been trained by Livable Future Project trainers. Community Facilitators will learn to build a team of the diverse people in their neighborhood and community who can oversee the community gathering and help make it fulfill the mission. Livable Future Project will have a board of directors and advisory board which reflects and supports the mission. Our main purpose will be to develop participitative democracy—something along the lines of sociocracy. I am familiar with the sociocracy principles, but I have not studied it extensively—one of my next priorities is to establish if this is the “ocracy” will be appropriate

Allison: When I’m talking to people in an organization to see how they’re doing with social media, I don’t look just at the technology. More important to me is how they talk about the way that they work. For instance, are they having a two-way conversation with people outside the organization, or are they just broadcasting messages? Is their website a place for real, open, side-to-side conversations between people inside the organization and outside, or is it just brochureware? And even blogs, which allow for comments, can be just pretty words that are meant to tell the world how great and invincible the group is, not letting people inside help figure out strategy and even struggle with the hard questions all organizations face.

Patricia: We will be all about inclusiveness and getting input from people, helping them more easily decisions which affect them directly—as always, creating a shared vision as well as individual visions.

Allison: “Nonprofit organizations aren’t going to become extinct, but they do need to transform themselves. In order for change to happen in large-scale, meaningful, and sustainable ways, activist organizations must change the way they view themselves and their constituents; they must start to act as part of networks of activists not as soloists.”

Patricia: I am so glad to see this statement. I have long felt a sense of helplessness when I try to work with established organizations. It is so discouraging to try to present something to a board of directors, or try to get an individual to present something to a steering committee—to get permission or support. Boards are usually overwhelmed anyway, and new ideas are just time consuming. I gave up working with boards and groups—but then I felt isolated, and couldn’t figure out how to get involved and get others involved. When I learned about the concept of helping people get in touch with their passionate vision, and then support them in carrying it out—it was like a revelation. It seems that we are taught in school that we can’t follow our dreams-we have to fit in like a cog in a wheel to the socio-economic order that needs us to be robots. J

Even though we consciously believe differently, our upbringing/training often keeps us from believing that we could do what we love and we could thrive by doing that.

I hope and pray that people will develop an alternative economy in their neighborhoods based on alternative currencies, credit systems, barter, and Time Banking so that people can be encouraged to find their right livelihoods which could include paid (or traded for) services such as being a facilitator—making it easy for people to create community gardens, learning centers, coop child care sytems, building sustainable systems, and more. The sky is the limit!

Although the Livable Future Project is not officially a non-profit organization—we are still in the process of deciding if this is the step we will take—we want to do as Allison says is beneficial—“ start to act as part of networks of activists not as soloists.”

Ultimately it is my dream that the job of Community Facilitator will be a respected role in the neighborhood, and so valued that people will contribute a monthly fee in order for a Community Facilitator to devote their full time to this work. CF’s will live simply and sustainably, and perhaps people will share freely food, reduced rent, rides, etc. If only 150 people paid $20 a month, a CF could have $3000 a month.

There is so much more that can be done besides the Community Gathering. The CG alone is a huge job but more could be done to help people, such encouraging people to become Community Weavers or a Family Advocate Volunteers so that even more can happen in between community gatherings.

When every neighborhood in a city has a Community Facilitator, and a Community Gathering, there will much more sharing, collaboration, and interweaving among neighborhoods. Community Facilitators will meet and share notes, and facilitate larger gatherings where delegates from the various neighborhoods can come together to create a shared vision for the city—and include scale methods where thousands and even millions can give input to help create a shared vision for a city, state, country, and even the world. Using a method. According to the Forum Foundation website, “the essence of over 25 years research in social science for us is the realization that big meetings at often remote distances are the Achilles’ Heel of the democratic process which undergirds our society, public and private.” Dick Spady and

Other than those ten dynamics, the essence of over 25 years research in social science for us is the realization that big meetings at often remote distances are the Achiilles heal of the democratic process which undergirds our society, public and private. P People today do not have time to go to big meetings, especially at remote distances. They are too busy earning a living. Besides they remember the last time they went; the sheer logistics are such that only a few people can speak, most can only listen. People today are often accused of being apathetic in their responsibilities as citizens in their communities, their schools, and their churches. Our research indicates that people are not apathetic; it is just that they have concluded that such big meetings at often remote distances are not worth their time and effort, and they drop out. The Forum Foundation has concluded that in order to get at the organizational and societal problems in society better, leaders must enable their members or constituents to meet in small groups, normally 8 to 12 persons, at times and places convenient to themselves during a one or two month window period in interaction with their leaders using audio or video cassettes and “Opinionnaires®.” But what is gained through interpersonal communication by being in small groups is simultaneously lost among the participants as a whole which is something greater than the mere sum of the parts. To restore this “lost sense of touch,” we have developed the Fast Forum® technique. It is a part of “Many-to-Many Communications” and exists at a degree of complexity below the Delphi Technique and below typical random sample polling but above letter writing, telephoning, or big meetings yet makes the same contribution to system solutions as they do but does it more systematically and economically. Furthermore, since all data generated is objective showing percentages of responses to various survey-type questions by demographics of gender, age, geographic, ethnic family etc., the reports generated never get bigger they just get better as more people participate. We can easily compare the opinions of groups of 200 with 2,000, or 20,000–thus there is no information overload for officials, planners, teachers, students, and parents involved. Communication and understanding are enhanced. In addition the process is never dependent on the media which can be involved as much or as little as it wishes.