Making Nonprofit Orgs Simpler (Part 7 of 11 NetNon series)

“A common refrain within nonprofit organizations and by nonprofit staffers is, ‘how can I make my life simpler when I have so much to do?” The answer is, well, simple: You have too much to do because you do too much.

Organizations and people do too much when they work within systems that are too complicated.’

This is a great excerpt from chapter 7 of The Networked Nonprofit. It continues with:

‘Simplicity clarifies organizations and forces them to focus their energy on what they do best, while leveraging the resources of their ecosystem for the rest. Simplicity powers more informal connections between people, blurs boundaries, and enables insiders to get out and outsiders to get in. Finally, simplicity helps to scale efforts because together, people can strengthen and improve communities better than a single organization ever could.’

Usually I have some witty story or unique angle about the chapters in this book. This time I don’t want to muddy the waters. Just read the book.

Just picture what your organization could do if your organization worked in simple way that was almost indistinguishable from the community you are helping.

I am going to share my thoughts about the book "The Networked Nonprofit" by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine over 11 posts, this was part 7 (one for each chapter).  But rather than just tell you what the chapter is about, I am going to share what I learned from it, any reactions and extra thoughts that I would add.  However the big caution I have with this, is that I am just not as smart and experienced as Beth and Allison, so you should probably just buy the book.