A side comment about semantics

Should we call the active participants of a nonprofit activity as “beneficiaries”?  I understand the point that beneficiaries are recipients of the social benefit (therefore, beneficiaries), however I have seen organizations trying to motivate individuals to get involved as active participants, on a leading role of their nonprofit activity.   The idea of co-creation of value, as we learned in other classes, builds upon the idea that beneficiaries are actually partners of the venture.  I’m having a hard time using the term “beneficiaries” because it creates a sense of passivity.

But as I said, this is a side comment, since it is just like coming to a Finance class saying that shareholder value is more than just the equity money figure. Yeah, right.

BP insights before defining FE

From now on, it seems that all I am doing will be connected to the framework.  If I choose one FE within the IOC (Int’l Olympic Committee), the focus will be on donors.  If I choose another FE, the focus will be on volunteers; and a third option would be related to beneficiaries.  And they all seem valid. 

 

My understanding at this point is that the Big Picture will not embrace the entire “organization” but only one perspective of the organization, or better saying, one specific objective.  And the IOC seems to have, seriously, hundreds of objectives.   I once thought that a company would have only one BP, like the master examples McDonalds (convenience, bla bla bla), BMW (performance, bla bla bla) and Walmart (logistics, bla bla bla).

 

Honestly, I think now that the BP is an excellent framework for “reading” the company in its various strategies.  For example, I am looking at the IOC in its myriad of programs, commissions and events, and for each one, I can use the BP as a “consistency check”. The more I use the framework, the more effective I will be at the organization, since I will be able to prioritize resources and to manage information.

 

Nice. Too bad that I only have 5 hours to complete the paper. Go keyboard, go.

For the love of ideas!

So many ideas for the project scope, that I feel weird to select one.  So many organizations, so interesting topics that I think I came to the MBA for a nonprofit reason.  Who doesn’t feel compelled to do something after watching the suffering in Darfur, or witnessing the unwanted poverty in Burma, or even the battle in court after the Exxon Valdez disaster?

Here is an example of what people can do about a social issue. For this one, I happen to know more about.

I feel like taking one that has an interesting appeal to most demographics, and yet a positive impact to the world.  And it is about sports.  The motivation has been related to social inclusion and citizenship: a sense of social change through the inspiration of a leader, in this case, a medalist.  Here is the organization that I want to write about: the International Olympic Committee and the Sports for All Commission.

Wishful thinking

My logic goes and my writing follows a thousand times slower.   I just wish I could write as fast as I think, so I could express my ideas and actions.  But we will make it. And learn.  And better perform.

Initial thoughts before deploying The Big Picture

I had attended Philosophy classes from 6th grade until the end of high school. Studying the great theories about the world, the society and the interactions between them, allowed me to develop an investigative mindset, to question what we have done of our lives generation after generation. I bring this because I am thinking about a phrase from Hegel (no quotes because I don't have the original books here): our notion of reality is not determined by our capacity of generating answers, but rather the art of coming with the right questions.

The first social marketing class was great. One of the assumptions that sustain the marketing plan is that organizations are doing something for the "good". At first, my mind would go straight to http://bit.ly/42g0B and feel happy with the positive ideas that show up. But then, with the readings, I realized that the discussion could embrace a more profound discussion. "What is good" is one of Hegelian questions.

"Good" is when 6,810,192,969 people [according to http://bit.ly/d5GyX ] live in harmony and happiness. Different people sharing, learning, producing, sustaining with the planet's resources. Believe me, that sentence does not have the same interpretation among societies. In History, tribes believed that killing the other tribe would result in harmony. And killing is far from my understanding of happiness.

What is going to be my contribution to this question? How am I going to drive my decisions, my life, my career, my family values, in a direction that I can see later in the long run that it has been towards what our American society has accepted as "good"?

With that in mind, I think I can start working on ideas for the marketing plan.

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-Saulo