As is usual towards the end of the year – and even more so towards the end of a decade – people tend to start postulating as to what the future will hold, leading to a pre-Christmas flurry of articles and blog posts about key trends to watch going forward.
In the good old days this used to involve journalists calling-round or sending emails in early November and then collating whatever their contacts contributed into an end of year trends piece. In an interesting sign of the times, this year social media has undoubtedly taken-over as the key way of sharing and collating thoughts on the future – with a range of crowdsourcing initiatives underway focusing on just this topic. So much so that Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz is saying that this is the point at which the whole idea of crowdsourcing trends has ‘jumped the shark‘.
To illustrate what I mean by this, in just the last couple of days I’ve been sent details of two specific social media initiatives aiming to capitalise on crowdsourcing to highlight key philanthropy and fundraising trends. The first is the US-based FutureLab, which kicked-off mid-year and has now got 60 ideas and discussion questions under debate. The second is Fundraising Scenarios, created by UK-based consultancy The Management Centre. Then, you can add to this the Twitter equivalent which is fast gathering pace under the hashtag #nonprofit2010.
With all this going-on, there’s really no need for me to add any specific 2010-2020 insights here – other than to say that I predict fundraisers going into strategic planning for the next decade with a very long list of trend-related things to try to take into account.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bryan Miller and christineegger, christineegger. christineegger said: Craving,too:"Definitely not enuf 2 just throw together another list & call it data or insight. Time 4 analysis." @p2173 http://bit.ly/3X9vny [...]
Funny and true. Yes, people do love lists, don’t they?
One of the things that most appeals to me about using social media to crowdsource thoughts on trends is that it should democratise ‘thought leadership’ in the sector; as it’s not just the opinions of the usual suspects that get heard and discussed.
I think the sector has hung on the words of a small number of supposed ‘gurus’ for too long – and sponsorship of conferences, advertising sales and such like have had too much influence on whose opinions are heard and published. Sadly, the result seems too often to be nothing more than some new buzz words being coined each year that then get bandied around a bit – but that not enough *really* moves forward.
Most of us know that if you really want to change things for the better, sustainably, the key is to involve people and empower them with an active part in coming up with important solutions and strategies. A vital part of that is being able to get those opinions heard and discussed in the first place and for people to feel able to share them. There are still relatively few people using social media to do that, but the number is growing – and initiatives like #nonprofit2010 help to promote this.
I think it’s a great thing. I just hope, when The Chronicle of Philanthropy collate all the thoughts, they do so representatively and without bias.
Thanks Rachel, I think you’re absolutely right that it’s great to have the opportunity to very easily hear from a far wider group of people than the usual ‘gurus’ (although they’re out there on #nonprofit2010 in force too I noticed). The key thing for me is that this unfiltered ‘crowd wisdom’ then must be collated and structured if it is to be of real strategic value to fundraisers planning for the future.
[...] social media and your existing network of supporters to build a ground-swell is hugely useful; if a journalist sees how popular an issue is from some basic online research, they are more likely [...]