This is the first of a three part series in which I’ll share some lessons drawn from the world of software development that can be applied to the social good sector. Part one is about recognizing obstacles to action for what they are.

I work on the web development team here at Idealist. My business card has the title of “Scrum Master,” which sounds equal parts terrifying and mystifying (in reality, it’s neither). One of my primary responsibilities is to remove obstacles for our web developers.

“Scrum” is one of several popular software development methodologies collectively known by the umbrella term “Agile.” Agile processes seek to address some of the issues inherent to highly complex projects such as software development, by providing a set of shared values, engineering principles, and communication methods.

As I’ve learned more about these methodologies, I’ve discovered there are many applications to the work that members of the Idealist community are engaged in every day. After all, what’s a more complex project than eradicating poverty, ending homelessness, or convincing world leaders to cooperate on climate change?

A technique for recognizing obstacles

Every morning, we have a 15-minute meeting called “the daily scrum” where each developer makes a commitment for the day, and talks about their obstacles.

One technique we use is making a list of certain words that we think might indicate a hidden obstacle, like “try,” “maybe,” and “hopefully.”

We write them on a whiteboard. Whenever a developer uses one of those words during the daily meeting, we call it out. For example, a developer might say, “Today I’ll try to finish the new blog feature…,” and the rest of the team will challenge him to explain why he’s only going to try.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

Applications for world-changing work

Identifying your own obstacles, or your organization’s, is a key step in any plan to change the world. Here are some strategies:

1. Make it a regular practice.
In Scrum, we ask ourselves every day what our obstacles are, and what’s getting in the way. In your context, this may be a weekly ritual, or something that you do at a twice-annual staff retreat.

2. Learn to recognize symptoms of hidden obstacles.
In the world of web development, there are a few common signs of unspoken obstacles: a general lack of progress, having more work “in progress” than there are developers on the team, or releasing buggy code. In the world of social good, the signs might include: not hitting your fundraising targets regularly, skipping writing your annual report to stakeholders, or getting unsatisfactory feedback from clients. Recognize these symptoms for what they are: evidence of some underlying obstacles.

3. Make obstacles visible.
Some Scrum teams have an “Impediments board” where they list their obstacles to action on index cards. Cards get removed when the impediment is removed. By making the obstacles visible, everyone sees them and they tend to get resolved faster.

4. Prioritize obstacles.
Not all obstacles are created equal. For example, an obstacle that is preventing your organization from receiving donations might be more important than something that prevents your organization from getting a new logo in time for your summer campaign. Some Scrum teams limit the number of obstacles “in play” at any one time. This forces you to prioritize, and choose the most significant obstacles to focus on.

5. Share responsibility.
A good Scrum Master will facilitate the removal of obstacles by creating a culture of shared team responsibility. Similarly, an executive director or project manager might be ultimately responsible for removing obstacles within an organization, but by empowering the team, they will be resolved more quickly.

We’ve found paying special attention to identifying and removing obstacles has greatly improved our development work at Idealist. What do you think? Do you have any tips or tricks for finding and resolving obstacles in your organization or projects?

p.s. Stay tuned for the next part of the series, where I’ll share some ideas for how to “inspect and adapt” on your internal processes.

The idea

What kid doesn’t love a snow day? Of course it’s a day off school, but, more importantly, waking up to a world that has been transformed by a fresh layer of snow adds a bit of magic and wonder to a child’s life.

On January 12 of this year, the city of Seattle was treated to an epic, fun-filled Snow Day. But this event was specifically designed for adults.

It started with a snow fort and castle-building competition, which later became the setting for the the world’s largest snowball fight. 6,000 people joined in, and a new Guinness world record was set. The day ended with a pub crawl that allowed community members to warm up, as well as make new friends.

The event was the brainchild of Neil Bergquist, who managed to pull of the impressive feat while also serving as the Director of SURF Incubator, a community-supported network of digital startups. Neil relied on his own entrepreneurial skills, and the support of his network of friends and contacts, to turn Snow Day into a reality.

“I wanted to do something disruptive. Snow Day was an opportunity for the city to come together and showcase everything we love about the Northwest,” he says.

The event was a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County. In addition to raising an impressive $50,000, it also helped participants connect with the youth organization’s mission to inspire and enable all young people to realize their full potential as productive, responsible, and caring citizens.

Why you might like to try this

• Creates a meaningful experience, while raising money. “Our mission was to raise money for kids by helping people remember what it’s like to be one,” Neil says. Snow Day went beyond the traditional charity auction or dinner, and provided a memorable, shared experience for Seattleites.
• Shines a spotlight on the beneficiary’s work and mission. There’s no doubt the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County got more than money out of the event. Neil is proud of the fact that the event garnered global media attention, and created positive buzz for the nonprofit. It helped bring attention to the Boys and Girls Clubs’ other fundraising efforts, as well as generated fresh interest amongst potential volunteers. As Neil says, “The publicity they received was hard to put a dollar value on.”
• Prioritizes fun and community. Neil recognizes the powerful community-building effect of something as iconic as a snow day. “Snow days are a time where the world shuts down. The stresses of our daily life come to a close, and people just focus on the here and now. And on each other.”

How you can replicate it

While Seattle’s Snow Day was the first of its kind, Neil says he can imagine similar events happening all over the world. He says the spirit of Snow Day is something everyone can relate to, and provides a healthy way to bring communities together.

If you’d like to bring a Snow Day to your community, consider these lessons from Neil and his team. Remember that Neil started this without any official institutional backing. He does have entrepreneurial skills, a pretty high risk tolerance, and a great network of supporters, but he says there’s no reason others can’t achieve the same kind of success.

• Think big. A Snow Day that attracted 100 people wouldn’t have made nearly the impact that this 6,000-person exercise in “managed chaos” (Neil’s words) had. When the team realized they had the potential to break a world record, they knew they had to pull out all the stops.
• Get your ducks in a row. Neil refers to the date and the venue as the “anchor pieces,” around which everything else needs to work, so deal with those first. He recommends securing an iconic venue, like the Seattle Center, as a backdrop. For a risky endeavour like Snow Day, you need to make sure you’re properly insured. Do your research. As Neil says, “You don’t just call up Allstate and say, ‘Hey, we’re having the world’s largest snowball fight.’”
• Make your own high-quality snow. Neil says if he organizes another Snow Day, he won’t bring in 160,000 pounds of snow in 34 dump trucks like he did this year. Instead, he’d investigate the several ways to create snow on site.
• Do your homework. Neil and his team are now experts on snow. They read studies on the dangers of snowball fights (they made sure goggles were available at the event after learning that eye lacerations are the number one cause of injuries during snowball fights). They conducted snow-quality tests in the Cascade mountains, and did scenario planning (how would various weather conditions affect the event?). They took the details seriously.
• Leverage every resource you can. Neil relied on the time and skills of his committed team of friends. He made use of personal connections to convince 36 corporate sponsors to get on board with an unprecedented, and, frankly, rather risky, endeavor. The team used their personal networks to blow up social media, eventually selling out the event a week in advance. They got a radio partner on board, and benefited from the free promotion. Neil believes creating mutually beneficial relationships was the key to getting the promotion he needed.
• Build a strong brand. Neil managed to get the “Snow.co” domain and the @SnowDay twitter handle, which he says added to the legitimacy of the event from the get go.
• Be prepared for a lot of work. Everyone on Neil’s team had a full-time job, in addition to their Snow Day responsibilities. Neil reports, “There was a team of six of us that were working all the time. I probably put in 80 hours per week for the five or six weeks leading up to the event. I loved the idea, and I wanted to make it happen.”

A month before the event, with 4,000 tickets sold, the Snow Day team still didn’t know how they were going to transport the 160,000 pounds of snow needed.

“The difficult part is maintaining the confidence that you’re going to find a way,” Neil finally says. “If you have a vision, you’re going to give everything it takes to deliver on that vision, even though you don’t always have all the answers.”

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Want to plan a Snow Day in your own community? Reach out to Neil Bergquist for information and advice: neil@snow.co.

When it comes to finding a social-impact career, many of us spend time trying to answer big questions: What’s my passion? What kind of work do I want to do? What cause am I interested in?

But are these the kind of questions we should be asking?

Cal Newport (Photo Credit: Cal Newport)

To explore this a bit further, we interviewed Cal Newport, a Washington, DC-based writer and assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University. He is the author of Study Hacks, a blog that dishes up thoughtful commentary on the themes of success and leading a meaningful life. In this interview he addresses the importance of expertise, the difference between mission-driven and passion, and how to make the best use of your time to increase your impact.

Idealist: Is there a difference between pursuing a mission driven career (i.e. committed to a cause or impact) and pursuing a passion? If so, how would you make that distinction?

Cal Newport: There is an important difference between pursuing a mission-driven career and pursuing a passion. The former doesn’t require you to figure out in advance what kind of mission will drive you. It is, instead, a commitment toward pushing your work toward something purposeful and important. The latter, by contrast, requires that you have figured out something in advance that you really want to do — which is rarely effective, especially for young people who don’t yet have much exposure to the world.

Idealist: A common thread in your writing is the importance of simplifying and focusing work to achieve excellence and impact. Do you think people and organizations tackling big social issues like poverty, for example, can apply the same methods?

Cal Newport: Absolutely. The best ideas tend to come from people with the most specialized expertise in the problem. This argues that if you want to make an impact, don’t start with the big idea, but instead start with the big commitment to immerse yourself in a problem you think needs solving. Don’t force the idea. Force yourself instead to develop your skills.

Idealist: You’ve written about psuedo-striving/busyness and how this actually stops people from being productive and successful. Why do you think people get caught up in this and how can people break through it, especially if we are trying to address issues that seem insurmountable?

Cal Newport: Pseudo-striving is that state you get in when you fill your whole day doing *stuff*, usually on the computer, that isn’t really pushing yourself to get better at your core skills. As a writer, for example, I could easily spend a full day monkeying around on twitter, and launching web projects, and tweaking WordPress. What really matters, however, is the longer term work of carefully researching and crafting prose — trying to make each project better than the last.

Cal’s latest book, “So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love,” is arriving on bookshelves on September 18th. Learn more and order your copy.

This could be your organization! (Via impactconference.org)

The IMPACT Conference is the largest annual conference in the United States focused on engaging college students in service, advocacy and social action. We have a special connection to this event which builds on the legacy of the COOL (Campus Outreach Opportunity League) National Conference and the Idealist Campus Conference, which we housed for three years.

This year’s conference will be held at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida on March 31-April 3, 2011. For more information on the conference, visit www.impactconference.org.

Nonprofits seeking to reach out to some of the most active and engaged college students (and campus administrators) in the country might consider sponsoring this dynamic event. Sponsoring organizations have several opportunities to connect with students during the conference. The early bird deadline to sponsor is January 21.

The Idealware Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits is a compact, 80-page introduction to the sometimes confusing world of software programs and web tools that nonprofits often leverage to maximize their impact. The Field Guide provides a basic overview of key terms and products, and would be most useful for novice or “accidental” techies who are hoping to familiarize themselves with the landscape. Anyone who is feeling a little lost after suddenly being charged with producing their organization’s new podcast series or developing a “search engine optimization” strategy will benefit from flipping through the pages of this small, accessible book. More experienced technology professionals will find the book is too basic, though they might learn about a few software programs they hadn’t been aware of.

The Guide is broken into three sections, and the structure allows the reader to quickly find what they’re looking for. The first section describes five functional areas of particular interest to nonprofits, and what categories of technology can be useful in each area: raising money, constituent outreach, event management, supporter engagement, and “listening and measuring,” along with a few pages on fundamental tools that are critical for all organizations. The second section is a set of fictional case studies, ranging from a small start-up with a $100,000 budget to an established $3.5 million organization with a sophisticated technology strategy. The final section provides a high level overview of specific software programs in each broad category, though it does not provide detailed analyses or reviews. For that, readers might want to visit the Idealware website which features in-depth research and product reviews. The website is an incredibly useful resource for both accidental techies and experienced IT professionals alike.

Individual copies of the Field Guide are available for $19.95 on Lulu. Additionally, organizations can purchase licenses to distribute larger quantities of the book to their networks. In this case, the Guide can be co-branded with your organization’s logo, a custom introduction page, information about your organization, and a customized set of resources for more information. For an additional fee, the Field Guide can be tailored specifically to your network. The content can be edited to speak directly to your organization’s typical processes and software needs, and can feature additional case studies and software ideas.

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More book reviews:

• This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
• The American Way to Change: How National Service and Volunteers are Transforming America
• How to Be an Everyday Philanthropist
• The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing Nonprofit Organizations to to Create the Future of Our World

[This blog entry appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]

Hannah's strawberry shortcakes. Click for the recipe.

We have a tradition in our New York City office of having “teatime” at 4:00 p.m. every Thursday. It’s a bit of a misnomer, since we don’t often have tea, but we do always have some kind of delicious treat (we rotate responsibility for bringing in something to share). No one can exactly remember how or why we started this tradition, but this is the fifth year running, and the time slot has remained “sacred.” We never miss teatime.

Since this tradition has been a great morale booster for us, even during tough times for the organization, we were curious to see if other nonprofits have food-related morale-boosting rituals. After a bit of research we found out that, indeed, many nonprofits use food as an excuse for bonding, team-building, knowledge-sharing, and more.

The Vera Institute in New York City, for example, has several traditions. They have a regular employee bake-off, an annual pie day, an annual potluck where staff members bring in dishes that relate to their family and ethnic backgrounds, and occasional “salad bowl” lunches where everyone brings in a salad ingredient for a buffet.

Hester Lyons, Human Resources Director at the Vera Institute, says these food-related events are a source of pride for the staff members who organize them. Additionally, she says they promote wellness among the employees, and provide valuable opportunities for staff members to get to know one another.

Additional ideas we’ve heard about from other nonprofits include cooking demonstrations, guest speakers from local greenmarkets or farms, brown bag lunches with a topical film screening, and, of course, regular after work happy hours.

If you’ve noticed your colleagues are feeling stressed or could use a boost, consider starting your own food-centered tradition. Bon appetit!

[This blog entry appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]

The deadline for The Clinton Global Initiative University’s 2010 Outstanding Commitment Awards is tomorrow, April 30th. The awards, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000, are used to support innovative student initiatives in one of five areas: Education, Environment & Climate Change, Peace & Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health. Applicants must submit a specific, measurable commitment and a plan for developing partnerships and ensuring sustainability. The contest is open to undergraduate and graduate students from around the world.

In 2009, 78 student-led initiatives were awarded grants to carry out their commitments to positive change. Winning projects included the demolition and new construction of an ecologically sustainable theater in an impoverished area of Brazil, a radio station in Nigeria broadcasting agricultural information to poor rural farmers living in isolated communities, and a partnership with cell phone companies in Ghana and Nigeria to create a system where any consumer with a cell phone could send a free text message to drug manufacturers to verify that their medication is real and not counterfeit.

Does your student group have a great idea? Apply today!

At Idealist, we believe the world is full of good ideas that don’t spread quickly enough. The Idea File is a new feature where we’ll give quick glimpses of ideas that seem fun, powerful, and potentially replicable — plus some things you might want to consider if you decide to take on a similar project. If you have an idea that addresses a pressing community need, and you think others should know about it, leave a comment below and we’ll take a look.

The idea:

Michelle Obama’s not the first First Lady to plant a vegetable garden at the White House, but her recent efforts have garnered a lot of attention for gardens in public places. Vegetable gardens in front of the City Halls of Portland, Oregon and Baltimore, Maryland have provided sustenance to homeless residents, learning opportunities for community members, and inspiration to other health- and environment-conscious cities.

Why we’re adding it to the Idea File:

The Baltimore garden provided 1500 pounds of fresh, healthy food to a local hot meals program in its first season. Additionally, passers-by have the opportunity to learn about produce they might never have heard about. Portland Mayor Sam Adams says a major purpose of the City Hall garden is to inspire Portland residents to grow their own food — spreading health and wellness, not to mention economic self-sufficiency in trying times. Additionally, a trend towards eating local foods can reduce energy use and have other positive environmental effects.

How you can replicate it:

If you’re interested in organizing for a public vegetable garden in your area, first research to see if there’s already a movement. For example, New Yorkers can sign a petition to get Mayor Bloomberg to allow a vegetable garden in front of City Hall. If you can’t find an existing project, it’s up to you to start one! You can create an organization on Idealist to find other people in your area with the same passion.

Considerations:

Of course, no project can be replicated exactly the same way in every community. Writing this post got us wondering: who plants these gardens? Who gets to decide what to do with the produce, and what methods of fertilizing, pest prevention, irrigation, etc., are going to be used? And what happens if the original proponents lose their energy and the place fills with weeds — is the city responsible for plowing it all under and planting grass and geraniums?

In your area, it might make more sense to join or start a community garden in a yard, an abandoned lot, or the space between your sidewalk and the street.

A recent article on The Guardian website highlights a study showing that there may be a link between political activism and happiness. Researchers Malte Klar of the University of Gottingen and Tim Kasser of Knox College compared a sample of college students and activists with a control group and found that “several indicators of activism were positively associated with measures of hedonic, eudaimonic, and social well-being.” In other words, activism may not always be fun, but it might make you happier.

In part of the study, college students were divided into two groups. The first wrote letters to the college cafeteria management asking for better food. The second group were told to take a more activist approach and requested that local or fairly traded products be offered. The activist group reported stronger feelings of vitality after the activity.

Many Idealist users have probably already intuited the connection between civic engagement and feelings of happiness. This study provides some data to back up our claims, and to encourage others to get involved.

To find opportunities for activism on Idealist, try searching for a volunteer opportunity using a keyword of your choice. Or select from the list of “Areas of Focus,” many of which can be politically oriented (some examples include: Disability Issues, Energy Conservation and Green Living, Government Oversight and Reform, Human Rights and Civil Liberties, Politics, and Prison Reform).

Nominations for the 2010 Civic Ventures Purpose Prize are due March 5.

The Purpose Prize recognizes outstanding innovators who are working creatively to spearhead significant social change in the second half of life. If you know someone over the age of 60 who has initiated important innovations in an encore career, and who is currently working in a leadership capacity on an initiative to address a major social problem in the United States or abroad, consider nominating them for the prize. Five nominees will be selected to win $100,000 and five more will receive $50,000 as a “down payment on what these 60-plus innovators will do next.”

Previous winners include a doctor and special education teacher who treat victims of terrorism around the world; a psychiatrist who recruits mental health professionals to provide free, confidential counseling to veterans, active-duty military personnel and their families; a computer executive who built a nationwide substance abuse recovery program based on Native American beliefs and traditions; an engineer who created “green” bricks out of fly ash, the residue of coal-fired power plants; and a telecommunications executive who brought broadband to Rutherford County and created an online ordering system that enables local farmers to sell their produce directly to Charlotte restaurants.

Funding for the prize is provided by The Atlantic Philanthropies and The John Templeton Foundation. Nominees must be residents of the United States or a U.S. territory.