Principled Innovation LLC

Would you work for your association for free?

July 11th, 2006

A post today on the Open Business Blog raises a critical question for all association leaders: what makes people work for free? The post, which takes Wikipedia’s volunteer-driven model as its subject, focuses in on a few factors that motivate contributors to invest their valuable time and attention into an uncompensated role. These factors include:

A core idealistic belief in the cause at hand.
The ease and “fun” of participation with others who share a similar passion and worldview.
Recognition and reward of contributors (with responsibility and power, as well as awards) within the system.
A tangible sense that collaboration with others consistently produces a better outcome than a single person can create on his or her own.
The formation of small communities around specific issues, offering interested contributors an intellectual home in which to debate important ideas and concepts.
The social capital that emerges over time and bonds people together because they have acted in ways that demonstrate reciprocal trust and goodwill.

To this list, I would add two ideas that don’t appear explicitly in the Open Business post, but which I believe are important considerations both for Wikipedia and for associations going forward. The first is the concept of care, an idea well known in the world of knowledge creation and sharing. Put simply, care is the gift of voluntary cooperation, the willingness to give your attention to ensure the well-being of something or someone without an expectation of receiving anything in return. In the case of Wikipedia, many of its volunteers care deeply about preserving its reputation and integrity. Consider what Chris Anderson writes in The Long Tail:

What makes Wikipedia really extraordinary is that it improves over time, organically healing itself as if its huge and growing army of tenders were an immune system, ever vigilant and quick to respond to anything that threatens the organism. And like a biological system, it evolves, selecting for traits that help it stay one step ahead of the predators and pathogens in its ecosystem.

Chris’s biological metaphor would not work nearly as well in the absence of the deep level of care exhibited by so many of Wikipedia’s volunteers. Care is a fundamental ingredient of any successful knowledge-based enterprise, particularly in the realm of sharing tacit knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is hard to articulate because it is so deeply embedded in experience. One irony of Wikipedia is that while it has made a public splash for codifying so much explicit knowledge in its tens of thousands of articles, the real story of its success is the heavy reliance of its volunteer contributors on the tacit knowledge they have created and shared with each other to help sustain Wikipedia.

The second idea is that of microinnovation. While there is no common definition for the term, in this context, I am defining it as the act of making very small contributions to a much larger. much broader innovation. Wikipedia is an innovation along multiple dimensions, and what I am suggesting is that each individual contribution by its volunteers is a form of microinnovation. I think it would be a mistake to underestimate the importance I’m sure many Wikipedia volunteers place on being even a small part of a global, game-changing innovation. It conveys some of the psychological benefits of being an innovator without the accompanying risks of pursuing a larger, independent venture. And I’m certain that many of these volunteers already are innovators in their professional lives, so their involvement with Wikipedia helps burnish the reputations they already enjoy in their specific workplace communities.

So, what are the implications of this post for associations? Taking a look at what is going on with Wikipedia, not to mention open source, it is hard not to be comparatively disappointed by the state of association volunteerism today. Associations are recycling volunteers, trying feverish to fill empty chairs, especially at the chapter level. Association volunteer opportunities often are about nothing but makework that isn’t especially fun, combined with internal political intrigue that saps energy and commitment along with it. Under these circumstances, social capital and care erode and there is no possibility for microinnovation. This description doesn’t capture what is happening in every association, but I believe it is basically accurate for the community as a whole, and that makes it a very sad state of affairs..

Wikipedia volunteers do their work because they are excited and passionate and they want to be involved. They will gladly work for free. So before you ask someone to accept a volunteer role in your association, take a close look at what that experience could be like and then ask yourself the fundamental question that is the title of this post: would I work for my own association for free?

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator

8 Comments Add your own

1. Mike Levin of HitTail | July 12th, 2006 at 7:07 am

I find that one of the things that motivates people is having an impact on the world. I would say that “care” is derived from collaboration, fun and recognition in a community with ideals. You just inherently care about such things. I would add that since so much of the experience is virtual, companies whose members express themselves through blogs and other online venues are often “cut off” from the feedback mechanisms that show them that community actually exists, and that they’re having an impact. It doesn’t always come in as comment posts (like this). And not all members have access to, or could make sense of, analytics software that measures such things. Perhaps a company’s Wikipedia-like motivational potential could be unleashed by better tools to “unveil” the impact they’re actually having.
2. Nick | July 12th, 2006 at 6:09 pm

I think one important thing that Wikipedia harnesses is that you can do “micro-volunteering,” i.e. you can put a touch on something and never spend time on it again. I think this is something that associations need to figure out–how do you make a place where people can do something meaningful on a whim? It’s long tail all over the place and I haven’t seen very many associations harnessing this latent volunteer source, because it’s hard to figure out. No?
3. OpenBusiness » Blog&hellip | July 13th, 2006 at 12:59 pm

[…] There have been some interesting thoughts about ‘What makes people work for free?’ since it was published on openbusiness.cc. The idea of ‘micro-innovation’, the act of making very small contributions to a much larger, much broader innovation sprung up at principledinnovation.com. A reply to this idea was the idea of ‘micro-volunteerism’ i.e. you can put a touch on something and never spend time on it again. It would be interesting to see more organisations working on models of stimulating people to contribute with as much ease as possible, especially in times with low incentive to volunteer as identified by principledinnovation. […]
4. Principled Innovation LLC&hellip | July 13th, 2006 at 11:32 pm

[…] As a follow-up to my discussion of Wikipedia in Tuesday’s post on working for your association for free, here is a unique map showing the nearly 2,100 edits by 68 different editors to Wikipedia’s article on the topic of evolution from December 2001 through October 2005. Each vertical line represents a new version of the article, while each color indicates a new editor. The six numbered red dots show important moments in the article’s own “evolution” over almost four years. (To access the explanation for the six dots, please visit the Discover website, sign up as a “member” rather than a subscriber and then create a printer-friendly version of this article.) […]
5. Irena | July 18th, 2006 at 5:15 pm

The fideal to build a small independent communities around specific issues, offering special new aproaches for invidual to be creative and part of the new movement in the society which will impact the comunity with positve ideas and actions. Aslo open a space in which to debate important ideas, problems solving, motivations, inspirations and concepts
Ideal to make a difference in the society by invidual actions bonds people together in trust and goodwill. In the We believe in the power of the arts to teach and to heal and to divert youth from going into the system further. We also feel that by working with the arts through our programs that serve the youth we will further our underlying mission to reduce the factors which drive the need for the juvenile justice system to exist by changing conditions and helping to create a caring community.”
NGO Art Studio showed that arts programs really can have an impact on youth. Not only can such programs enhance young peoples’ attitudes about themselves and their futures, but the programs also can increase academic achievement and decrease delinquent behaviour
6. Principled Innovation LLC&hellip | July 18th, 2006 at 10:20 pm

[…] In the course of collecting information for my recent post on Wikipedia, I learned of the extraordinary contributions of Angela Beesley. While her name will not be familiar to PI Blog readers, you should pay attention to what she has accomplished in just the last few years: more than 50,000 edits on Wikipedia articles since early 2003, a seat on the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees (which she has recently resigned) and the status of a recognized leader in the global wiki community. Currently, Angela serves as vice president of community relations for Wikia Inc., a for-profit wiki company she co-founded with Wikimedia founder Jimmy Wales in 2004. […]
7. Principled Innovation LLC&hellip | September 4th, 2006 at 5:58 pm

[…] After last month’s impromptu hiatus, the monthly PI Skypecast will return on Wednesday, September 20 at 2 pm EDT. This month, I will be focusing on the concept of microinnovation, which I previously mentioned in a July post about Wikipedia. In that post, I defined microinnovation as “the act of making very small contributions to a much larger. much broader innovation,” I want to use the upcoming Skypecast to tweak, i.e., expand on, that definition and put the concept in the broader context of how associations can accelerate innovation in today’s environment. […]
8. Irena Gapkovska | October 10th, 2006 at 5:42 pm

Idealism is the main core of the human civilization. Volunteers can e inspired by the higher goals which can help the other people and impact the world. Art is idealistic and inspires people to search for the different values in their lifes. The idea of peace in the world is also our greates inspiration.All over the world it has its defenders, some working in obscurity, others in the spotlight of public life. But its scope would be much smaller today had it not been given expression in the disinterested acts of thousands of anonymous men and women capable of listening to others, talking to them and acting with them and on their behalf.
The concept of “a culture of peace” has clearly not appeared from nowhere. But to have a single expression to describe a multitude of ethical and practical initiatives may help to highlight their common purpose, make them more widely known and bring them together.
The importance of the culture of peace has now been recognized by the world community.

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