This post is the fulfilment of one of this week’s 12 Week Year goals for DriverlessCroc. It’s a first draft of an Amazon-style press release used to develop a product.
Pins with Flags On
The landscape of building a small organisation
There is no roadmap for successfully building a charity or social enterprise: if there was an easy path, someone else would have done it before you.
Pins with Flags On is written for anyone interested in building organisations to get something imporant done, and especially for people who are new to leading, managing and marketing. It aims to help you develop your sense of direction and to get things done as you get started, and to point out key features of the landscape of building an organisation that it’s helpful to know about in advance.
This book won’t make you an expert, but it will give you a set of useful reference points and guide you to some experts worth listening to as you go on. It will help, and it’s short: if you do what it says it will save you far more time and money than you spend reading it.
A problem to solve
Most people building organisations for change have a technical skill of some kind, and an theoretical (or less commonly, a proven) solution to a problem. But they underestimate the gap between a workable solution and a working solution that reaches lots of the people they want to serve. They might have managed or led established organisations but still be unware of what it takes to build a successful and sustainable organisation from nothing.
From getting people to actually use your solution “in the real world” to getting someone to pay for it and building and sustaining the team and systems needed to bring it repeatedly to large numbers of people, Pins with Flags On will help you find your way forward by showing you the areas of activity that you’ll need at least a working knowledge of, and the best resources for getting up to speed. It’s part tool-kit, part curriculum, and part rueful list of things I wish I could tell my younger self. Each “pin” is a short chapter describing a feature of the non-profit landscape, with links to further recommended resources, both free and paid.
I hope you use it and find it helpful, and if you do, I hope you’ll share it.
Get started at driverlesscrocodile.com
sorry it’s taken 10 days for me to read this. Really good Stu.