Convert Bricks to Clicks

from Stanford Social Innovation Review:

Scaling Impact
How to get 100x the results with 2x the organization

Many organizations are using the Web to expand their impact without increasing their numbers of boots on the ground. In these so-called “bricks-to-clicks” models, they create toolkits and platforms that users can readily adopt. For example, KaBOOM! helps communities build new playgrounds for children. In its first 10 years, KaBOOM! built nearly 750 playgrounds. But its reach was partly limited by the number of staff it could deploy to each site.

Then KaBOOM! shifted from hands-on management to a Webbased platform that helps communities organize their projects. The result: approximately 4,000 more playgrounds in just three years. Similar bricks-to-clicks models are under way in mentoring, advocacy, and other fields.

Social media likewise hold much promise for scaling impact through knowledge sharing, network building, campaigns, and collaborations. Wikimedia is perhaps the most well-known social media outlet, with a global community of about 100,000 citizen-editors and 345 million unique visitors a month on Wikipedia.