By Kendall Fisher (opens in new tab), executive producer at Grow Wire
Nonprofits must constantly report on their financial activity, where they’re spending donor money and the direct outcome of that spend. And they are expected to operate and grow with limited overhead cost. Put bluntly: The world holds nonprofits to a much more stringent set of criteria than for-profit businesses--criteria that hinders their ability to make a difference.
On this episode of the “Grow Wire Podcast (opens in new tab),” we discuss these challenges with Lauren Woodman, CEO of NetHope.
NetHope empowers organizations to use technology effectively in pursuit of their mission. It’s a consortium of 57 of the world’s largest humanitarian, development and conservation organizations. NetHope unites these organizations with top technology companies and funding partners in order to design, fund, implement, adapt and scale innovative approaches to some of the world’s largest problems.
These problems typically occur in places where little technology is available—especially during emergencies—and thus, NetHope works with its partners and nonprofit members to deploy the connectivity resources that can, and do, make a huge difference.
Woodman shares story after story about the way nonprofits—like the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders—utilize technology in times of need and for people in need. She tells stories of competitor companies coming together and sharing ideas under the umbrella of doing good better. And she shares her authentic and powerful opinion that today’s nonprofit organizations need access to the right technology in order to get infrastructure in place, in order to retain top talent, in order to deploy resources and, ultimately, in order to fuel their mission to help solve some of our world’s biggest problems…and no illogical oversight on overhead spending should restrict them from doing that.
Tune in to hear the full podcast episode on Apple Podcasts (opens in new tab), SoundCloud (opens in new tab) and YouTube (opens in new tab).