Reconciling the Supply & Demand of Good Intentions: Why we must strike a balance between high-volume and high-touch service programs.
This 2014 article by John Cary from the Stanford Social Innovation Review is still so pertinent. There are so many resources in our world, but matching them is still a challenge:
LinkedIn recently eclipsed a staggering 300 million members. Over the past year since it launched, already more than two million of those members have signed onto the company’s LinkedIn for Good program to offer their skills and time to nonprofits through skills-based volunteering and board service.
Led by Meg Garlinghouse, LinkedIn for Good represents a remarkable show of strength and generosity, both on the part of LinkedIn and its members. But Garlinghouse has found herself with a surprising predicament: “Week after week, we get about 60,000 members signing up; we simply can’t work quickly enough to feed the appetite of our members,” she explains.
Though the number of nonprofits using LinkedIn for Good to connect with volunteers increased ten-fold in the second half of its launch year (to 8,000), the amount of available work falls far short of what members are ready to offer. At present, it breaks down to 250 volunteers per nonprofit.
Read the full article at https://ssir.org/articles/entry/reconciling_the_supply_demand_of_good_intentions