Activism and Focusing, or Not
Yes, that image is fuzzy and a little bit frustrating. This is what happens when you don’t focus on a cause, a social problem, or a solution. If you are an activist of any kind, you need to focus. If you are an activist, not the founder of a nonprofit or an employee who carries out the organization’s programs distraction comes more easily. But, social entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives and boards can lose focus.
Thinking About Limits
Are you doing too many things? There are so many petitions, marches, articles, tips, calls to action, and who knows what. Based on the ten thousand ways (I did count!) that activists try to engage people on social media, I would say that focus is a problem for organizations and for individuals.
Focusing as an Organization
Of course, any organization needs to focus on things it can do well. You are not the nonprofit version of Amazon; you cannot 297 kinds of ideas, policies, and practices at once. You can’t even promote everything that relates to gender equality, homelessness, or veganism. Every development director and every communications associate knows that an organization has to focus time and money on a narrow range of tasks. The more thinly those resources get spread, the longer it takes to make real progress.
Worse, this unfocused activity can lead supporters to feel like they are helping much more than they really are. This is unfortunate but understandable, I guess. People want to feel like they’ve done something. Signing a petition and sharing that fact on social media feels good. Do these petitions offer a good return-on-investment though? That’s a question that maybe doesn’t get asked as much as it should. The reason why is the subject of another article, but for now — consider how best to focus your supporters’ time and attention. Don’t assume that spreading their attention across a half-dozen campaigns and petition drives a year is the best idea.
Obviously, an activist organization has limited resources. Volunteers and staff only have so much time. Money only goes so far. The organization’s mission statement, if it is a good one, provides all the focus most organizations need. Just make sure to check it against your current activities and priorities. Are you doing some things just because they are easy, or trendy, or what every other activist group does? You might realize lots of your social media activity is just that — trendy, easy, popular.
Focusing as an Individual
If you are an individual, the importance of focus should be obvious. In other areas of life, we know we have to set priorities and act on them. Consider personal finance. You can pay off your student loan and your car loan, and save for retirement, and save $30,000 for a downpayment on a house, and put $200 a month away for your kid’s college fund. Or can you? Well, it depends on how much time you have and how much money you make.
Personal activism is pretty much like personal finance. How much time do you have? How much time do you have? Odds are you don’t have the time, energy and money to make a significant contribution to five or six things at once.
Knowledge is power, or so we’re told. That’s only true in activism if you have enough knowledge of the issue to choose effective actions to take. If you have a job, a spouse, two kids, and other family or community responsibilities, do you really have that much time? Maybe not. Becoming sufficiently informed about social inequality, gun violence, child abuse, climate change, and immigration debates in one month is not realistic for most of us.
It can seem tempting to do a little of this and a little of that, and maybe read another short article on Medium when you have time. However, if you really care about saving the Cumberland River, reducing teen pregnancy, or promoting renewable energy, you need to invest time and money in doing things that we know can make a difference.
And there’s no way to know what those things are in general. What works depends on the issue. You have to invest the time to know what works and support those things. Sharing a bunch of articles on Facebook and signing an online petition every week or so does help, but not too much. Unless you have 4,000 or more Facebook friends or 30,000 Twitter followers.
Two Lessons to Learn
Make sure your organization has a coherent strategy focused on achieving one thing or a few things. The bigger the staff, the more things you can do. That rather obvious rule of thumb has lots of exceptions, so don’t assume it
Whether you want to help change the world on your own or as part of a nonprofit, you have to focus your time and money.
