Bonded Pro Bono
Last night I had a dream that I was serving on a panel at a big conference in Dallas. One of my fellow panelists announced that they had found the key to scaling pro bono- bonds.The crowd loved the idea.
Waking up, I had no idea why they loved the idea or what it was for that matter. Bonds?
There are three types of bonds that I know of- the kind used to raise money (i.e. bond measure for schools), Barry Bonds (i.e. steroids and home runs), and social bonds (i.e. what keeps us connected).
None of these made any sense. What was my co-panelist proposing?
Then another option occurred to me. When you hire professional services for the home (e.g. cleaning, construction, etc.) you have the option of hiring 'bonded' services.
Could this be what the imagined fellow panelist meant?
This makes a little more sense. You hire a bonded service to mitigate risk. I'm not sure what risk it covers. Theft? Damage? Disappearing mid-job?
To save money I tend to go the non-bonded route so it isn't clear to me how it works. Is it having proven identification of employees (third-party verified), insurance in case of a problem, escrow funds to cover potential damages, or something else connected to bail bonds?
If only Robert Langdon were here to help break the code.
The general idea of bonded pro bono is interesting. Imagine a company says they will donate the services to build a web site that would cost you $100k to hire a firm to do for you otherwise. You're psyched, but you really need the site and are worried that they will flake and you will be left holding the bag. Now assume that they will bond the project. They set aside $100k grant and say that if they don't get the site done to your satisfaction by a certain deadline, you get the money to buy the services. The level of trust goes way up. They are willing to back up their commitment. To bond it.
This would radically change the effectiveness of pro bono as it would increase nonprofit trust and require a deep commitment from the provider.
It would create a series of other issues, of course. Not least of which is that it would dry up the supply of pro bono.
The literal example here obviously doesn't work. The spirit it of it, however, is interesting. How do you make both parties feel like the project is bonded?
We do it in our Service Grants by guaranteeing completion assuming the client lives up to certain responsibilities. If the project blows up, we own cleaning it up and getting it back on track. This gives the pro bono consultants and clients the peace of mind needed to trust the process.
How can we replicate this trust outside our programs?
I love when dreams offer new ideas. I think there’s a lot to be leveraged from having an online community. The only thought I had was the importance of relationships and trust within a given community. For example, you wouldn't want to do a bad job on a pro bono project if you knew it could tarnish your reputation somehow. Harness the power of social pressure and technology. I think of websites that help build trust and credibility between one group and another—for example, Linked In let's you recommend the work of colleagues, Yelp lets customers voice their complaints/praise about local businesses, and Couchsurfing lets hosts and couchsurfers rate each other.
To delve into the couchsurfing phenomenon a bit. What is it? Couchsurfing.com is a website that allows travelers to literally find a free couch to crash on in any city in the world. (How I made my way through France on a franc.) Travelers love it because it’s free and you get to hang out with local, generally very cool people in the city you’re visiting. Hosts love it because they get to meet generally very cool people traveling from all over the world and show them the sights.
Still, it seems sort of insane. Why would anyone do this? You are staying at a stranger’s house halfway around the world and trusting that they won’t steal all your stuff or, you know, kill you. Similar worries exist for the host. And yet this is a vibrant growing global community out there that works. So how do they build so much trust between strangers?
Key things about the site:
1-Both hosts and guests can leave comments on each others’ profiles about their experience together. When I looked for potential hosts, I always went with someone who had hundreds of comments from travelers with good feedback. You figure it would be hard for them to fake that and must be genuine. Indeed, I always had amazing experiences with every stay.
2-It shows what percentage of requests and messages you’ve received through the site that you’ve responded to. This is another important indicator of how flakey or not you are. I always went with hosts who had 100% response rate. You don’t want to be stranded at that train station in Paris after all.
3-Level of engagement. Seeing how thoroughly their profile was filled in also helped me measure whether a host was trustworthy or not. I wanted someone who was engaged and active in the community. Were they members of groups? How many “friends” did they have? How well did they convey their personality through the profile?
4-There are different ways to increase your credibility and reputation as a normal, not dangerous, hygienic potential guest/host. There is a verification process with different ways to confirm your identity and subsequent levels you can attain of “legitimacy.” (Ie. Confirming your home address by responding to mail that gets sent to you, etc) Your profile says if you are “verified” or not.
5-Finally you can be “vouched for” by someone. To me, this is the highest level of verification/honor you can get in the couchsurfing world. You have to be vouched for by 3 different people before you can start vouching for others. So far one person has vouched for me. This is the kind of built in security that can come from creating such a network of people. There is a limited number of people who are vouched for so it is quite an honor when you receive it. For example, I am a fantastic houseguest if I do so say myself and have surfed many a couch, but I only have 1 vouched for designation so far. If someone gets 3 designations, you know this is a couchsurfing pro and you should invite them immediately to hang out.
All this detail to say that I think potentially having a website where volunteers would have profiles that nonprofit clients' recommendations/complaints could be posted on in addition to their colleagues’ recommendations would certainly add another level of accountability to pro bono projects. Seeing how responsive a volunteer is also would add credibility. Finally, having different levels of honors/designations to strive for would also show the quality of someone's engagement.
If you know everyone you work with on a pro bono project will be able to post their comments about you, it may make you think twice before flaking on your responsibilities or risk losing your reputation within that community. Similarly, as I found with couchsurfing, it is fun to “build your reputation” in a specialized community. I enjoyed collecting comments from hosts just as much as you might enjoy collecting postcards of cityscapes. Where I was once highly skeptical of this crazy “couchsurfing” concept, I now am a believer and trust it implicitly.