I always liked the star fish story.
An old man walks along a beach and sees a young boy throwing something into the water. As he approaches, he sees hundreds of starfish lining the beach, washed in from the tide. The young boy is rushing around, throwing the starfish back into the water one by one. The old man asks why he bothers, it's pointless. There are too many starfish to help them all. As he flings a starfish deep into the water, the young boy replies, "It mattered to that one."
This story reminds me of how great things start small. Yes, he's just a kid, making a difference one starfish at a time, but it mattered to that starfish. A lot of non-profits find themselves collecting statistics and trying to make quotas and goals. I love goals. I think they push you to do better, be better. But it mattered to that last person that non-profit helped. Non-profits, or NGOs, starting out are like the little boy. They have big goals, but start with a small impact. Maybe they'll grow up and build a starfish collecting and throwing machine, but right now they are throwing them in one by one.
I'm helping start a non-profit called Worldwide Mobility. Today we met with the founder of Good2Gether. I'm excited. Good2Gether is trying to make sense of the vast space of non-profits and help connect them with people who care about issues when they care about them. It got me excited for the future and really thinking. If this gets big, he will have a very profitable business model, and non-profits will have more traffic. In an era where everyone is in information overload, it's easy to forget that you want to google how to help with the tsunami that just occurred. It's much easier to click on a link with an appropriate non-profit that's right next to the article. It's a call to action, focused on what people can do, supplies they can donate, how they can volunteer. I'm excited to incorporate that into our future plans.
Worldwide Mobility fills a niche that has been unaddressed thus far in Africa. The quality of the donated, well meaning chairs is low. The chairs last a few months instead of the years that they are needed. NGOs come in and donate in mass hundreds, thousands of wheelchairs, but ultimately, they end up in junk yards. When a part breaks, it is impossible to fix. Fortunately, there is something that does work: local workshops. Local workshops provide assessment, fitting, and instruction to people who need wheelchairs. Designed for Africa use, these wheelchairs often last five or more years and are made from local materials. Of course, funding is an issue. Worldwide Mobility connects donnor funds to the local workshops. Even though these chairs cost more, when you consider the cost of the number of donated chairs it would take to last as long as one locally made chair, local is better.
It's like the starfish. Worldwide Mobility flings them deep where they can thrive. It takes more effort to help one person, but it matters so much more to that one.
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