CASE 4

I am a Social Entrepreneur

Expand your network

Especially given some of the less mature financial markets in which civic technology might be initiated, organisations should explore expanding their networks to new kinds of contacts and partners, even before considering diversifying revenue streams. This means active participation in social communication channels and relevant events. This might even mean looking for mentors that exist outside your current network. New partners could mean new resources, both human and technical, and new communities.

Budget like there’s a tomorrow

Budgets need to be designed with the eventual scaling strategy in mind. This means trying to capacitate as much as you possibly can today, for the organisation you want tomorrow. This must however be realistic. It will need to be balanced against the risks of expanding too quickly, too soon, and making your overheads too burdensome. Think of this as another “Goldilocks” scenario (see Tip I). Basically, what is being advised is not just budgeting based on previous expenses, but also understanding your budget needs to facilitate where you want to get to.

Think about your dollar value

There should be a strong emphasis on trying to determine both the social and economic implications of your product (alongside its business model). Unpacking return on investment needs to be thought of in significant detail, and with realistic projections strongly embedded in your context.

B: Reimagine Yourself

While you need a clear sense of who you are as an organisation and what you are good at to ensure your broader success, it is also an important exercise to try and reimagine yourself, even if for pure speculation. If you are a non-profit, what would a for-profit version of your organisation look like? If you are a for profit, what would it look like to access charitable funds?

F: Budget for the Future

Sustainability needs to be in your budget line items. Particularly given the challenges to the types of funds available and limitations to the use of those funds, you should specifically allocate line items that can foster your sustainability. For-profit entities do this through the accumulation of profit, and non-profits should do this through the accumulation of surpluses that gets allocated against future expenditure.These line items should be included across funding and financing proposals and offer security against volatility in the funding and finance environment. It also better enables you to sustain organisationaldevelopment, like employing as opposed to contracting capacity and talent.

H: The Open-Source Conundrum: How to derive value from non-proprietary assets

Many civic technology organisations are embedded in the open movement, though this is not necessarily an innate feature of such entities. An interesting consideration in this regard is how a civic technology entity can create business models around non-proprietary data or even non-proprietary code. Each organisation will have to decide whether to what extent they wish to deviate from open models, or how to adjust their business models to extract value from something other than proprietary assets.This may simply mean focusing not on selling data or code, but rather on your service and expertise.

I: Diversify…Somewhat

Many civic technology organisations will have heard the call to diversify income streams. As seen in the various considerations of risk, this is a really important strategy for ensuring that you are less reliant on single entities whose priorities or strategies may change, and also less politically vulnerable - creating abetter balance of power between you and your funding sources. However, there is a caution from other research worth noting: "Gains from diversification can quickly reach diminishing and negative returns as additional investment in capacity are required to manage and support these added revenue streams andrelationships". You can think of it then as a classic "Goldilocks" situation: how much diversification will be "just enough" for your organisation considering your ultimate impact and finance strategy?