Britt recently posed a question: "What is needed to facilitate more nonprofits' adoption of the social web?" Here's my attempt at an answer...

We all know that real estate is about "location, location, location." I propose that the next iteration of the nonprofit sector should be about "distribution, distribution, distribution." Those of us who have worked in the nonprofit sector know that the work is hard, the hours are long, and the pay is, well, disproportionate to the first two. Nonprofits have tried to address those problems by fundraising more, building bigger websites, and hiring folks from the private sector, among other approaches. But instead of trying to "bulk up" a system that doesn't work, why don't we consider changing the system?

• What if organizations -- rather than doing direct mail or hiring consultants to squeeze money out of supporters -- chose to equip their supporters with tools that would allow those supporters to fundraise on the organization's behalf?

• What if organizations -- rather than emailing supporters with one specific action request -- opened up that process and chose to equip their supporters with tools that would allow those supporters to not only act on the organization's behalf but also to organize their friends and family around those actions?

• What if organizations -- as a matter of strategy, philosophy, and capacity -- actually trusted that their supporters care about their work, want to act on their behalf, and have a wealth of resources to contribute to that work?

Putting simple tools in the hands of their supporters is a great way for the nonprofit sector to not only adopt social web tools, but also to adopt social web philosophy. That's what we're trying to encourage at PledgeBank, and it's what foundations like Overbrook and Case are doing in fantastic ways.

There's a precedent here -- this is the philosophy that the open source and the Wikipedia communities adhere to: "two heads are better than one." When you have distributed work, there is more accuracy, more accountability, and more capacity -- all things the nonprofit sector needs to learn more about.

So, my answer here would be that the nonprofit sector needs more of a philosophical adherence to social web tools before trying to figure out how to use those tools. Let's not put the cart before the horse -- let's have a conversation about our missions, what we hope to accomplish, and how we can best empower and equip our supporters to help us do that hard and important work.