Originally Posted on Stanford SOCIAL INNOVATION Review
Stress is demanding. But our brains can adapt remarkably well. In fact, according to experts in health psychology like Laurel Mellin, if we train our brains “for the high-stress times in which we live, just about every aspect of life would improve.” In other words, we can replace mental patterns that inhibit us with thoughts and strategies that prime our minds for action and resilience.
I see similar potential for social impact organizations. Mastering the strategies that serve us during a crisis can fundamentally improve the way our organizations operate—long after the crisis is over.
During the last year, I helped bring to life two COVID-19 pandemic response initiatives: COVID-19 Action Fund for Africa (CAF-Africa), a collaboration between more than 30 partners to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) to community health workers in Africa, and Pandemic Action Network, through which more than 120 members help accelerate the global COVID-19 response and prepare the world for future pandemics.
Like many other efforts, the pandemic forced us to work in crisis mode; we had to assemble teams and partners extremely quickly and work in unconventional ways. Yet despite the challenges, the initiatives have procured more than 81 million units of PPE in Africa and reached more than 3.5 billion people in 117 countries about the importance of wearing masks.
Among the approaches we’ve taken, three have stood out: forming loose partnerships, putting ego aside, and acting with urgency. While these strategies aren’t new to the social sector, they have proved particularly vital to our success during the pandemic. I believe more organizations can find them vital as well, as they come together outside times of crisis to accelerate progress on all kinds of issues.
1. Forming Loose Partnerships
Many collaborations are limited by their DNA. Sometimes a leader or donor narrows the group’s perspective and agenda. Other groups operate by consensus, but members can agree on only a few actions. In circumstances like these, initiatives fail to capitalize on the full range of expertise and activities available to them.
One way organizations can shed these limitations is by forming “loose” networks or partnerships that strike a balance between independence and support. Members contribute what they can and lean on the group as necessary, but the group neither follows a single member’s lead nor speaks for every member all the time.
Art collectives frequently employ this model. In 1960s New York, for example, Judson Dance Theater united choreographers, musicians, writers, and visual artists under a common aesthetic. The group had no director and few formal rules. Instead, members collaborated in whatever permutations met their mutual goals for exploring style and form. Members like choreographer Trisha Brown were extremely active, creating and contributing to dozens of different works, while others like Andy Warhol contributed only occasionally. Though contributors rotated, the collective’s presence and output were constant, making the theater both prolific and influential. Judson produced almost 200 performance works during the two years it operated and became a major voice in defining postmodern dance in the United States.
To generate a similar level of activity, Pandemic Action Network had to unite experts in policy, public health, equity, communications, and dozens of other areas, and take rapid and decisive action on multiple fronts simultaneously. So, we built flexibility into our DNA. Members can opt into specific activities, such as co-signing a policy paper or using their platforms to share a message. But more importantly, the network creates a forum where members can learn from each other and support the needs of the day. Terms of membership also make it clear the network’s leadership can act without extensive and time-consuming consultation: Members can’t veto network activities, but neither are they accountable for everything it does.
This looseness has allowed the network to meet a range of challenges with speed and might. It helped us shape President Biden’s pandemic policies, support major public awareness campaigns on social media, and bolster the world’s largest effort to share vaccines with low-income countries. Leveraging each member’s strengths wherever possible enables broad and deep impact.
2. Putting Ego Aside
You don’t need a crisis to teach you “there is no ‘I’ in team,” but the pressure of a crisis does reveal how many ways ego can enter the equation—even in mission-driven work. Organizations compete for credit or prominence so that they can secure the funding they need to survive. Individuals compete for speaking opportunities and other forms of recognition. In other words, putting ego aside takes a lot of discipline. It means breaking old habits and embracing new ones. It may even mean suffering a personal cost for the sake of the greater good—“taking one for the team,” as they say.
Basketball player Kevin Garnett offers a perfect example. He spent 10 years as the leading scorer for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Then he was traded to the Boston Celtics, which had two other star players, and his scoring and playing time dropped dramatically. Rather than complain or rebel, Garnett focused on figuring out the best way to serve his new team: playing defense. His contribution helped the Celtics win the league championship and earned him Defensive Player of the Year honors—proving that “taking one for the team” can have personal benefits as well.
During the pandemic, putting ego aside has helped members of the Pandemic Action Network not only work better together but also collaborate with organizations outside our group. To thwart the worldwide surge of COVID-19 cases in late summer of 2020, for example, we launched World Mask Week, a campaign that brought together a wide range of public and private partners to focus messaging on wearing masks. While the network provided a toolkit, we encouraged partners to use whatever language they were comfortable with to raise awareness on the issue.
It didn’t matter whose hashtag got the most mileage. What mattered was, by the end of that week, billions of people around the world had heard that wearing a mask was one of the simplest and most valuable things they could do to protect themselves and other people. Had each of us prioritized our own individual campaigns, we never would have had that kind of reach.
CAF-Africa members put ego aside in an even more sensitive context: money. To get the coalition going, members shared their organizations’ donor contacts with the group, generating almost 100 potential leads. Some members redirected individual offers from donors and asked them to give to CAF-Africa instead.
Ego is sneaky. We need to stay vigilant to keep it out of our collaborations. By prioritizing the common mission every day, with every partner, we can unlock greater potential for action and progress.
3. Acting With Urgency
Effectively responding to a crisis means matching the speed of the problem. But acting with urgency can help make gains against long-term challenges as well. The tech sector has built its reputation on this idea of rapid innovation, and CodeNow Founder Ryan Seashore says nonprofits can target a similar pace—“except that we’re not so much about moving fast and breaking things, as we are moving fast and helping them.”
For collaborations in social impact, acting with urgency means taking on challenges instead of waiting for the big global organizations to address them or invite you to join. It means setting aggressive deadlines and doing your best with what you know now, rather than waiting for the perfect answer or plan.
The recent shortage of medical oxygen in India illustrates why this is so important. As soon as it made headlines in April 2021, economist Ramanan Laxminarayan founded an organization called Oxygen for India to deliver oxygen cylinders and concentrators to providers and patients at no cost. Rather than wait for a critical mass of funds, members, or beneficiaries, Laxminarayan jumped into the fray by collecting donations from his personal network. This enabled the group to provide some aid immediately and draw attention to the effort. By the end of only one month, Oxygen for India had accumulated more than 20 organizational partners and delivered 2,500 oxygen cylinders and more than 1,500 concentrators to those in need.
CAF-Africa was similarly proactive about addressing the lack of PPE for community health workers. Multiple organizations, like Community Health Impact Coalition (CHIC), were aware of aspects of the problem, and came together in April 2020 to analyze the landscape, raise money, and put PPE on cargo planes to Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and other countries. This issue didn’t land on the agenda of major global agencies until a year later. Had we waited for an invitation or precedent, half a million workers would still be without PPE. Instead, by the end of 2020, our initiative was the fifth largest procurer of PPE in the world.
Beyond Crisis Mode
A crisis like COVID-19 forces organizations to put aside conventional preferences and habits, and embrace the plans and partners that help them take meaningful action right away. Although we took up the strategies outlined here out of necessity, organizations can also adopt them by choice.
Everyone in the social sector is meeting a critical need. Providing food security is important whether there’s a famine or not. Climate action is necessary no matter how many acres of land are on fire. Whatever the mission, structural limitations and selfish impulses impede progress, and we need to push them out of the way.
Taking action together, with urgency and without ego, helps us fulfill our commitment to impact and focus on what really matters. We lean on this truth when crisis demands it. But in fact, it’s true all the time.