How can we convince professionals to engage probono in a long-term support of an NGO? We gave them a teaser. We gathered 20 of them with 6 NGOs in a 2 hour brainstorming session at the offices of Baker McKenzie. Output? “We want more”
It is quite hard when you are a professional working in a corporate firm to go out of your comfort zone to approach NGOs and offer them support, even if you really want to do it. “What am I going to find over there”, “who are these people” “maybe I will not fit and it will be awkward”. Same feeling for the NGO: “we would like someone with specific skills but what if we don’t lke the person, what if the person does not care about our special needs”…..so we realized we needed to go slowly “Yavas Yavas”
On the 5th of December, we gathered 5 NGOS and 1 social entrepreneur (Karakutu, Oy ve Otesi, Mavi Kalem, Yenidenbiz, Herkes için Mimarlik and One cotton threads) in a 2 h brainstorming session in the offices of Baker McKenzie. We had lawyers (Baker McKenzie), bankers (EBRD, IFC and Garanti), skills from industry, from other NGOer, web design and students. Everyone gathered in small groups according to affinity and they worked on one specific challenge. Sometimes it was really structured with real SWOT analysis done, sometimes it was more speaking more generally about the subject, brainstorming about it and in some cases it went deep into specific details like e-commerce legislation.
We had huge difficulties to wrap up and finish the session; everyone felt it was too short..but it was indeed a teaser…a short way to show them what the experience could be and how they could use their skills in another way. In the couple of days that followed, most NGOs have been contacted by probono consultants asking whether they could continue discussions. Amazing!
It was a first time; it was certainly not perfect with probably more work to be done to scope correctly the challenges of the NGO but everyone had fun and 90% of participant said they want to come back! We will probably organize a follow up session in January. Stay tuned!