Giving Compass' Take:

• Eric Cantor, writing for Stanford Social Innovation Review, examines the four primary pitfalls that developers run into when designing social products. 

• How can nonprofit leaders and donors work with product developers to help them understand the social sector? 

• Here is a roadmap to impactful social innovation. 

Nonprofits and other social sector organizations are enthusiastic about using innovative mobile and web-based tools to improve their programs and service delivery, and as costs per line of code drop and an “app for that” mentality becomes ubiquitous, these organizations—with their domain expertise, end-user proximity and trust, and general scrappiness—are well positioned to design digital solutions.

It’s worth pausing for a moment, however, to recognize that today’s leading product development practices often conflict with the way social sector organizations traditionally attract resources and manage workflow.

1. The funding pitfall: While the funding and life cycle of tech businesses through an established venture model accounts for this, most social-sector funders are risk-averse and inclined to pay for expected outcomes rather than iteration.\

2. The identity pitfall: The development team needs clear guidelines on what is sacred and what is malleable before it can build in a way that truly reflects the organization’s identity and voice.

3. The operational pitfall: It’s important that practitioners agree early on how they will optimize product strategy for success.

4. The experimentation pitfall: Product development is an intensive undertaking that requires dedicated resources, conviction, and commitment, regardless of an organization’s mastery of existing programs.

Social-sector organizations—with their authentic DNA, capacity for developing deep community trust, and commitment to solving problems—will play an important part in understanding and addressing humanity’s deepest challenges into the future.

Read the full article about pitfalls in social product innovation by Eric Cantor at Stanford Social Innovation Review