After ten years in the nonprofit sector, I keep circling back to one question. How can there be so many good people, yet so many problems in the world? Each day, at work, volunteering, or elsewhere in the sector, I meet people much better than I am, who have been doing good work much longer than I have.
Yet, the biggest perplexity I have is how to scale good intentions. I am at a point in my life where I have more questions than answers, and while there is no silver bullet that will solve the world’s problems, I keep circling back to the concept of trust. Systems exist, but people on the inside reinforce them, and as much as the human ego likes to think it is in control, the reality is that no system is greater than the relationships that make it up.
Relationships require constant practice, and no single aspect is more important than trust. One key obstacle I notice is that institutions are wired for compliance and risk management, even if it means being cynical about people and clients and what they do. While there will always be corrupt individuals who take advantage of systems, and risk management is inevitable, sometimes taking a chance is a part of leadership.
I wonder what the civil society sector would look like if all services were delivered at the point of use, with significantly fewer barriers for access. For instance, if a nonprofit provides rental subsidies with a more flexible policy, it may be able to reach more people in genuine need, even if there is some increased risk of misuse.
While funders and donors alike might panic, especially in nonprofits trying to ensure money goes to the people who need it most, there would be a few fundamental differences in how things are done, and they are as follows.
First, increased access to resources will have large, positive impacts on how people feel they can rely on social services more broadly because nonprofits are now major players in the social economy. One of the biggest misconceptions about nonprofits is that they are powerless, or that their practices cannot scale. The truth of the matter is that nonprofits, according to Imagine Canada, employ 2.9 million people and account for 8.4% of Canada’s GDP. Accordingly, a change to a trust-based approach to service delivery does not just shape the way that individual clients benefit; it changes the way the economy works at large. If the purpose of progressive movements is to expand the social safety net, trust-based service delivery at any scale is a great place to start.
Second, services delivered at the point of use mean that people who depend on those supports can have deeper conversations with their service providers about their specific needs, without having to fit into a rubric. Imagine if client intakes were not about sifting through bank statements, tenant agreements, gathering IDs, and more, but about the person behind it all. Client support is about emotional support, and treating people like humans, not just data collection. By forcing reporting, you end up limiting the capacity of service providers, and sometimes prevent more creative solutions to client needs.
Third, without constant compliance and database management, staff can redirect toward longer-term projects or toward public policy advocacy. Nonprofit employees often understand their clients and political issues better than members of parliament, and their voices are essential. Yet, many employees are treated as administrators instead of advocates. Re-imagining reporting can be a new step to staff empowerment if done properly. If staff could change, limit, or redesign their reporting requirements, more advocacy will almost become inevitable because their relational understanding of clients will be freed to travel to higher levels of decision-making.
Trust doesn’t just help people, but can help to solve a fundamental problem in civic discourse — why so many bad things happen in a world of so many good people. It is not because of intentions, but because people are often limited in their freedom to act on those intentions.
Compliance serves a role, but the idea of providing services at the point of use remains an important thought experiment. It shows that, where possible, greater trust can dramatically improve people’s lives. Two great resources that have been plugging away at the stigma behind trust can be found here: trust-based philanthropy or decolonizing wealth.
Scaling good intentions requires giving space for people with those intentions to act upon them, and that becomes difficult when the underlying design of society revolves entirely around the worst-case scenario. While significant progress is being made, one of the biggest ways the social service system can change may not be through internal reform alone, but through broader societal attitudes. Every day, voters and taxpayers shape the systems that get built.
Once that trust is in place, it won’t just help individuals, it will have downstream impacts on the whole of society.
Dakota McGovern 