I’m actively involved in several nonprofits, although I’m relatively new to the nonprofit world.
One thing that truly impresses me about iNaturalist is the continuous and iterative feedback from its users. You can create feature requests, you can vote on others’ ideas, and you can see the community shape the platform together.
In contrast, some of the nonprofits I work with are very top-down. They will INFORM you about their plans, but they will rarely ASK for your input, despite the vast experience that their members have in the nonprofit sector.
I’d love to hear your experiences with this! What approaches have worked? What hasn’t worked? I’m especially curious about your thoughts on top-down vs. bottom-up management styles.
iNaturalist as an organization does not strike me as particularly bottom-up. they’re not really involving just anyone in shaping their overall mission, overall development roadmap, financial stuff, staffing, etc.
they may ask for input on specific development questions and solicit feedback on bugs, etc., but that’s not unusual for a software development organization. so i wouldn’t conflate that with overall management style.
different management styles are approrpiate for different organizations, different boards, different executive leadership, different missions, etc. what works best just depends on what your paritcular situation is.
All organisations are Top down. Some organisations has a feedback loop. There is no Bottom-up style unless it is a revolution.
I’m living a life quite like a frog in a well, with internet connectivity. From what I see around my world, some non-profit organisations may have some susceptibility to corruption. All organisations should guard against corruption. Most charities probably started as a novel idea. Then they start to gain a viral following or patronage from people. From my own country, I’ve seen before in the news that some scandals came out from the management of some charities. There was a case of a kidney dialysis charity, the CEO bought a golden sink, someone said that, and the CEO sued the person. The public then realise that the management people are loaded. so the idea is that nonprofit can be quite rich, particularly religion. Religion is soft power. Lots of money flows into the coffers of major religious organisation. Radical religious organisations may even subvert countries. Religion preachers of some radical sects are often on youtube vids or in the news. We have no idea how much money they receive. Something motivates them.
Further thoughts, Is the UN non-profit ? Is it Bottom-up or Top down?.
In the general schemes of thing, there is a factory, first you have the boss who is the Capitalist, next his executives, managers who formed the management. then the Engineers, supervisors, and follow by blue collar workers or robots. Those management who use robots obviously prefers Top down. Management often knows that image is a big factor, and may employ public relationship strategies, to gain mass appeal. so they might go the populist route. which in some cases can lead to instability, as they say too many cooks spoil the soup. It is just my opinion only. Someone ask for opinion, I just type something that came to my mind.
As someone who has been working for nonprofits for the past 30 years, I’d say — it depends.
Start with the legal structure. You don’t say what country you’re in, but the laws of the country that the nonprofit operates in are going to have an effect on how a nonprofit can operate.
Then you have to look at who the nonprofit is accountable to. Nonprofits may be accountable to some or all of the following stakeholders: funders; whoever is being served by the nonprofit; wider community; members (if and only if it’s a membership organization); etc. Differences in accountability may require different management styles.
My basic point is that there’s no one good way to manage a nonprofit. A good place to learn about different nonprofit management styles, start with BoardSource https://boardsource.org. I also find the Jossey‐Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management is a useful resource. And there are people with degrees in nonprofit leadership and management, and I find I can learn a lot from them.
Sorry I can’t come up with a simple answer to your question. Maybe I’m too close to the subject. Feel free to ignore this whole reply!
This topic is about nonprofits in general and is not really related to iNaturalist aside from it being a jumping-off point for the discussion, so I’m going to close and unlist it. The iNat Forum is for discussion of iNaturalist and related nature/conservation topics. I’d suggest seeking out a forum that’s specifically about nonprofit management.
