There is an interesting dichotomy among nonprofits – those which share the best practices they have, and those which don’t.
I presume that those who hoard and don’t share their results are fearful that the best practices could be used to take donations away that would otherwise be theirs.
In my experience, the barrier to new ideas (or stolen best practice) is not in finding out what the best practice is, but in convincing people to actually use that new idea consistently.
Legions of consultants and managers work to convince inertia-bound nonprofit managers and staff to try new things and not revert to the old practice as soon as left alone.
Instituting that best practice is the hard work. And really, IF someone stole your best practice, and IF they were able to implement it, and IF you lost some small amount of your income in order to seed another organization doing good work, it that a tragedy?
What do you think?
