I designed an app that can save your life from breast cancer, but you won’t hear about it
Women send me messages that the award-winning app I designed, saved their life through early detection of their breast cancer. But you’ve never of heard of it. This is why.
A few months ago I got this message in my inbox:
“If it wasn’t for your app I don’t know how long it would have been until I found the lump myself. It’s not just the fact that it’s a reminder, it’s also the video that talks you through too. I’m not confident about a lot of things, so this helped to know that I was doing it properly.
Because of this app, I found my lump. It’s saved my life.”
As a designer it’s so rewarding to use my skills for a cause that’s dear to my family. Design is what makes the difference to create a true impact. It’s seeing problems through the eyes of patients and creating a solution to fit their needs in a way that’s useful and beautiful.
But when this work is done under a nonprofit umbrella, the work is almost always underfunded. Not because it’s not needed or solving an important problem, but because if something isn’t designed for profit, it’s pushed to the side in the market place and society reinforces that position.
Charities have to show no one is being paid “too much” in the process of solving the problem, and that no one spends “too much” to market the solution to those who need it or to get the donors they need.
But if it’s about getting a stylish pair of shoes in the hands of customers, competitive salaries are expected. Marketing budgets are healthy and are effective in expanding market share. Done well, the shoes adorn many feet.
Customers don’t ask how much of their dollar is spent just on shoe materials to determine if they are getting a good return on their investment.
Using this metaphor for nonprofits, if an employee instead of a volunteer makes the shoes, it’s counted against the charity. If the packaging costs money, or a great commercial is made to display the features, it’s all seen as extravagant. If people are paid to test it out to make sure it was the right fit, the shoe somehow loses value. Everything that isn’t the shoe material is in effect considered a waste of investment.
*95 cents of every dollar* is the expected rate of return for the “best” nonprofits. But would any company be able to make a truly great shoe if the only investment to be made and be seen as an effective use of funds is if the company only spent funds on rubber and fabric held together by a literal shoestring budget? No warehouse, no internet bills, no payroll taxes, no R&D budget, just the shoe?
Do really great as a for-profit company and even more investment is offered to scale up. Launch an IPO. Be recognized as a great leader and go on a book tour. Be praised for a high salary because the CEO is worth every penny when s/he achieves that market share.
No one after buying a pair of shoes says, “I can’t believe the CEO of this shoe company is making a competitive salary.” But if someone donates a dollar and finds out that the CEO’s salary of that multi-million budget charity and 600 staff is making a competitive wage, it’s seen as shameful. No one stops to think, “But what impact are they making? How are they scaling their solution?” It’s only about that 95 cents.
But what could a charity do if they had perhaps 30 cents of every dollar to invest in better staff? R&D? Not have to rely solely on volunteers to provide quality services more consistently? Or fully support their volunteers with more resources and support?
In the upcoming Uncharitable documentary, it sums it up this way: Would you rather eat at a soup kitchen that invested in their facility, had reliable staff, and invested in nutrition planning, or one that got the cheapest ingredients, in the cheapest building, made by sporadically available free labor who weren’t trained in cooking or hygiene?
Knowing which one you would choose, why would anyone think that those who use these services should deserve less than we would want for ourselves? Hasn’t business shown that it’s possible to have a thriving company and terrific service and also to be efficient and effective in serving many at scale?
A charity can be super effective and help even millions of people (in my charity’s case we’ve reached over 1.5 billion people with our work and two full time staff—yes I’m tired all the time), but invest in anything other than the “shoe”, and the headlines are brutal. The leaders of the charity are fired and publicly shamed. It sends the message that charities shouldn’t innovate with our dollar. Charities shouldn’t compete to get the best leaders and industry experts. Charities must remain with a limited access to the market, limit talent searches to those who can afford a lower salary, and not compete with the for-profit sector to help us feel better about our dollar, not necessarily do the most good with our dollar.
As Dan Pallotta writes in his book, “In the name of charity, we place the needy second to football [the NFL was a nonprofit at the time], symphonies [conductors get paid millions a year at those nonprofits], and the entire world of commerce under the mistaken notion that, by refusing to allow people to make money ‘off of them,’ they are being placed first.”
I know I could make (a lot) more money with my talents in the for-profit sector, but this is my calling. I can (sorta) afford my calling, but not everyone has a safety net of family to fall back on to bring the solutions we need into the world. Oh, but what I could do with a few million dollars to invest in people and research to truly help more people get detected earlier with breast cancer!
In short, the way we view value in a nonprofit is harming our nonprofits from really tackling problems we need solved. We need to change our expectations on these literal nickel and dime budgets as being the only path to creating a lasting impact for good.
My name is Corrine. I designed an app called “Know Your Lemons” that saves lives, but you haven’t heard of it because my marketing budget consists of writing an article on Medium.
