Crowdsourcing for the Children
The National Movement for America’s Children, an organization devoted to the well-being of children in the United States, recently launched a crowdsourcing campaign designed to achieve the ambitious goal of “developing and implementing a clear strategy and set of actions that provide for healthy child development for all children.” The hope is that this plan will reduce the likelihood of unhealthy childhood experiences and help address the $104 billion the country spends each year when failing to prevent child abuse and neglect.
The organization is calling for a multifaceted approach and a holistic national strategy, including policies and actions for government, businesses, communities, faith institutions and individuals – all of whom have a role to play in supporting healthy development for all children.
The campaign is using a variety of methods to generate responses. Regularly posted surveys provide structured feedback on a predetermined set of questions while open forums encourage discussion and idea sharing. Organizers also plan to incorporate traditional offline events such as conferences and fundraising activities to generate momentum.
The movement is a combined effort from about a dozen national nonprofit groups ranging from The American Humane Society to Prevent Child Abuse America. Using the collected responses, they will formulate a strategy that will culminate in a rally in Washington D.C.
Hopefully the organization will have success similar to those of profiled in an article from Nonprofit Quarterly about volunteer-led service innovations that have managed to stay relevant and successfully mobilize volunteers, even during challenging times. Pathways to Education is one example, which has carried out one of the most effective high school dropout prevention program in North America. The volunteer-based initiative reduced the dropout rate from 56 percent to 10 percent in one of the poorest communities in Canada and is now being planted, through community ownership and volunteer commitment, in a number of other Canadian cities.
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