CROWDSOURCING: A PROMISING PRACTICE BOTH NONPROFIT-LIKE AND VISIONARY

Over the better part of a decade, crowdsourcing has emerged as a tool for accessing insights, developing innovations, and using collective intelligence to identify approaches to address complex problems. Increasingly, crowdsourcing is being used as a pathway for creating strategies by leveraging the participation of diverse stakeholders through eliciting feedback, inviting ideas, and exploring new concepts. This, of course, should be native to nonprofits, the purpose of which is centered on collective action and fulfilling the public good—as the public envisions it. So, we should not make the mistake of thinking of this as a foreign concept for us; there is a crying need to recommit to the practice of this kind of engagement as a core practice.Over the better part of a decade, crowdsourcing has emerged as a tool for accessing insights, developing innovations, and using collective intelligence to identify approaches to address complex problems. Increasingly, crowdsourcing is being used as a pathway for creating strategies by leveraging the participation of diverse stakeholders through eliciting feedback, inviting ideas, and exploring new concepts. This, of course, should be native to nonprofits, the purpose of which is centered on collective action and fulfilling the public good—as the public envisions it. So, we should not make the mistake of thinking of this as a foreign concept for us; there is a crying need to recommit to the practice of this kind of engagement as a core practice.