Think both at the Micro- and Macro-level.
It’s an unusual thing to ask, so what do I mean by Think Micro and Macro?
What Micro means is likely what’s already occurring at your small or start-up nonprofit. Thinking Micro is about looking at what’s right in front of you, facing you every day, in the immediate Now. It’s highly likely that it was the Micro that led you to form your nonprofit in the first place. You saw a Need or Problem that you could not ignore because it was in your face every day. Micro is close by, it’s right now, it’s urgent, and it’s important to whoever else is in your circle.
What I mean by Macro is a little harder to define, and may not seem important, but it is. Macro is thinking about your Problem/Need as not just your own, but something the world is affected by. Something Macro is being felt way outside your sphere, it is the ripple effect of what you see right in front of you. It touches people at the street level (the people you serve every day), and also indirectly and eventually touches everyone else.
Example: the cars you and your friends drive are gas guzzlers. Your nonprofit wants to get everyone in your neighborhood into a fuel-efficient car. Thinking about it on the Macro level, the problem is not just about the cars you and your friends drive, but all the millions of other cars on the road with the same fuel-inefficiency and all the extra fossil fuels being used up by all of them and the carbon footprint they are all making collectively, and the choking fumes they are creating and the hole they’re creating in the ozone layer. All those cars end up affecting all of humanity; we all breathe the same air and live in the same atmosphere. That’s the problem from the Macro level.
Now that we understand what Micro and Macro thinking means, so what? Well, the importance of thinking at both the Micro- and Macro-levels comes into play in several different ways.
First, it is critical when you’re researching prospects. If you can see your organization and what it does and why from both the individual, and local levels, and also from the community-wide and worldview levels, you can increase the pool of funders available to you and possibly interested in what your org is about.
Thinking Micro and Macro also helps as you build your case statement and approach to funders. Examining the Need you seek to address or Problem you work to solve from the societal level and then also from the personal level gives you two stories to tell and expands the need/problem, its effects, and the potential impact you can make. If you can express the difference your org can make both from the outsized standpoint, but then also bring it down to the individual story, you can succeed it telling the larger story (appealing to the “head”) and the smaller, street level story (appealing to the “heart”).
How do you do this? If you’re a new or smaller nonprofit, you’re probably just too busy keeping your head down and doing your nonprofit’s thing. You are likely faced every day with stories at the Micro level. You come in contact with the people you serve and the needs they have and the problems they are working on all the time. It’s what gets you up in the morning and keeps you from sleeping at night.
But how do you think on a Macro level?
It can start with thinking about not just what is happening in your circle, but thinking also about how the same problem/need is felt in the next community over (or county, or state, etc.). Problems tend to be universal, so if you are working to solve them, likely someone else is too.
And if you have that in common, wouldn’t it be useful to know what someone else is doing to ease the ease or alleviate the same problem? Sharing of info, as opposed to staying insular, is why associations have members and hold conferences. And a really good reason for you to attend one. There are possibly other ‘solves’ or other ways of looking at common issues that could prove useful to you.
What could result is not only that someone hears you, gets it, and offers an empathetic ear, but possibly even a new and better way to go about the work you do. Or even possibly an alliance could be formed so sharing of resources can make both of you stronger (think “barter” or “trade” or the like).
Another possible benefit? Grant applications often ask about other similar organizations in your community — are you working with them? If you can not only identify those organizations, but also cite a meeting of the minds between you, isn’t that better than answering ‘no,’ and being wrong? And seeming isolated and unaware of the landscape?
So my suggestion, to Think Micro and Macro, actually makes the need you work to fulfill more pressing, the work you are doing more important, and the benefits of funding you and your org’s solutions have a stronger benefit TO SOCIETY. It’s imperative to Think Micro and Macro to be able to impress upon funders and donors how your organization is the best investment of their dollars.
