Developing a Nonprofit Response to the Economic Crisis, Wikipedia-Style

Martin Kearns, the founder of a nonprofit environmental organization, has started a Wikipedia-style effort to help advocacy groups and other charities weather the recession.

Mr. Kearns begins the entry by telling readers that “we should all begin to operate with new assumptions.”

He says that money going into advocacy will decline by at least 20 percent, and perhaps by as much as 50 percent. “The progressive advocacy movement in 2010 will look very different from the movement at the end of 2008,” he writes.

The dissolution of the movement will not take place in predictable or sensible ways, he writes. Large, effective groups may fail, and less effective ones may survive. Connections among organizations will wither, and “a sustained effort to repair and reconnect these threads will be required,” Mr. Kearns says.

The deepening economic crisis will also fuel a move toward “rapid change and cultural instability,” according to Mr. Kearns. This means that charities will have to seize opportunities more quickly and try to influence policy in rapid waves.

Meanwhile, he says that networks of nonprofit organizations need plans to “rationally deal with the reductions in overall capacity while also capitalizing on the opportunities that these disruptions produce.”

Mr. Kearns invites others to edit his ideas and add their own insights, with the goal of developing a “shared response plan” to the economic crisis.

(The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a special section of its Web site devoted to the economy’s challenge.)