[MUSIC PLAYING]
[APPLAUSE]
ANN MEI CHANG:
It's so fun for me
to be here for a
number of reasons.
One is I live two blocks away,
so this is the easiest speaking
gig possible.
The other, as I was
telling, Jacquelline,
it's like coming
back to high school.
I left Google about
eight years ago,
and it's like all these
memories come flooding back.
This building actually wasn't
a Google building when I left.
But it's consistent
branding and all that,
so it brings back
lots of good memories.
So when I left Google
eight years ago,
I decided to spend the second
half of my career working
towards social good,
specifically focused
on Google poverty.
And I had spent my whole
career in the tech world.
I studied as a
software engineer,
as an engineering director.
I knew how to build
software, but I knew nothing
about global poverty.
So I knew I had a lot to learn.
And I wasn't really sure
how I could contribute.
At first, everyone
was trying to come
to me to help them build
an app for this or that
or build a website, and
it wasn't clear to me
that that was really going
to be a highest and best use.
So I set out to learn.
And one of the things
that really struck me,
as I dug into these
issues, was that there's
these immense, complex
challenges out there.
And there's incredible people
working on these issues,
with such dedication, a lot
of resources going into it.
But it just felt like we
were barely making a dent.
And so I think my journey
over the last eight years
has really been
trying to figure out
not how I can make my own tiny
little mark on some corner
of some issue, but really
looking at the system
and saying, how can we do this
better and trying to bring some
the experiences that
I've had at Google
and other places to some of
these big social challenges.
And so I'm assuming
people here generally
have heard of the
"Lean Startup."
Is that, yes?
And so I think the
"Lean Startup" just
is one of the books that's
really captured some
of the best practices
of innovation
I think we live and
breathe here at Google.
And Eric talks about
the "Lean Startup"
as a methodology for building
products and services
under conditions of
extreme uncertainty,
which is true for
startup companies,
is true for a lot
of things we're
trying to invent
here at Google that
have never been done before.
And I would argue it's
equally if not more true
when it comes to
social challenges.
Because we're talking about big,
complex, long-term entrenched
issues that we don't
have solutions for.
And so in that case, there's
a huge amount of uncertainty,
but yet what seems--
what I found to be
true is that most
of the organizations
out there who
are trying to tackle
these challenges
are really good at
predictable execution.
They like to create
these grandmaster plans.
Maybe they don't like
to do it, but the system
of applying for
grants and so forth,
forces them to create
these grandmasters plans,
and they're expected to
execute rigidly to that plan--
sort of the opposite of what we
all know innovation looks like.
So when there is
such uncertainty,
I think what we
need to do instead
is look at approaches
that help accelerate
the speed of learning.
And this probably seems
obvious to all of you.
And I know lots of
nonprofit leaders
who have picked up the
"Lean Startup," have heard
about other innovation tools,
such as human-centered design,
and they say, this
makes a lot of sense.
We want to do this.
And then, they get stuck
because they struggle
with a number of barriers,
such as the nature of how
restrictive funding can be, the
difficulty of measuring impact,
and the length of time it
can take to realize impact,
and also the whole notion
of experimentation,
running A/B tests sounds great
when you're building a website.
It's a little harder
when you're talking
about experimenting on
really vulnerable people who
are living on the edge.
And so that's really
why I wrote this book.
It's not to invent
something new.
I don't come up
with new methodology
here that didn't exist before--
but to really look at how
these best practices that
have come out of
places like Google
can be adapted for the
realities of the context
that organizations
work in who are trying
to deliver social good
until, in the process
of writing the
book, I spoke with--
I was lucky to interview
over 200 organizations--
big and small, domestic and
international, nonprofits
and for-profits, funders
and implementers,
and really try to see,
among the most successful,
what were the core
elements of their success?
And I kind of boiled it
down into three principles.
And what was surprising to me
is that the traditional way
of going about doing social good
is the exact opposite of this.
We tend to think too
small, start too big,
and get diverted by many
things on the path to impact.
So let me start
with "think big."
So what I found is
that most nonprofits,
the way that they
go about their work
is that they plan
based on constraints.
We have this much money.
We have this many people.
We have this grant opportunity.
There's this size and scope.
And so what can we do
within this box we're in?
And they usually do some good.
But it rarely moves the needle.
This is where it feels like
we're doing so much work
and working so hard, and yet
we're never getting ahead.
I think the first shift
that needs to happen
is that we need to stop
planning based on constraints
and start planning
based on the need.
What is the actual
need in the world?
What would actually move the
needle on changing, addressing
a real problem?
And that's a really
different approach.
You know, here in
Silicon Valley,
we know everybody's-- all the
startup companies are running
around with their PowerPoint
decks that show the hockey
stick curve of how they're
going to reach a billion people.
That doesn't happen
in the social sector
very often, at
least, and it needs
to because the problems
are just as big.
Let me just illustrate
what that looks like.
Over the last 30 years, we've
made slow but steady progress
on core social
challenges like access
to clean water,
electricity, and sanitation.
This is really hard,
painstaking work because we're
trying to reach people
who are very poor,
who are living in very remote
areas, and so it's slow.
And yet during this
same period of time,
adoption of mobile
phones skyrocketed.
And what's the difference here?
One of the differences is that
this is something people really
want in demand.
I've heard so many
stories of people
who will top up their mobile
phone before they'll buy food.
And so today, there's more
people with mobile phones
than have a toilet.
The other side is, on the
supply side, the companies that
manufacture mobile
phones make a profit,
can plow that into making
better phones for cheaper
and distributing them.
The telecom companies
that sell minutes
are able to make a profit, and
so they can build more towers,
reach more rural areas,
deliver service more cheaply.
And so through this
combination of strong demand
and strong supply, you
see this kind of growth.
And certainly, not everything
in the social sector
is going to look
like this, but I
think we should
challenge ourselves
to say, how do we shoot
for something that
has this kind of trajectory?
And I think it's possible
in more cases than we think.
And that starts out by setting
a goal, setting higher sights.
A nonprofit here in
the Bay Area called
"Earn" is focused on helping
low-income Americans develop
a habit of savings.
And after 10 years
in business, they
were being lauded at being
the top of their field,
having 7,000 micro
savings accounts.
And the founder, Ben Mangan,
one day woke up and he thought,
we're getting all
this recognition,
but, really, there are an
estimated 50 to 70 million
Americans who could
benefit from this.
And we're reaching
7,000 after 10 years.
We're barely
scratching the surface.
And so he got up
at an awards dinner
and made this grand
announcement that they
were going to reach a million
people in the next five years.
That's a big stretch from 7,000.
But what it did is it forced
Earn to re-look at their model.
They were doing in-person
visits to each of their clients.
They were doing a
financial match.
And these things were
feasible if they're
going to get to the
scope of the need.
And so it forced them to take
a different look at things.
And they ended up
building a technology
platform that could reach a
lot more people, a lot more
cheaply.
And the first year after
rolling out that platform,
they reached 85,000 people--
so more than 10 times as many
as in their first 10 years
combined.
There's just a
illustration of what
it can look like to shift your
mindset and to shoot bigger.
And that often means
that we don't necessarily
know the path there yet.
But at least if
we're successful,
we can really move the needle.
So the second principle of
Lean Impact is to start small.
We all know here that, when we
have some great product idea,
that we want to start small.
We dog-food things;
we run A/B tests.
But this is uncommon
in the social sector.
And we all know that
by starting small,
we can make a bigger
impact over time,
because we can learn much
more faster, iterate much
more quickly when we're
experimented with just 5,
or 10, or 100
people versus trying
to carry the infrastructure
and all the logistics
related to serving
thousands of people.
So the core of "Lean Startup,"
Eric talks about the Build,
Measure, Learn feedback loop.
And this is the cycle of
iteration where we build an--
you know we have a potential
solution, a hypothesis
about what it will do.
We build an experiment,
measure, gather the data,
and we learn and we
iterate through this.
So this is all very familiar
to us in the tech world.
It's sort of familiar
in the social sector.
The only problem is,
in the social sector,
this cycle usually takes years.
So in the global
development space,
you're often designing a program
for one, or two, or three
years before it
even hits the field.
And say it's a
five-year program,
you run it for 2 and 1/2 years.
You then do your midline
evaluation, which usually
takes a year in and of itself.
then, you're 3 and 1/2
years into your program,
you get some data,
and then you might
plow what you learned
into your next proposal.
So the whole cycle could
take like five or seven years
to get through.
And so if you imagine these
great, complex challenges
and you're only learning on
the cycle of seven years,
you're not going to
make a lot of progress.
And the world is only
moving faster and faster.
So the key here is,
how do we speed up
this feedback loop
for social good so
that we can make
faster progress,
and can take more risks, and
try more different things,
can find much better solutions?
And so when it comes
to social impact,
there's three
dimensions that I think
we need to test hypotheses
around-- value, impact,
and growth.
In the "Lean Startup,"
Eric talks about the value
hypothesis and the
growth hypothesis
is a two-core hypothesis to
test that we do within the tech
industry, certainly.
The value hypothesis
is certainly
not only do people
want your product,
but they'll demand
it, come back for it,
tell their friends about it.
Growth is, what is
the engine for growth
that's going to drive adoption?
Are people going to refer folks?
Are they going to pay money
for it that you can plow back
into investment?
And so forth.
But then for social
impact, we need
to add a third hypothesis,
which is the impact hypothesis.
It's not enough to have
something that people want
and have it be able
to get to people,
then you can just be talking
about Nike shoes, maybe.
But it also has to
have social impact.
And too often we don't ask the
simple question, does it work?
Does it deliver the social
benefit that we are seeking.
And so let me just
talk briefly--
give a brief example
for each of these three
and what it might look
like in the social context.
So for value, this is testing--
is this something that people
will really demand, and use,
and engage with?
And a MVP for value
will look very different
and can look very different
in the social sector
than when you're testing
an online service.
In this case, it's a social
enterprise called Copia Global.
It's in Kenya.
They set out to look
at how to provide
a much wider range
of consumer goods
to people living in rural areas
that typically only have access
to the basic consumer staples.
And so rather than building
out the infrastructure
to transport goods, to
build an online catalog
or ordering system,
and warehouses,
and all this kind of stuff,
they decided to run an MVP.
Their MVP consisted
of the CEO Crispin,
going to the local Walmart
equivalent, the Nakumatt,
and taking pictures of a
bunch of different products
off the shelves of what he
thought people might like.
And he pasted these into
a handful of catalogs,
distributed them
to a few villages,
and stepped back to
see what would happen.
And his questions were,
would people even want
to order from a catalog?
What kinds of things
would they order?
Would agents sell
from the catalog?
And they learned a lot of
things, just from this process.
First, they learned
that people would order.
Orders started coming in.
And when an order would
come in, Crispin himself
would go run to the store, buy
the product off the shelves,
and hand carry it
to the village.
Now this is certainly not
something that could scale,
but it's something
that he could get up
and running within a few days.
And so he validated
the fact that, yes,
people wanted to order
from the catalog.
This was a value to people.
He also found out
what kind of products
people wanted to order.
One of the surprises
was that, today,
one of their most popular
products is cement.
Not something they
thought of initially,
but if you think
about it, going--
If you don't have a car going
and getting cement and carrying
it home is actually
kind of hard.
And so it's something
that people really
value getting delivery of.
And then, they had another
surprise, which is,
they originally thought that
the agents that they would use
would be the people who are
running these kind of kiosk,
the corner stores
in these villages,
because they were
already selling goods.
But it turned out that
these kiosk owners
were more interested in moving
the inventory they were already
carrying in their shops.
And so they didn't
really try to encourage
people to buy from the catalog.
And the people who ended up
making much better agents
were complementary
businesses, like hair salons,
where people would be
waiting to get their haircut,
they could flip
through the catalog,
and it would be an
additional stream of income.
So through this
kind of MVP, again,
that looks very
different than if you're
testing an online
service, they were
able to learn a ton of stuff
very quickly very cheaply that
really helped them
refine their service.
On the impact front, one
of the biggest challenges
is, as I mentioned earlier,
that it can take a long time
to fully realize impact.
One of the examples of where
that's true is in education.
The educational attainment
can take years to realize.
Summit Public Schools is another
nonprofit in the Bay Area.
And they set out with this
idea of Diane Tavenner, who's
the founder, set
out with the idea
that she wanted to run the
school for a diverse student
body, where 100% of the
students would graduate college.
Now they brought in all the best
practices that they could find,
set up a charter school,
and eight years later,
when their first
cohort graduated
from college, what
they found was
they were doing significantly
better than average.
And they were getting
all sorts of pressure
to scale their model.
And Diane said, wait, slow down.
We're doing really
good, but we're still
far short of the 100% target.
We can do better.
But she also said,
there is no way
I'm waiting another eight years
to try something different
and see if it works.
And so what she
decided instead is
to figure out how
to build a culture
and process for
speeding up learning
within their organization.
And that consisted of coming
up with a platform where
they could capture data.
So they moved to a
weekly cycle where
they would do
student assessments
to see what students learned.
They would have
focus groups, see
what people were engaged
with, get feedback
from teachers, and so forth--
and gather all this data
on a weekly basis.
And they ended up running
57 weeks of experiments,
kind of varying the
length, and duration,
and nature of different
classroom elements,
to come up with this
revolutionary model
of personalized learning.
And today, that model
of personalized learning
has been adopted by
over 300 public schools.
And last year, their students
had a 99% admission rate
to college.
So they haven't graduated
yet, but they're
learning much, much faster now.
And so it's just an example
that, a lot of times,
even though the full impact may
take a long time to realize,
there's earlier
indicators that we
can capture that help us improve
and refine our interventions.
The third pillar of social
innovation is growth.
And I want to share the
example of VisionSpring
to illustrate what
growth might look like,
because it's very different
than in the private sector.
So VisionSpring set out with--
their audacious goal was
to take an invention that's
700 years old, that has been
proven to increase productivity
and learning potential,
and that's eyeglasses.
We often think of innovation as
got to be some whiz bang latest
technology, but they took
something that's 700 years old,
and yet two and a half billion
people who need eyeglasses
don't have them today.
And so they set out to
try to figure this out.
They started out by going to
two geographies, El Salvador
and India, hiring
some people they
called "vision entrepreneurs"
to do outreach to these--
to people in rural areas
and provide vision care.
And they came back
with compelling stories
of kids who were able
to learn, of adults
who were able to work again.
And for most nonprofits, they
would be thrilled by this.
They're making a huge difference
in these people's lives.
But VisionSpring thought
it wasn't enough.
They were losing money with
every person they reached.
They would never be
able to get to scale.
So they pivoted.
Their second incarnation,
they created vision centers
in more urban areas, and served
a more affluent population,
and took the profits from
that to cross-subsidize,
outreach some more rural areas.
And so through this, they became
financially self sustainable.
Again, the holy grail
for nonprofits--
I'm making a big
difference, and I'm
financially self-sustainable.
But it still wasn't enough.
Because it would have
taken them decades to be
able to scale their
infrastructure to reach
everyone they wanted to reach.
So they pivoted again.
They ended up partnering with
an organization in Bangladesh
called BRAC that has a network
of community health care
workers in every
corner of the country
and provided vision services
through this existing network.
And so through this
partnership, they've
now been able to reach
over a million people.
And through additional
partnerships,
they've reached over four
and a half million people.
And so now, they're making
a difference, financially
self-sustainable, and
reaching millions.
There's only one problem.
Four and a half million
people is a tiny fraction
of 2 and 1/2 billion people.
And they recognized
that this is not
something any one
organization could solve.
There's a systems problem
that manufacturers
weren't incentivized to
create low cost enough classes
and get them distributed
to rural areas.
Governments weren't taking
care of the basic vision
needs of their populations.
And so they started a
public private partnership
called the EYElliance
that brings together
eyeglass manufacturers,
and governments,
and nonprofits to look
at these systems issues.
And one of their first
successes was an MOU
they signed with the
government of Liberia,
where the government
agreed to integrate vision
care into their public health
system and public school
system.
And so you can
imagine that, as they
look at this more
on a systemic level,
and try to influence policy
and influence market dynamics,
that they have a hope
of eventually getting
to that two and a
half billion number.
So the last principle
of "Lean Impact"
is to relentlessly seek impact.
Now this may seem like
the obvious thing to do.
After all, these are
mission-driven organizations.
Of course they're
going to seek impact.
But it turns out that
there's so many things that
push in the opposite direction.
You've all probably heard
of this phrase, fall in love
with the problem,
not the solution.
And what I see with a
lot of organizations
is that people get
excited about applying
a particular technology
or the particular role
of their organization,
or they have
pride of ownership over the
design of an intervention
that they have invested
their time and energy into
and have seen make a difference.
One of the indicators
of this, to me,
as I talk to lots of different
international NGOs who work
in education, or health
care, or agriculture--
and a lot of them have
similar programs--
and every one of them will tell
me their program is the best.
And they can't all
possibly be right.
And so we're not
really being rigorous
in looking at what really is
the best solution to a problem.
People are just getting
accustomed to promoting
their thing--
because it's on their website.
It's what they
pitched to funders.
Everybody's saying why
their thing is the best.
And very few of them
can tell me basic--
answer basic
questions like, what
is the cost effectiveness
of your solution
so that we can actually
compare these things.
And so part of what
I think we need to do
is start looking at
the right metrics.
Eric talks about
the vanity metrics
as these absolute numbers of the
number of people we've reached
or the number of
dollars we've raised.
These are the things
that organizations
tend to highlight if you--
as much as they talk about
mission on the outside,
on the inside, if you go to
the executive team meetings,
this is what they're
talking about--
how many people did you reach,
how many dollars you raised,
what's our grant pipeline.
None of these things have
any correlation with impact.
You can reach a lot
of people, but did you
actually improve their lives?
And even if you did
improve their lives,
could somebody else have done
more with the same resources?
So instead, what I think
we need to focus on
is the metrics on the
right, which are, what
I call the innovation metrics.
These are the unit-level metrics
on value, growth, and impact--
things such as the adoption
rate, the unit costs,
the success rate, that will
pay dividends over time
as you optimize those.
And a lot of times,
we don't even
know what this data is when it
comes to social interventions.
We're focusing too much
on actually just reaching
more and more people
and not on really
optimizing for the basic
unit drivers of success.
So I'll just wrap up
by saying, the one--
I could sum down one
thing that I really
wanted to accomplish
with this book is
to change the minds of
the world for anybody,
any organization who
cares about social good,
whether you're
volunteering your time,
you're donating
your money, you're
working on a project
for social good
or otherwise, I think we
need to raise the bar.
Companies are expected to
maximize shareholder value,
maximize profits.
And we have all
these regulations
that force them to do so, and
companies will relentlessly
maximize their profits.
I think we need to bring that
same attitude to social good.
If you're a mission-driven
organization,
or you claim to be, it's not
enough to deliver some good.
We too easily let
ourselves settle
for delivering some good.
We made some difference.
Instead, I think we
need to hold ourselves
accountable to maximizing the
impact and scale of our work.
And so, to me, that means
setting those audacious goals,
really thinking about
the size and the need,
but then starting
small, and testing,
and optimizing what we deliver
around value growth and impact
and staying relentlessly
focused on achieving
the maximum impact possible.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
JACQUELLINE FULLER: So I'm
going to ask a few questions,
but get your questions ready.
We'll turn it over in a minute.
This is kind of a
self-selected group,
but I think you are a
hero to many at Google
because we tend to attract
technologists and people who
care very, very deeply about
using their skills to change
the world.
And so I think a lot of folks
are asking themselves, how can
I make the most impact on the
issues I care about, especially
if I'm a technologist.
So what's your advice to
all of these Googlers?
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, that was
a question I was asking myself.
I couldn't figure out--
OK, I know how to
build software.
How am I possibly going to make
an impact on Google poverty?
And this may be a
little heretical,
given what Google.org
org does, but I
think that the first
thing people leap to is,
like, let's figure out
how to use technology.
And I think that
using technology
is absolutely a powerful
tool that the social sector
generally does not know
how to use well enough.
But I think, equally,
if not more so,
it's how we build
the technology.
I mean, Google is
not outstanding
only because of the
technology it builds,
but it's the process--
JACQUELLINE FULLER: The system.
ANN MEI CHANG: --by
which we build it, right?
I often give the example of,
everyone thinks of Google
as one of the most innovative
companies on the planet.
And yet if you look at it,
Google didn't invent search.
Like, there was Infoseek and--
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, but
Google got better at search
because it iterated and improved
the user interface, the feature
set, the algorithms and so
forth faster than anyone else.
And it's that muscle of being
able to do that that I think
is really missing from the
social sector in addition
to the technology.
So I think what I
found is once I--
you have to start with
a lot of humility,
because there's so much we don't
know not living in that world,
but there's still
much value we can add,
because we bring
a skill set that
doesn't exist, for the
most part, in the sector.
And so there's huge,
huge opportunity there.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Yeah.
Little infomercial for
being a Google.org Fellow--
we have some in
the room here who
have volunteered for some of our
partners, like Thorn and Center
for Policing Equity, but our
hypothesis is, basically,
that we can help do the most
good as Google, Google.org,
and we're really leaning into
providing resources, but most
importantly our Googlers.
And so we're sending out
teams for six months at a time
to really--
ANN MEI CHANG: Oh, that's great.
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
--yeah, deeply embed.
And we've got some folks
here who've done that.
But you know, you raise a good
point, too, in the book about,
I think sometimes we can have
some hubris in the tech world
and think that we sort of know
everything and can just go in
and solve everything.
And you know, those folks
in the nonprofit world
are just not that bright
or not that ambitious.
And I'm going to go
in and teach them.
So what do you
think is something
that you've picked up from
being on both sides of the table
that tech can learn from
the nonprofit sector?
ANN MEI CHANG: Well, there's
sort of the macro thing
and then the micro thing.
On the macro level, you
talked about the value growth
and impact hypotheses.
And Eric started out
with Silicon Valley
being value and growth
over the two hypotheses.
I think that we're seeing
pressure now around the world
on the impact that tech has.
And I think that my hope is
not only does the social sector
adopt some of these tools
from the tech sector,
but maybe some of
this will flow back,
where we can also be looking
at the impact hypothesis
as something we should
equally weigh and value
as we develop products.
Because the kind of reach that
Google and other companies
have is huge, and we need
to think about the impact
we're having.
At a micro level, I think that
one of the things I've seen
is tech people coming into
the social sector, especially
global development, which is
hard because you're working
with people who are very,
very different than you,
who are very far away, who
have different cultures,
and languages, and lives.
And I think there can
be this hubris to say,
hey, we can build
you an app for that,
not to mention they don't
have smartphones or let
alone a signal, right?
And so people who have
been in the social sector
and global development
for a long time
have worked in and out
with the local populations
and have a much better
understanding of the realities
of what people live with.
And I think we
can often be naive
and just assuming that
if we build an app
or provide the
technology that it's
going to change everything.
And there's so many-- you know,
that's like 2% of the problem.
There are so many
other dynamics at play.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Well,
you talked, too, in the book,
and Bryan Stevenson has this
phrase, "get proximate--"
you know, how
important it is for us
to just roll up our
sleeves, and go, and listen,
listen with empathy.
How has that played
out in your career?
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, I think
it's so essential to get
proximate, and not just, like--
I think sometimes people
think, "get proximate"
means go take a trip
to Kenya for a week,
and talk to some
people, and come home,
and then you build your product.
One of the examples
I give in the book
is of Proximity Designs--
incorporated that
into their name.
When they decided to
work with smallholder
farmers and Myanmar,
they literally picked up
and moved there.
Because what it
allowed them to do
is, every day, be living among
and talking to the farmers they
were trying to serve
and be able to design
with them in the whole
process and every day
be able to bring prototypes
and get their feedback.
And so they were able to
speed up their feedback loop
by being there and getting
that kind of feedback.
And I think that's
just so essential.
Because we make so
many bad assumptions,
especially when we're
working with people
who are so different than us.
One of the things I
learned is that innovating
is so much harder in the social
sector for a number of reasons.
But this is one of the reasons.
Like, here, when we
build products at Google,
we're generally
building products
that are for people like us.
And during my time at Google--
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
Which is part of problem.
ANN MEI CHANG:
Yeah, during my time
at Google, the products
that we failed at the most
were ones for people who
were not quite like us.
Because we were so used
to-- we have a system--
JACQUELLINE FULLER: And
because we're not very diverse,
there's a lot of people
that aren't quite like us.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yes, exactly.
Yeah, I think that's
really an issue.
But when you're building
products for people like,
you can use the product.
You dog-food the product.
You get generally
pretty good feedback.
And you have a pretty
good sense of how
people are going to respond.
That's completely
different when you're
working with
vulnerable populations,
whether domestic
or international,
that just don't have the same
instincts, assumptions, culture
that we do.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Mm-hm.
So one more question,
then I'm going
to open it up to the audience.
So you talked about the
importance of nonprofits
being able to be
self-sustaining,
and I think some of the problem
in the nonprofit culture,
frankly, or a lot of it, is
derived to just how skewed they
are by funders, and that
funders acted more responsibly
and in line with providing
incentives around true impact.
I loved your slide about
measuring true impact.
But do you have a thought
on this social businesses,
versus nonprofits,
versus governments?
You know, how do you think
about the different roles
that each of those kinds
of groups can play in this?
ANN MEI CHANG: It's
a great question.
And funders is probably the
biggest barrier to innovation
that I consistently hear
when I talk to nonprofits.
And it's because of the
nature of restrictive funding.
I think that both funders
and nonprofits, or donors
and nonprofits, are
trying too much to solve
the problem themselves.
And if you look at just
the numbers in terms
of how much donor
dollars there are
and how much reach
nonprofits have,
they're not set up
for almost any problem
to be able to deliver at
the scale that's needed.
And so what I think we need to
do is shift our thinking a bit
and think of donors
and nonprofits
more as incubators, as
the startups if you will,
to figure out the
better solutions.
Because they can be
close to the problem.
They can experiment, and
take risks, and figure out
how to deliver better services.
And when they do,
then, I think there's
like three general paths
to scale that are possible.
And it depends on the type
of thing you're doing.
But one path of scale is if you
can develop a private sector
business model.
But that may start with a
nonprofit or social enterprise
because the upside
may not be big enough
and the risk may be too high
for a private sector company
to take it on.
And so this is where donors and
nonprofits can sort of de-risk
and refine a model, and
then be able to hand it
off to private sector to
be a to take it forward.
The other end of the extreme
is for basic social services.
Government is really
the path to scale.
Government spends
a lot of money,
many more times than
philanthropy spends,
providing social services
for its citizens,
whether it's education
or health care
are some of the biggest areas--
but so where we
can help government
more cost effectively spend
its money by coming up
with new and better
solutions, we
can leverage that money
that government is already
spending in a much better way
to make a bigger difference.
And the third kind of
path is some variation
on replication or franchising,
that maybe it's not just
one private sector
company or one government,
but it can be lots of
smaller organizations
in different places
who are all adapting--
microfinance is sort of a great
example of the replication
model, getting to
millions of people,
people in both the private
sector and nonprofit models.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Great.
Well, let's open it up
to questions in the room.
And do we have any on
the Livestream as well?
Yeah, go ahead.
AUDIENCE: I do have a question.
And I apologize; I was
trying to figure out
how to formulate this well.
I think there's a
culture in Silicon Valley
of, scale is good, right?
Like, scale is the
thing that you want.
And I think-- I agree.
It'd be good to see more scale.
I think a corollary
of this, though,
is that organizations that are
trying to scale, then, kind of
ignore the problems
that don't scale well.
And you mentioned
the hockey stick
graph of mobile
phones sales going up
and latrines not really.
And I think there's a reason why
Google cell phones and we don't
sell latrines.
I guess my question is, what
do you think happens in, say,
a decade when social
impact organizations all
start to stay that it becomes
this culture of, like, desire
to scale and kind of
a demand, and need,
and baseline as to scale,
and then, they start to say,
OK, we're going to ignore
the hard-to-scale problems
and only address the
ones that's scalable?
Is that something
you think there's
a way to hedge against that?
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah,
it's a great question.
So I do think that, in
just about every case,
we should be aiming
for scale, but I
don't think that means we should
pick off the easy problems.
I think that social sector
organizations should
focus on the toughest problems.
The reason that we
need a social sector
is where both markets and
governments are failing.
And so if markets
and the governments
are already working,
like mobile phones,
you don't need nonprofits
to get involved.
So they, generally,
should be focused
on the problems that aren't
being taken up by others.
And I think for any
kind of problem,
we should think
about how to scale.
I get a lot of questions
from folks about,
how about local
community organizations.
And one of the
things I would say
is that, yes, local
community organizations
are essential-- to be close
to the community, understand
the community, and so forth.
But I would ask a few questions.
First, are you delivering
the most cost-effective
intervention that you could?
Whether it's you're trying
to help the homeless,
or feed the hungry,
or whatever--
are you doing this as cost
effectively as possible?
If not, can you learn
from or take practices
from other organizations
that are figuring this out.
And if you are, if you've gotten
to the most cost-effective way
to do this and you're also
reaching all the people that
need this, you should
absolutely tell other people
how you're doing this so they
don't have to all figure it
out themselves.
And scaling doesn't mean having
to scale your organization.
It means scaling the impact.
And so I think
there's very few cases
I can think of where you
wouldn't want to get the scale,
but that doesn't mean--
I don't see organizations
say, oh, we're
only going to tackle
problems that get to scale.
I think they really have the
problems they want to tackle.
The problem is that they're
really focusing their success
on delivering to a
finite number of people
instead of looking
at how to really get
to everyone that needs it.
AUDIENCE: And my question
is about more tactically
around when you
think you are ready.
And I think, for context,
like 10 years ago,
if I finish master in
CS, and I got two offers,
one was in a nonprofit
doing consulting and doing
capacity-building
for nonprofits.
And the other one was for
Google being a developer.
And I wanted to
go to a nonprofit,
but my mentors that said, hey,
good intentions aren't enough.
Go get your skills,
money, network and stuff.
So 10 years have gone by, and
I'm still evaluating that.
And my question is
along the lines of,
when do you know you're
ready to make a transition?
And specifically, looking
back, were there muscles
that you felt you
underflexed and muscles
that you felt you
over-flexed now
that you are on the other side?
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
That's a great question.
ANN MEI CHANG: It
is a great question.
I made a somewhat arbitrary
decision in my mid 20s;
I was going to spend
half of my career
in tech Silicon Valley
and half of my career--
so for me, it was
just, like, oh,
now, I'm 42 or
something like that.
It's time to do it.
I don't think
there's one answer.
I'll tell you my
experience of this.
Because I think it's
different-- some people
start from the beginning in
the social sector and do great.
And other people
come in very late.
For me, what worked
out well about doing it
mid-career is I
think the reality is
that you can
personally learn faster
in the private sector
than social sector.
There's a lot more resources.
There's a lot more
talent than expertise.
There's a lot more competition.
Things move faster.
And so I felt like
I developed skills
at two or three times the rate
I would have by being in Silicon
Valley then I would
have if I just
started in the social sector.
And so the other
thing is I think
that because there's
a lot of dysfunction
in the sector, a
lot of us, I think,
would be pretty frustrated
going into the social sector
in a junior level role,
where we're essentially
executing on those
grand master plans
that someone came up with.
And so, for me, it was
more interesting going in,
where I could be in
a senior enough role
that I had some say over
the planning of things
and the strategy for things
so that I felt like I
could make a bigger difference.
And exactly what point
in time there is,
I don't think there's
an exact science to it,
but I think that spending enough
time in the private sector
to build up your skills--
think about what you want your
unique advantage to be when
you go to the social sector.
If it's technical
capabilities, again, you'll
learn faster here
than you will there.
But then, at some point, you
can bring it to government
or to a nonprofit.
If it's leadership
experience, that's
a different type of thing.
Or if it's innovation
experience,
those are the kinds
of things that you
can develop great expertise
in at a place like Google
and then, eventually, be
able to cross-fertilize that
to other types of organizations.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: I think the
other thing that I tell folks--
because I get asked this
question a lot as well-- is,
especially if you're
right out of college,
I strongly encourage people to
go get their transferable skill
in business, whether that's
accounting, or marketing,
or coding--
get-- really do what
Ann Mei was saying,
but be careful that
you don't create
a lifestyle that's
unsustainable to work
in government or non-profits.
Because those same
people who I counsel,
sometimes I check
in five years later,
and they're like, ah,
man, I got this mortgage.
And yeah, I wanted to do--
go work for Give
directly, but I can't.
So there's some
practicalities to it, too,
in terms of freeing yourself
to do the kinds of things
that you want to do
at a certain season.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah,
that's a great point.
And the other way to do it is
not necessarily to have it be
a one-way shift, that I
think this fellowship that
you've talked about,
which sounds new--
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
Which he did.
ANN MEI CHANG:
Oh, which you did.
Is something that didn't
exist when I was at Google,
I made up my own
fellowship, essentially--
took a leave of absence.
But the US government now
has a US digital services
and 18F where
they're taking people
in for like one or two years.
And then, you can
go back to your job.
And so for some people,
it doesn't necessarily
make sense for it to
be a one-way street.
You may want to
come back, but you
could take a year or
two out and do something
to contribute back.
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
Any idea on where
to fundraise when nonprofit
needs to be agile--
try, fail, iterate--
without showing
appealing concrete
impact numbers to donor?
ANN MEI CHANG:
Yes, that is hard.
Because most big
donors tend to like
to fund very
rigid-defined programs.
The good news is that--
JACQUELLINE FULLER: And they
like the big reach numbers.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yes, they do.
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
Speaking for a friend.
ANN MEI CHANG: So it's hard to
answer this in a general sense.
The good news is I think more
and more donors are waking up
to this.
I spend a lot of time going
around talking to donors.
And both-- there is a lot
of more innovative, smaller
donors, like Google.org, Echoing
Green, Draper Richards Kaplan,
JACQUELLINE FULLER: GiveWell.
ANN MEI CHANG: GiveWell.
So there's a lot of these
smaller, more innovative
donors, if you will,
that specialize in--
Mulago Foundation here-- that
specialize in kind of helping--
allowing people to iterate
and failed an experiment
and so forth.
And so finding the relevant
ones in your space is great.
The other good news is that
more and more of l big donors
are also starting to do
this-- so not necessarily
in the core of
what they're doing,
but almost every donor
now has something
on this side where they
have more flexible funding.
So at USAID, we had the
development innovation ventures
that was modeled after
venture capital that
did tiered funding that started
at $100,000, and $1 million,
and $5 million, where we
could take a lot more risk.
And then, we spun out the
Global Innovation Fund.
That's similar.
We have the grand
challenges that
are similar on specific issues,
where we need better solutions.
So there's a lot of
different things out there.
Whoever asked this question,
I'm happy to talk to, depending
on your specific type of thing.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Irwin's
done a lot of work--
who asked the question--
has done a lot of work
internally on Google's
social impact projects.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, and I
would encourage you all that,
as you donate money,
also, as donors yourself,
even if you're not a huge
mega donor like the Gates
Foundation, you can
help organizations
by giving them
unrestricted money,
to allow them to do this
kind of experimentation.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: If you
don't have the time or knowhow
to do the research
to find those,
you can use proxies
like GiveWell
and are groups like
Fast Forward, who
are funding tech-based
non-profits, who
you can use them as a proxy
for really understanding deeply
the impact.
AUDIENCE: I was hoping you could
talk a little bit about how
you would make the pitch
for this type of approach
in industries where--
like the government for
example, where things
tend to move a lot slower.
Because I can
imagine if you were
to take this approach--
like, you give a couple
examples of how spots in
the federal government
are becoming more innovative
with their spending,
but they tend to be very niche
programs, whereas I can imagine
if you took this to a
career program officer,
they might perceive of
someone from Silicon
Valley as an outsider.
So how do you make a
pitch for rapid iteration
in a place where the culture
is kind of like, well, we've
always done it this way.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah,
it's a great question.
I mean, government is
a huge institution,
and it changes very slowly.
The good news is that
there are career people.
So this was, essentially,
my charter at USAID.
I was the first
executive director
for the Global Development Lab.
We were set up as a bureau
to really promote-- you know,
transform global development.
And we're a little
corner of the agency,
but our mission
was to go reach out
to other parts of the
agency, find those advocates,
work with them to
build success stories.
So it's just like
adoption of any new thing.
You have to go step by step.
And so we would start by
experimenting ourselves,
showing it could be done,
then we would partner
with the early adopters
across the agency
that we could find, the Senior
Foreign Service officers, who
were like mission directors,
but who are forward leaning,
and we'd get a handful of
them to try stuff with us
and show that they could do it,
and they had their own network
of other Senior Foreign Service
officers that trusted them,
that they could then tell
and then be our advocates,
and spread the word further.
And so it's step by step,
that kind of adoption
curve that takes a long time.
And one of the most
exciting things for me
in writing this book is--
I left USAID and government
at the end of the Obama
administration-- when I launched
this book three months ago
at the Brookings Institute
in DC, one of the speakers
on the panel, like
Jacquelline is being here,
was Jim Richardson,
who's one of the most
senior political
appointees in USAID,
as part of the Trump
administration.
He runs the Policy and
Budget Bureau for USAID.
And he read the whole book.
He said, this is exactly
what we're trying to do.
We're trying to move
all our procurement
so that 30% of
what we're spending
is going through innovative
funding mechanisms.
And so even this administration,
which has its challenges,
is still moving
these things forward.
And so I do think
there's movement,
but it will be slow because
government is just slow.
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
We've found, too,
in working with-- as google.org
in working with USAID,
for example, we've
been supporting
using direct unconditional
cash transfers as a benchmark,
as you talked about.
ANN MEI CHANG: Household grants.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Yeah,
and worked with USAID
to do some A/B
testing with them.
And I think sometimes,
as you were saying,
other groups can help de-risk
ideas, prove them out,
but really, the government,
groups like USAID,
are the ones who are going
to do things at scale.
So us doing a partnership with
USAID is a way to take an idea,
test it out, see where it works,
where it doesn't, and have
government bring it to scale.
ANN MEI CHANG:
Yeah, you're always
going to have people who are
going to drag their feet,
but I think you also are
always going to have people
who really are mission-driven.
If they see something's going
to work better, and get better
results, and save lives--
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
In our case, it
was like the Rwandan mission
stepped forward and was like,
we want to do this.
So it's finding folks within.
And when you went to--
we've talked a lot
about government,
but when you went into the
nonprofit sector as well,
you went into an
innovation-- was it
the innovation lab at Mercy?
ANN MEI CHANG: It wasn't
called the Innovation--
I led the Social Ventures team.
JACQUELLINE FULLER:
Yeah, Social Ventures.
And so even with our large
multinational non-profits
as well, similarly,
there are ways to--
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah,
and I think almost every
of the large international NGOs
now, almost every one of them
has some sort of
innovation lab now.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
I know that government often
has a strain on its budget,
whether that's like
San Francisco City Hall
or maybe USAID.
So I'm really interested in
public private partnerships.
In your research, did
you see any good example
of a government
working with companies
to scale their impact?
ANN MEI CHANG: Government
working with-- you mean--
AUDIENCE: Yeah,
like, for example, I
know in San Francisco,
maybe the local government
will work with companies in the
area to provide jobs for people
or have an impact that
the government might not
have budget for.
ANN MEI CHANG: I see, I see.
Yeah.
So it is true that government
is always crunched by budgets.
But I think it's
also true that we
don't spend government
money very effectively a lot
of the time.
So I think that's where
private sector can really help.
I'm not sure the kind of
projects you're thinking about.
There's such a range of
public private partnerships.
That's why I was asking that.
We worked on at USAID--
I was responsible for our
partnerships office as well.
And so one of the
categories is what
people call "shared value."
So a classic is
Starbucks working
or Walmart working to source
from smallholder farmers
or from disadvantaged
populations
to try to create economic
growth for those folks
but while getting the goods that
they need for their own supply
chains.
So that's something where we
will cross-subsidize, where
grant money can go to do
that technical assistance,
to go find all the farmers,
build collectives, and so
forth, and connect them
to the supply chains
that then companies
can kind of take over
and be able to operate
on an ongoing basis.
We also did things--
at the lab, for example, we
would fund for-profit entities
as well as nonprofit
entities in the early stages
to de-risk their new innovation.
So we did a lot with the
off-grid energy sector, where
the sort of pay-as-you
solar, where
we put in some of
the earliest money
to experiment with these
pay-as-you go solar systems,
and then over time, as
the systems were proven,
as they became financially self
sustainable, impact investors
started coming in to
be able to fund them
and at a much, much
greater degree than we
would have been able to.
And so there's lots
of different ways.
And I think a lot of these kind
of public private partnerships
like the EYElliance I
talked about earlier, where
private sector and
governments come together
for collective action.
I started something that Google
was involved with called,
The Alliance for
Affordable Internet that
was looking at how do we expand
access to internet around
the world by addressing market
failures and policy failures.
So just a few examples,
but very important.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: So we
have four minutes left,
so I wonder if we could
try to hit our remaining
questions quickly.
ANN MEI CHANG: So one
[INAUDIBLE] implied schools are
so static is that it's hard
to test iterate on other
people's children's.
What are ways innovative,
and even radical,
ideas can be validated
without risking
the well-being of other folks?
That's a great question.
So I think a couple
answers to that.
One is on the Summit
Public Schools thing.
This was like an opt-in.
People knew that their
kids were going--
it wasn't like we were going
to experiment their children
and not tell you.
It's that they saw enough
value was being provided there,
and they felt like
they were still
going to get a better education
than they would otherwise
that people opted into this.
And I think that's
important, that people need
to make have informed consent.
And that can be
a little trickier
when you're working with
vulnerable populations.
Two things I would say to this.
One is that-- it's
one of the reasons
that we need to start small.
So when you experiment with only
a very small number of people,
you can pay much more
attention to making sure
that they are made whole and
that nothing bad happens,
there's not unintended
consequences.
Because you can watch what
happens with five people
much more easily than
thousands of people.
The other is, I think that-- so
we need to tier up those risks,
not take too big a risk
before we're ready.
The other is, I
think we also need
to ask the question of, what is
the risk of not doing anything?
So you think of
vaccines, for example.
If no one was ever given
the first polio vaccine--
there was a risk to
that person's life
who got the first polio vaccine.
There millions of people
would have died otherwise.
But you don't
irresponsibly just randomly
give someone a polio vaccine.
You test in a Petri dish,
then you test it with rats,
then you test it in monkeys.
And then, when you get to
testing it with people,
you watch very closely, but
you still take some risks.
But it's that measured risks.
And you look at the upside
of, if you're successful,
the number of people's
lives you can save.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: [INAUDIBLE]
AUDIENCE: Hi.
One of the sections in your
book that really stuck out to me
was when you talk about the
different type of impact
numbers that result from
both an e-commerce business.
You talk more about
the 30-day active.
You could do sign-up
completes, et cetera,
more Silicon Valley numbers
that we're used to, but then how
the impact numbers for social
impact takes years to see that
same type of result. So I
was wondering if you had any
recommendations of
a set of numbers,
maybe three
categories of numbers,
that can sit in the middle--
so not quite 30-day
user active, but not
quite like a
four-year RCT that can
help both funders
and nonprofits guide
and tell the story of whether
or not a program is successful.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, I can't
give you generic metrics
because they're going to
be different depending
on the type of intervention.
What I would say is
that, I look at--
almost every nonprofit
has a theory of change
for what-- you know, we're
going to train these farmers,
then they're going to have
better farming techniques,
then they're going to have
better yields for their crops,
then you're going to have
higher incomes, and whatever.
You have a theory of change.
And part of testing for impact
is testing those linkages
and the theory of change.
We tend to create these
elaborate theories of change,
and then put them
on the bookshelf,
and then just run through
the whole program,
then try and do
an RCT at the end.
But if you test each
of those linkages,
it's like, if you
train the farmers,
did they actually do what
you trained them to do?
If they didn't, you don't have
to wait four years to figure
out if their incomes increase.
So what are those simpler
earlier indicators
that tell you?
And so summit public
schools did this
by measuring learning
assessments each week to say,
hey, we tried this thing.
Did the students learn better
than doing it some other way?
And so it really depends on the
nature of their intervention.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: All
right, last question.
AUDIENCE: So my sense is that
a lot of small organizations,
in particular, their thought
process is kind of, well, sure,
it would be great to quantify
things and know how we're
doing, but we're just spending
all of our energy and effort
doing the real work
of the organization,
helping the target
population, whatever it is.
So how do you pitch
to those groups
that reorienting
some of their efforts
toward coming up with metrics,
quantifying things, tracking
those metrics, is
worth the effort?
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah,
that's a great question.
One is that, I think--
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Change
funder behavior, number one.
ANN MEI CHANG: Hold
them accountable.
Because when your funders are
telling you, give us numbers,
it's really hard to do
something different.
JACQUELLINE FULLER: Give us
real numbers, give us outcomes.
ANN MEI CHANG: Yeah, and also,
I think that in the book,
I talk about starting
with an audacious goal.
So too often-- it's a short
term, long-term tradeoff,
right?
You can deliver more
in the short term
by just cranking out
stuff, but you're never
going to bend the
curve to accelerate
your growth in the long term.
So you end up like the clean
water sanitation graph.
And so it means setting
that audacious goal.
Because most
nonprofits have goals
that they can meet just by
working a little bit harder.
And so if you have a goal that's
like 10% better than last year,
there's no reason to take risk.
There's no reason to innovate.
There's no reason
to potentially fail.
But if you have a goal that's
longer term, that's like,
we've got to get to
10X, or 100X, or 1,000X,
then as you're doing your
thing, you can sort of see,
are you on your
trajectory to get there?
And so I ask nonprofits, what's
your definition of success?
What does success look like
in 10 years or 20 years?
Push it out far enough
that they're not
trying to project what they're
doing today, but then look at,
are we on a trajectory
to get there?
And if not, and this
is your mission, what
do we need to do to try to shift
the curve so that we change
the trajectory?
JACQUELLINE FULLER: But
let's give a warm thank you
to the hero of many of us, who
is helping to not only create
a product or do one small
thing for one small group,
but really help an entire
sector of government
in the social sector to
understand how to be innovative
and how to really
create systems change.
Thanks, Ann Mei.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
