Twenty years ago, social impact technology was just emerging. Today, a cadre of high-growth tech nonprofits is defining how we address our biggest challenges. Aria Finger is a pioneer in this sector. She was the CEO of DoSomething.org, a youth activism hub and one of the world’s first scaled tech nonprofits. Today, she serves as the Chief of Staff for entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist Reid Hoffman. I chatted with Aria about how she unlocks scaled impact for high-growth tech nonprofits.
Shannon Farley: You’ve been in the social impact tech space for over 15 years. You led tech nonprofit DoSomething.org for over a decade, and are now serving as the Chief of Staff for Reid Hoffman. What has been the throughline in your career?
Finger: Growing up, my mom was a piano teacher and my dad worked in education or at nonprofits. It was instilled in me that making a positive impact in the world - in both big and small ways - was important. What drew me to DoSomething.org was that I could focus on a variety of social causes. No day was the same. Yet, I had no idea that achieving impact at scale through technology would become one of the core tenets of my experience at DoSomething - and then carry through to my current work with Reid Hoffman.
What excited me about both DoSomething and Reid’s work was the cross-sector nature of their missions. The NGO sector is not going to solve all the world’s problems by itself; but neither is the for-profit sector or the government. If we’re going to solve society’s most intractable problems, then nonprofits, governments, and businesses all must work together to get it done.
Farley: You were one of the first to leverage technology to inspire social change. How has the role of technology in the social sector evolved?
Finger: In my early days at DoSomething, we were one of the only nonprofits that had a full-time developer on staff, much less a data scientist or a contract with Twilio for text messaging. I remember the days before WordPress or Squarespace, when you needed a webmaster to make changes to your website through a laborious and expensive process. We couldn’t move at the pace that we wanted to.
Today, I’m inspired by how prevalent - and innovative - tech for good solutions have become. Technology that we take for granted has had a huge impact on the social sector. From video-based social movements like what’s currently happening in Iran, to the growing category of tech nonprofits building software solutions for impact, it’s clear that technology is playing an increasingly central role in the social sector.
Aria takes the stage at DoSomething.org’s Youth Engagement Summit in 2019
Farley: Technology is also redefining the scale of social impact solutions. You drove massive growth at DoSomething.org, scaling the digital platform to over 5M members across 131 countries. This is a case-in-point example of scaling from startup to high-growth tech nonprofit. How did you achieve this growth?
Finger: In short: a healthy dose of idealism and the inability to take no for an answer, combined with a real commitment to audience insights. When we didn’t see a good solution for reaching our 3M members by text, we built it ourselves. When we wanted an awards show that highlighted young people on primetime TV - back when TV was a thing - we asked VH1 to put it on the air. When Twitter had just launched, we were one of the first nonprofits to use it, even though most people thought Twitter was only about posting what you ate for breakfast. This brash approach to technology helped us continue redefining what scale looked like.
Another critical piece of our growth journey was our relentless commitment to understanding our audience. Young people were caricatured by the media, forgotten by pollsters on election day, and underestimated by almost everyone. We wanted to be their champion. Technology helped us uncover what they actually cared about. For instance, when a member of our staff came out as trans via text to our member base, in under an hour we crowdsourced 25,000+ questions from young people across the country that cued us into teen sentiment towards the trans community. By understanding our audience’s perspective, we were able to build solutions that resonated with young people and therefore fueled our growth.
Farley: We’re seeing more and more tech nonprofits reach the same caliber of scale that you did at DoSomething.org. What strategies should leaders of high-growth tech nonprofits employ to successfully navigate the growth stage?
Finger: On the technology side, build as little as possible and buy as much as possible. Technology gets outdated so quickly these days that you don’t want your team spending all of their time updating old, jankity technology.
On the growth side, my advice would be to dream bigger. Ask yourself: what would it take to reach 100x more people, or make 1,000x the impact? Even if you don’t get there, doing these thought experiments might help you pursue new approaches that could increase impact - or force you to consider a new business model that will help you become self-sufficient. When DoSomething went through this process, it actually led us to cut 80% of our programming to double down on campaigns we saw as the most scalable opportunities. It was painful but valuable, and was ultimately what drove our growth.
Aria speaks on a panel at Fast Forward’s Accelerate Good Global conference in 2019
Farley: That’s great advice. You’re now Reid Hoffman’s Chief of Staff, where you’re unlocking his vision to find high-impact entrepreneurs building the smartest solutions to tough problems. How does the experience you gained leading a tech nonprofit inform this work?
Finger: It’s been fun and really meaningful to be on the other side. We’re on a mission to find leaders poised to make an outsized impact in their sector. As we have these conversations, I can impart some of the hard-earned wisdom that I gained from being a nonprofit CEO. I also have extra empathy for the many nonprofit leaders we meet who are working tirelessly to make an impact, run organizations, and of course, fundraise. This perspective has helped me not only identify nonprofit leaders with big potential, but also create strong partnerships with them.
Farley: In your role, you must see a lot of exciting social impact tech solutions. What do you look for when you make big-ticket investments in high-growth nonprofits?
Finger: The number one thing I look for is the same in both for-profit and nonprofit investments: an incredible founder or CEO to bet on. If I believe in you, our team will do everything in our power to support you in being successful. When it comes to high-growth tech nonprofits, I’m also looking at how an investment can truly be an investment in growth. Can this investment take the organization to a new level of scale, or help them reach sustainability? It’s an unfortunate truth that so many nonprofits’ growth is limited by their ability to raise funds. I’m always looking at their revenue models to see if I can help create a path towards earned income. I also consider how I might facilitate key connections for an organization, like with a stable audience of donors who will provide continued support, or with folks who could facilitate key partnerships like a government contract.
For example, take Byron Auguste, who’s leading Opportunity @ Work to “tear the paper ceiling” and help Americans without college degrees earn the respect and higher-paying jobs for which they are qualified. Or Zo Orchingwa who is leading Ameelio, which provides communication technologies and education to currently incarcerated people across the country with the ultimate goal of reducing mass incarceration. Investments in these leaders at this stage of their growth is transformative.
Farley: In this same vein, Reid Hoffman is a model for how tech leaders can put tech-generated wealth to play in the social sector. You help source his philanthropy deal flow. In your eyes, where do you see untapped impact opportunities and what role can tech leaders play in unlocking that impact?
Finger: It’s no secret that white male CEOs are over-represented in both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors. We’re always thinking about how we can create more opportunities in tech for women and people of color to lead. What that looks like for Reid - and could look like for other tech leaders - is investing in high-growth tech solutions for impact built by diverse leaders. It’s a huge opportunity to define how tech is leveraged to better our world.
