Shannon Farley, Executive Director of Fast Forward AMA!

We invited Shannon Farley, the incredible founder & director of Fast Forward. Below are some of her thoughts on running Fast Forward, personal development, the tech for good space, and Silicon Valley Culture.

Running Fast Forward

Q: How do you assess the potential of a non-profit venture? What elements do you look for? Do you think these elements are similar to the ones that lead for-profits to success?

A: I evaluate tech nonprofits the same way many venture capitalists evaluate for-profit investment opportunities. We want the biggest bang for our buck. I consider the quality of the team (leadership skills, tech talent, vision, capacity to solve the problem, etc.) and then I consider the potential for impact (scope of the problem and scalability of the solution). Tech nonprofits look like any other startup — except they measure impact instead of profit.

Q: How does the potential for scalability for a tech nonprofit venture affect its ability to get selected for an incubator? Many high-impact ideas target local communities and seem to be successful in smaller areas that could use a lot of development.

Scale is everything. It’s important to investors as well as communities. You can have local scale. One Degree — a Yelp for social services — is a great example of a tech nonprofit that is achieving local scale.

Q: What is one particularly difficult decision you’ve had to make when deciding whether or not to fund one nonprofit versus another?

The hardest decisions are when we care deeply about the issue, really like the leader, but we don’t think they came up with the most impactful tech solutions. For any group where we saw potential, we stay in touch.

Q: What was your biggest challenge founding and leading Fast Forward?

A: Finding great tech nonprofits. There are less than 300 tech nonprofits in the world that we have found so far — you can see a complete list on ffwd.org. Finding our unicorn is a challenge.

Leadership

Q: What keeps you driven?

A: People often remark that it must be great to do work that I love. It is great. I do love it. But I love it because it gives me the opportunity to do what I couldn’t help but do. I don’t always love the day to day. I am always grateful for the opportunity to do the thing I must which for me is social justice activism.

Q: What are the best ways to cultivate leadership skills, and how did you grow yours?

A: Learn by doing. Raise your hand. Take that leadership position. Especially for women leaders — we wait to be asked. If someone had to ask you, you probably started too late. I co-founded a nonprofit at 23 and became a CEO at 28. No need to wait.

Silicon Valley Culture

Q: How can we make strategic philanthropy a norm amongst the newly wealthy in the Silicon Valley?

I think giving will be the new norm for Silicon Valley. Benioff’s 1–1–1 model helps and there are many others like The Founder’s Pledge, SF Gives, etc. This is an area where nonprofits are falling short. I hear of lots of nonprofits CEOs/fundraisers who don’t do their research or don’t strategically target leaders from the tech community. If you want people to give, you have to give them an opportunity to engage with your organization/issue.

Q: How do we think that we can change the Silicon Valley culture to think that for profit doesn’t mean that we can’t do social good aka startups don’t have to be snapchat for puppies in order to make money and social good and profit can be colinear?

A: People claim that profit and impact can be colinear — I am not so sure. There is a difference between profit margin and impact margin. If you are going after the biggest impact, your customers are likely the most difficult (i.e. expensive) to reach. You are most certainly not hitting the biggest profit margin. Can you make money and do good? Sure. But you will have neither the biggest impact nor the biggest profit and it will be hard to reach scale. I don’t think middling for-profit social impact companies do much good for anyone.

Tech For Good Organizations & Nonprofits

Q: Common advice for startups is to start with a small market before expanding. At the same time, Fast Forward and similar tech for good groups promote “thinking bigger”. How do we balance the two?

A: You can have a big vision and still start small. In this space, maybe even more than the for-profit space, you need to really understand the people you want to serve. You should start small and gain insights before you scale.

Q: Many successful tech nonprofits I see tend to work very closely with the local communities they serve, often co-creating solutions as opposed to taking a more top-down approach. What are some ways to ensure effective engagement of one’s target communities?

A: Know your customer. You can co-create or better yet be the customer. I have a strong preference for founders who have personally experienced the problem they set out to solve. When it is your problem, you have a bigger stake in the outcome. If you haven’t experienced the problem, you must work directly with the customer to understand their needs and build for them.

Q: What do you think the low-hanging fruit in the tech for good space are? Which new technologies and innovations are opening up the most opportunity for impact?

A: There is huge opportunity for nonprofit efficiency plays on public services. As Zenefits has streamlined insurance, it would be great if a nonprofit could streamline registering for food stamps or social security benefits.

Q: What are some of the biggest areas where you see nonprofits failing and what are the best ways to avoid those pitfalls?

Focus. Focus is hard for all entrepreneurs, but when the people paying for your services are not your core customer, focus gets complicated. In the beginning, bootstrap with fellowships, awards, or accelerators for as long as you can before your bring issue-based funders into the mix.

Don’t ignore the backoffice. Too often startup founders ignore governance, accounting, legal, etc. while they are focused on fundraising and building their product. Backoffice mistakes in the early days can kill efficiency later. Hire/contract backoffice professionals as soon as possible so you can get back to building.

Q: What does it really mean to focus on impact? And how can we apply it to our lives as Computer Scientists?

A: All entrepreneurs — for or nonprofit — are driven by mission. To undertake a startup, you have to be motivated by more than profits. But don’t let anyone oversell you on their impact. The proof is in their numbers. The social sector needs good computer scientists. And there are incredible launchpads for CS folks like Code for America and Fast Forward.

Q: How do you fundamentally incorporate social justice into your initiatives, and how might we do the same?

A: I love this question. My social justice lens is one of the reasons that impact margins factor into how we choose our investments. TOMS shoes models are fine, but if you care about impact at scale, meaningful economic opportunity is better than a free pair of shoes.

Philanthropy is a practice. TOMs shoes are a great gateway into good. Awareness and attention trigger our philanthropic muscles. But when you are talking about venture philanthropy the impact has to be bigger than a line item in a marketing budget.

If you want to incorporate social justice, I recommend chasing problems for which there is no market solution.

Thanks again to Shannon for taking the time to have such a fantastic conversation with our community! We’re incredibly excited about the future of tech nonprofits, and can’t wait to see how Fast Forward paves the way.