Noah Smock on shared resources for nonprofits: a warehouse of tools that cuts partner overhead and changes how many volunteers a group can say yes to.
Shared resources for nonprofits, done at real scale, look like a warehouse full of shovels, drills, rakes, tables, chairs and Wi-Fi hotspots that any community organization can borrow. Watch Noah Smock, Director of Resource Development at ToolBank USA, explain the model to Stephen Sakach and Mike Liwski, and why he calls it radical sharing.
The budget effect is real. Noah describes Baltimore tree-planting groups whose tool and equipment spend fell by an estimated 40 to 50 percent once they could stop buying, storing and replacing their own. But the number he cares about is a different one. When a group has hundreds of quality tools available, it stops planning around what it owns and starts planning around what it wants to do, which changes how many volunteers it can actually say yes to.
Noah is also direct about what breaks community partnerships. Funders who assume writing the cheque means owning the vision. Corporate programs that reset every time a contact leaves. Benefit systems employees never hear about, like the Fortune 500 partner that pays the ToolBank $10 for every hour its people volunteer, which plenty of its own staff do not know exists.
Also in this conversation:
• Why he kept running neighborhood cleanups whether two people came or fifteen
• Measuring time, talent and testimony instead of only dollars
• Letting employee passion, not the CEO's, choose the cause
• The debris sled lent to a homeowner two days after their house burned
• The five-times-why exercise for testing whether a system means anything
Listen to the full episode: Building Community and Connection in Business with Noah Smock (https://www.theblisspodcast.com/building-community-and-connection-in-business-with-noah-smock/) Guest profile: Noah Smock (https://www.theblisspodcast.com/guests/noah-smock/) More from the Featured Guest Series (https://www.theblisspodcast.com/categories/bliss-businesses-series/)