Oyinda Bamgbose: How Tech Can Still Save the World

Oyinda’s experience in helping nonprofits transition to digital literacy has given her insights into how we can maximise the impact of technology in the world. How can established organisations make better use of tools and frameworks that we as software people use everyday?

Oyinda shares lessons that help you understand the opportunities, the challenges and the processes that can help technology drive change in the world. From evolving perspectives, adapting and overcoming resistance to change, and why using frameworks for guidance, she will consider how to use frameworks and tools for social impact.

Whatever your business, you will learn how change happens and thus how your business can have more impact.

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Transcript

Oyinda Bamgbose 

Hello, everyone, good morning. Hello. Good morning. It’s very interesting doing this talk now, after what you listened to earlier this morning. But I do want to start by saying that this how tech can still save the world is not going to be this. So I don’t know if you have read the techno optimist manifesto that Mark Andreessen from Andreessen Horowitz fame, has posted not that long ago. It’s an interesting read. If you haven’t read it, I would recommend giving it a read. I’ve definitely pulled out something, some controversial quotes from it. We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives death that were preventable by deaths that were preventable by AI, oh, that was prevented from existing is a form of murder, quite alarmist. That is not what this talk is going to be about. There are some interesting things in that manifesto, but I’m not going to cover that.

So although I would say I’m not a tech optimist, I would say that I am optimistic about the role that technology can play in saving the world. And I did change the title of my talk to be a little bit attention seeking. Saving the world is a bit of a big task, a bit hard to talk about any real solutions. But I think we can all agree, as we heard this morning, there are real big problems that the world is facing right now, and I also believe that tech can be used to solve some of those big, meaningful problems.

Now, as people that are in the Business of Software that work in tech, I feel like we travel into different worlds and kind of gain knowledge about people and the problems that they’re facing, and kind of become experts in these different worlds. And I come to you today not to teach you anything, not necessarily to change your mind about anything, but to share my travels in some new worlds, and kind of how going in these worlds and being a bit of an adventurer has made me think differently about tech and its potential to solve some real world problems.

So my name is Oyinda. I work in product. I’ve been working in tech for 10 years, and to talk about my journey into tech, I, by default, have been international. So I was born in the UK, but my heritage is Nigerian, and so I’ve always had this perspective of people we do exist in different worlds, and people have very different experiences. And what I did see in Nigeria was a lot more poverty. Now that’s not the whole picture. We know there is poverty here in the UK today, but in Nigeria, it was more obvious. And so from that background, I decided that I wanted to do something to help, and that when I grew up, I wanted to work in international development.

And so I went to university to study politics economics, to learn how the world works, and eventually go into that career to somewhat help alleviate suffering. And it was at university that my dream died. The more you know, the more depressed you get. I learnt how the world works, and previously, going into international development, I wanted to work at the UN that was kind of my dream, or work at a big NGO, but through studying kind of what had happened in history and how that had affected power structures and things going forward, I changed my mind. And the UN is an interesting and important organization, and big NGOs too, but they were very much in the old way of how the world works, and definitely used existing power structures and maybe what the egalitarian institutions that I had potentially naively thought they were also sometimes there was a question of, were they actually making the good impact that we all hope that they do. Sometimes the effects of what they were doing would have negative effects, and even when they had the best of intentions to do good. They were big institutions, right? So they were moving very slowly. The impact that they could have on the world was really slow.

And at the time, there was another sector that was the complete opposite. Tech startups were revolutionizing everything. They were working in new ways. They were making a big impact, and they were making it fast. They were moving fast and breaking things. And so I thought, You know what? I want to go, where people are doing things differently. I want to learn how to make a change and make it fast, and learn how I can then with those frameworks and that knowledge, apply that in different fields. And so I went into tech to learn how to make impact at scale and how to do it quickly.

So yesterday, we were kind of told to reflect on our origin story, and we drew that beautiful tree of life. And I guess I have a question for you all. Why did you go into tech? So I’d love you to talk, to find someone next to you and share what made you go into tech.

Okay, okay, okay, so hopefully, hopefully you have both had the chance to share, and I shared my reason, at least my rational reason, as we all know, jobs to be done. Maybe the rational reason isn’t the real one or the underlying motivation, but I am curious what other people’s answers were. So I’m going to pick on people, and I would like you to tell me the answer of your neighbor. I know your name, Martin. I’m going to pick on you.

Audience Member 

Dom wanted to design physical products for fan and boring, and instead, thought that the design UIs of the software that how physical products would be more interesting.

Oyinda Bamgbose 

Love it. I’m going to pick on you at the end there. Why did you go into tech? Or why did your partner go into tech?

Audience Member 

So we were talking about how initially got into electronics, so soldering, building stuff, and really liked quick feedback cycles and then go into computers. I really loved the feedback you got quickly from computers.

Oyinda Bamgbose 

Thank you. I’m gonna pick one more person you at the end in the boot up. Why did your partner, person next to you go into tech?

Audience Member 

You so I had two partners here, like computers, watching on tick, and his lawyer, who went to a lawyer who went to tech.

Oyinda Bamgbose 

I love that answer. And a lot of people going from sort of physical products to digital, which is really interesting. But yeah, I shared my story. The reason I went into tech, I wanted to learn how to make impact at scale and fast.

And when I went into tech, I think there was a real feeling of optimism. We were revolutionizing everything, right? Revolutionizing making coffee, buying groceries. There was a lot of hope, optimism. And I guess like big dreams in tech, and I think there has been a shift. Maybe from your perspective, we’ve become more pessimistic, at least, that’s what Mark Andreessen would say. Maybe from your perspective, we become more realistic. We’re not really talking about revolutionizing stuff anymore. We’re more talking about revenue. But also, I think, from certain technologies, the adoption of certain software, we realized that moving fast and breaking things did actually break some things. And so I think tech has been a bit more reflexive, reflective of the impact that they’re making. And wondering, is it for good or is it for ill?

And it’s an interesting question, the adoption of AI, the access that a lot of people have, I think this kind of question is in the news a lot more, and is kind of on people’s minds. And so when I was making this presentation, I kind of thought about this, will tech help save the world, or is it going to end it? And of course, I asked an LLM, I asked Gemini which I really enjoyed doing. And the definition that Gemini came up with is like, well, first of all, what is technology? And technology is simply the application of knowledge to achieve certain goals or to solve problems. And from Gemini perspective, good is it for tech or evil? It depends. At the end of the day, technology is an enabler. And the question for us is, what goals do we want to achieve by using it, and what problems do we want to solve?

Now, the talk before me, as you know, in the world, there are many big problems to solve, whether it’s what’s kind of going on now, even maybe you’ve blocked out of your mind like me, but we had the big pandemic, and based off of that, a lot of people around the world have been pushed into poverty, even in the UK, regardless of kind of things that are happening now, we also have big trends, right? Climate change, as we heard this morning, also, if you’re looking at mega trends, we have kind of aging populations, and it’s great we’re going to be living longer, but then less people are being born. How are the young people going to look after the kind of bigger number of older people? Increasing poverty around the world. There are a lot of big problems now you don’t have to talk to your partner, but I would like you to just reflect very quickly. What problems do you care about? If you maybe some of you are, I don’t know, but if you were a billionaire, money wasn’t an object, and you could do some positive impact on the world. What would you choose?

Now, if thinking about those big problems kind of made you a bit overwhelmed and makes you feel like you can’t really do anything, I think I’ve had a shift as a traveler into a new world through product and software. That’s made me think about things slightly differently. A lot of the conversation around tech, and whether it’s for good or for evil, whether it will save the world or end it focuses very much on the what. It focuses on the technology itself. And maybe to add a bit of nuance, it focuses on the how, how is it going to be used? What goals is the technology going to be used to achieve? What problem are they going to be used to solve? And it’s very valid. But recently, what I have become more interested in is the who, who is using the technology? What are they using it for? What problems are they using it to solve? And as a traveler, as a product person, the world that I have entered into is the world of nonprofits, and interacting with nonprofits has really made me rethink about technology and its ability to solve problems.

Now this talk, I’m not saying that the answer that we need for you know how to save the world, how to solve these big, meaningful problems, is non profits. We just need to build tech for non profits, and they’re going to save the world. That is definitely not what I’m saying. I had a good conversation with some of you yesterday evening, and I went back to Rome, and I was like, I’ve got to completely change my slides. But really, what it made me do is add this slide in, like, add some nuance. I am not saying nonprofits alone and the use of tech is going to save the world. And to be honest, I don’t think that technology is going to be the way to solve the big problems that we have. We need way more than technology alone to solve these big problems, whether that is social movements, policy, we’re not allowed to talk about politics. I remember that was part of the code of conduct, but technology alone is not going to save us so much more is needed. However, I genuinely, genuinely believe that whatever we do use or whatever happens to solve these big problems, whether it is those social movements or policy, technology is going to have a role to play that I am sure of.And so what I wanted to come to talk to you about today is how entering this new world and seeing how people working in organizations I hadn’t had access to before has made me think differently about tech, its ability to solve problems, and has given me some hope.

My Background

So I work at Percent. Percent is a VC backed company, and our mission as an organization is to help power purpose in other organizations. Now what that means for non profits is we help give them access to the best tech at the best prices through our verification service, and we also do other things. I have other sort of products to help them fundraise in innovative, new ways. And so being a good product person, I speak with my customers or one of my end users every day. And my biggest realization by those conversations, by having those conversations, is that so many nonprofits are just like startups. They have a change that they want to make in the world. They have big dreams. They want to make a big impact, but they do not have many resources, and so they have to start small. They are default, dead. The amount of founders of these nonprofits always thinking about fundraising, always thinking about the lack of money that they have in the bank. What they need to do to raise money, money, money. Money is important. Money makes the world go around. Non profits. Need to scramble to get it.

Similar to start ups. They have different types of work that they need to do. So there is the work to kind of just keep the organization going, the admin, the paperwork, the legal stuff, the accounting, the bookkeeping, the recruiting, and then there’s the actual work. And for nonprofits, that actual work is their purpose, their mission, driven work. But there are these two types of work largely going on. And my favorite learning is that they are really scrappy. So in the same way, startups, little resources, have to make the most of what they’ve got, nonprofits are the same, and they are just as innovative as people working in startups.

Permatours

So there was one organization I spoke to. They’re called Permatours. Their mission is to spread the use of permaculture around the world, and it’s kind of a better way of farming, I guess. And one thing that they had done to fundraise because they didn’t have money. Everyone was kind of volunteer and paying out of their pocket. They realized we need to make money. Actually, in America, I think governments have these budgets for, like, parks and recs. I only know about the TV show, but apparently it’s like a real thing. And those governments, I don’t think they call them councils. I don’t know what they’re called in America, they have budgets. And so the non profit was aware that actually what they could do is win the contract to plant trees in, I think, near rivers in New York. And so what that enabled them to do was they were doing the work that they wanted to do, kind of agriculture in a better way, but they were getting paid by the government to do it. And so this kind of it was something that they hadn’t tried before, but actually thinking about who could be their customer, who could pay them to their service while they were doing their mission driven work, was something I thought was ingenious. And so yes, nonprofits are like startups. They’re scrappy, they have big dreams, but they start small. However, I think it is harder to be in a nonprofit than in a startup in many ways, and the main one is money. Money makes the world go round. Money makes things happen.

There are two main ways that nonprofits try to get money to do their mission driven work. So one is through grants, and another kind of mainstream is through individual donations, but they face some constraints to get those. So for grants, grants are hard to get and to apply, they take time. Nonprofits don’t necessarily have the people to do the research, to do the applications, to even apply for these grants, but let’s say that they did. A lot of these grants to be eligible they want evidence of work that you’ve done and kind of data and kind of to show your impact that you’ve had. And so it’s kind of like the chicken and egg situation, or on a job application for an entry level role where you need to have 10 years experience. The grants ask nonprofits to show evidence of the work that they’ve done, but in order to do the work, they need money. And so that puts a lot of nonprofits not even, not even in the kind of potential candidates to actually raise that money. And so the nonprofits that need the money the most are the least likely to get it.

Realities of Nonprofits

But I think the main constraint that nonprofits feel they face around grants is there’s just a small pot that everyone is fighting to get. So many small nonprofits, and competition is fierce. However, what’s interesting and what I really like is that nonprofits are very collaborative, and so even though they feel like they’re fighting for the same money, they often help each other to get it. So that’s the kind of constraints they face with getting grants. And so others try to get individual donations. And as you can imagine, there are some difficulties there people either don’t feel like they’re able to give or don’t really want to give. And one of the main reasons people don’t want to give is that they don’t trust nonprofits. They don’t trust that the nonprofits are going to be efficient with their money. Where is it going? They also don’t necessarily trust that the nonprofits are going to use that money effectively and also to get out and make people aware that their nonprofit even exists, maybe people would support it if they knew. How did they get awareness? How do they get in front of people? So there are a lot of constraints to getting money for nonprofits, which is crucial for them to grow.

They do also have other constraints. So the lack of money means they’re less able to buy tools, including software that can help them make them more efficient and increase their impact. Their lack of money means they don’t have people. And when they do have people, those people are volunteers, and so can’t really they have full time jobs, and so the amount of time that they can actually spend on furthering than the nonprofit mission is lessened.

An interesting thing I didn’t think about, but in kind of business we think about employee turnover and how that’s really bad. Knowledge is lost. The ability to move things forward is lost. Well, you can imagine it’s even worse for volunteers, and I’ve heard of nonprofits where, let’s say they have a website, the person, the techie person that built the website, left and so no one in the organization can do anything. And this kind of constant turnover of volunteers means that progress is really slow. Things get stuck in bad states.

And one thing that is quite unique to nonprofits, and another constraint that they face is actually something I don’t think we face in startups so much, and that is resistance to technology itself. This doesn’t happen in all nonprofits, but there can often be different generations working in the same organization, and a resistance to using tech. I spoke to someone last week, actually, and they were talking about, in a way, the pandemic was obviously horrible, but what it allowed them to do was use Zoom and have the benefit of virtual meetings. But since the pandemic, people have kind of gone back. And so this nonprofit needs to have meetings. That’s kind of how they do things. They do things in person, but they can never schedule a meeting to kind of figure out what they need to do next, because there’s a resistance to going back to using Zoom. The people that are busy working people want to do the virtual meetings, but the people who are retired don’t. And that’s one small example. But again, resistance to using email, to not using paper and storing things online, this is something that in startups you can’t even imagine. This is something that people who work in nonprofits face. And so there are challenges that nonprofits are facing to have the impact that they want to have, but they are often using tech to solve some of the problems that they’re facing as organizations themselves.

And another big learning that I’ve had in these conversations with a nonprofit every day is that they definitely, like all organizations, exist along a spectrum, and so some nonprofits are right down at the end. This way. They are, starting to use technology in a very basic way. And then there are also examples of nonprofits that are using them, I think, better than startups.

So the basics, going in I had no idea how important email was. So a lot of people don’t trust nonprofits, and so it’s really important for nonprofits to build trust, whether that’s when they’re applying for grants or from their website. Problem is a lot of them are using personal email, and that makes them look really unprofessional. And so one of the biggest things I’ve heard from nonprofits is they are applying for Google workspace. Google have a nonprofit program just in order to get an email so that they look more professional. But also when people leave the organization and take their email with them, they don’t look they don’t take all of that organization knowledge with them. So genuinely, a game changer for a lot of nonprofits is getting an organization email, and that is something I never would have thought is a problem today, but outside of tech, it is.

And as I said, a lot of people, a lot of volunteers, are storing stuff on their personal drives. They’re just getting stuff done things need to get done when they leave. All of that is lost. And a lot of nonprofits also are taking the first step, step to get an online presence and setting up their website. And for a lot of them, they don’t know where to start. It feels quite overwhelming. Again, things that are basic in the startup world and in tech and in software for nonprofits, really important and a bit of a game changer. Never would have thought that before.

Now, not all nonprofits are in this basic stage. I think many know the importance of an online presence, and a lot of people have done something about it. And so for those that are more in the intermediate category, the biggest learning I have is that, because they are like startups, often, they have the same goals that we do in software. They have the same problems, and they are using the exact same tools.

So for example, they are thinking about, how do we make people aware of our cause of our programs? And so they’re using the same tools that we would thinking about reaching people using paid ads, email marketing, and all of the great email marketing tools that we have, SEO. They have the same problems, same goals, same tools. That may seem obvious, but a learning for me, but because they are doing different work, they are doing work to push their mission forward, they do have different goals. And another learning for me was even though they have different goals to run their programs, to run their mission, they still have the same problems and are still using the same tools that we would. So a lot of nonprofits have programs, and that’s what they call them. So let’s say you are a soup kitchen, and that’s your program. How do you order food for the kitchen. How do you get volunteers and recruit them? Manage their time. They’re different problems, but they have the same problems that we do, of managing people, of communication. And so they could use, and are using project management tools, survey tools, for recruiting volunteers. And so in many ways, they are running like startups using the same tools, have a lot of the same issues and need the same skills.

Now, a lot of these nonprofits, what’s pushing them forward and getting them to adopt tech going from even the basic stuff of setting up their email or kind of the more advanced stuff, there is always a designated techie, and they are pushing the nonprofit forward. And I guess another type of nonprofit that I’ve come across, and people in nonprofits are those that are in the advanced, and I would say they are maybe more advanced than many of the companies that you guys work at, and it’s because often it is tech people actually starting the nonprofits themselves.

Kwanda

So this is Jermaine, and Jermaine is an example of someone who has used his skills from tech to actually build a nonprofit. So Jermaine, when he was younger, always kind of informally, tinkered around with tech when he entered the job market. Formally, he became a designer, a graphic designer, realized the money that people were making, and so changed his title to product designer, and went over to Silicon Valley to work at a tech startup, and there he learned how you can build a great team, you can build a great product, you can build a great organization. And so he loved it. He loved tech. He was working there for a few years, but he had a slight shift in his thinking and thought to himself, is this really what I want to be doing? He had a passion like me. He had a Nigerian heritage. He had a passion to help develop Africa. And so he reflected himself and thought, what is the work that I want to be doing in 40 to 50 years? And his answer brought him to found Kwanda.

So this is Kwanda, and it is essentially a community of diasporans who fundraise and raise money for projects that are locally-led. And I am a member of the village. We call it, and I’m very happy to be part of it. And part of why I love Kwanda so much is because, for me, it’s a great example of using the best of tech to solve real world problems. So thinking about it, Jermaine what he’s doing and how Kwanda are talking about themselves. We can think of frameworks that we use in tech, like job to be done that Bob was talking about. And so there is a reason, an underlying reason, why people give and Jermaine identified that for many of the people that were part of this community, they were diasporans. They often were brought up in the West, but kind of wanted a connection with back home, and so that was the motivator and the drive for them joining Kwanda, and that’s something that he talks about quite prominently.

Similarly, a lot of people, there’s a lack of trust with nonprofits, and so he’s using tech to overcome those objections with a ledger so every bit of money that comes in and goes out of Kwanda is on their website. And in order to enable this to happen at scale, it’s pretty much 90% automated, and so using tech to overcome some of the objections that people have to donating. And Jermaine is very aware that he wants to use the startup playbooks from Silicon Valley to grow Kwanda and increase the impact that it has, and kind of looking under the hood and going into the weeds of how Kwanda is built, I generally believe it’s probably one of the most forward thinking nonprofits in the world, and it probably goes beyond what a lot of tech or software companies are doing so about at least 75% of the work that Kwanda does and how it runs is completely automated.

So hopefully you can read that. This is a post that Jermaine did a few weeks ago on LinkedIn, and I wanted to call out a few things I um, I realized Kwanda had fallen in line with who I am and how I want to work. I get to work with a tiny team, two people tinkering away like a scientist. It feels exponential every day. Each improvement makes the world spin faster. It only requires a few hours of my time a day, internal processes are shaping up very nicely, smooth and well documented. AI is handling so much of the workload.

Now, Jermaine was talking me through what he was doing and how he was using AI to run QandA, and one thing I wasn’t expecting was he was saying, AI actually isn’t fully there for what I need. I have all my documents written as if a five or six year old had read it. He’d made videos on Loom, got the transcripts, fed that to chat GPT, to write instructions, and all of that is in Notion, and he’s using Notion AI to enable his very small team to run things very quick, but what he wants is agents that can actually execute the task. And says the tech isn’t there yet.

So listening to Jermaine, I thought, I need to step up my game. I am not using AI as well as he is, and maybe some of you feel the same, but definitely inspirational to see how he is building a nonprofit and making it scale by using new technology. So being automated will help Kwanda scale the impact that it’s able to make.

ACEs Matter

One thing I’ve been talking about a lot is scale. Scale. Scale, scale, big problems. How are we going to save the world? Everything is big, and I wanted to share one more story of a nonprofit that I had come across. So this is ACEs Matter. It was started by a woman called Cendie, and she has had many difficulties in her life. She did a test, which is called the ACES test, or adverse child experiences. And there’s been a lot of scientific study about adverse child experiences, essentially childhood trauma, and what that does while you’re developing and how that affects your nervous system and all of the impact that that has on your life, how you behave. And for her, understanding that she had a high ACE score unlocked a different life her. And so she wanted to start an organization to spread awareness of ACEs and help more people heal from their childhood trauma. And I spoke to Cendie, and I was very taken by her, but I was not taken by her website.

This is actually an improved version. I’ve not gone through the taken a screenshot of the whole site, but this was good. This was good, the best of the website, it felt like what was going on sort of further down and on many pages was hindering rather than helping her mission. And so I got really excited. I realized, actually, I think I have skills that I can use to help Cendie. I have some time I can help her build a website. Yeah, I had minimal time, so we kind of created a proposal for a short project that I could do, but I really felt like I could use the knowledge that I had in order to kind of increase the impact that she could make. So we had a call, and I said, Cendie, here’s my proposal. You know, I’m going to have to, I’m busy with work, lots going on, but I want to build a website that can give you what you want increase the impact of aces. And so we talked what are your goals? What do you think the website should achieve? And so we spoke about those. She wanted people to take the test. On her website, she has a test where people can figure out their aces score. So that was one of the goals. Great makes sense. She wanted people to be able to donate to her organization. Fantastic makes sense. And she wanted people to be able to book sort of training sessions where, let’s say they didn’t have ACEs, they could kind of support the organization by booking a session with sendee in their organization, and that would kind of be one raise way that they raise money. It’s like, fantastic. We’ve identified some goals. I agree. They seem like some good goals. Cool.

So what are some metrics? How are we going to track whether improving your website has had the impact that we wanted? And so she said, test submissions, let’s measure test submissions. And I was like, perfect, yes, test submissions, I think are your North Star. I’m really excited. You’ve applied for Google for Nonprofits as part of that program, nonprofits can get $10,000 of Ad Grants each month. I was like, great. We can do campaigns. We can send create ad campaigns for you. Her website was already ranking within the like, top 10 results at the time for ACES was like, fantastic. We can get people to your site. We can get them taking the test. This is your North Star. Yes, we’ll measure it. We’ll increase it.

And she said another measure, I want to increase new donations. Perfect. Makes complete sense. Thinking about the flows where we would get people donating. There’s a well, there would be on the new site, a page where people can donate. But also maybe a good time to get people donating is after they’ve taken the test. So when you take the test, you become more aware, and maybe you’re more willing to give even if you don’t have a high a score. Fantastic.

And then she said, I also want to measure the number of testimonials that we get from people that have taken the test and have gone on to further resources and to get help. And after that, I said, nothing. And I thought, I’m going to help, because she was talking about a metric that I hadn’t even thought about, and actually it was one that actually mattered.

So I love tech, I love the way that it makes us think. But I was so much thinking about metrics and growth and scaling that I was forgetting what actually mattered, and I didn’t want to help Cendie because I thought she had a solution that necessarily could scale. Although I wanted her to help her do that, I was very taken by her and her passion and her mission to bring awareness of aces to her community, even if it was in a very small way. Yeah, that was my thought on going to hell.

And kind of this experience with Cendie made me remember a principle that we have in startups and in tech and. Which is do things that don’t scale, but for a slightly different reason, I wanted to go into tech to make a big impact on the world, to learn how to scale things quickly. But actually a lot of those things can feel very overwhelming, and through this experience with Sandy, I realized, if you can make any impact, maybe that’s what you need, like a first step to change one person’s life, or to help one person with their organization that experience, the thought that I’m going to help, also realizing that actually a little bit of change can matter and be very motivating. Made me think differently.

So my attention to seeking title at the beginning was tech can still save the world. How can tech still save the world? Or maybe, listening to me, you figured out the title was a bit of a catfish. It’s not about saving the world. However, tech is being used by people right now to solve meaningful problems. And as a adventurer into a new world, the new world of non profits, I’ve taken away some things, and it’s made me think differently.

Lessons and Realizations

So one is build for everyone. Now this is something we already should have in mind, right? And I thought I did, but talking with this lady who worked at a theater company, and she was basically asking me for help to set up her website, which I couldn’t really help her with but I was volunteering in a way, and what I took from that interaction was the fear and the uncertainty.

And I realized, like, no matter how simple the UX is, some people might need some extra help. They might need pointers. I really hate, like those videos or those guides that kind of tell you where to go. I’m like, No, if it’s a good design, people can just get there. But actually, that’s not the case, and I was very much in the tech bubble. If we’re thinking of designing for everyone, things that you think may not need to happen UX, that you think may not need to be built, you should reconsider, and so I would say, as a reminder, when you’re thinking about your products and who you’re building for, build for everyone who’s in your target market.

Second lesson, AI, is exciting, and maybe this is something that you may have thought was obvious, but I have been a bit ambivalent about AI. For me, a lot of the conversation, a lot of how it was being used, didn’t seem that exciting. I felt like it was going to make B2B SaaS a little bit better, to automate things so that people didn’t need to be hired anymore to reduce, I guess, jobs, and maybe that was a impoverished mindset to have. Realizing that nonprofits were using AI to do stuff that they genuinely wouldn’t have had the capability or the capacity to do made me think differently, and realized that AI, while it may be used to make things more efficient and reduce people that are needed, it also genuinely will expand what can be done, particularly by people who don’t have money resources to do certain things already.

And the third lesson for me is do things that don’t scale. It’s a lesson in startups, we know, but for me, this is for a slightly different reason. It’s okay to help one person, it’s okay to work on small projects, partly because doing something is better than nothing. And really, I said I cared about these big world problems, but I wasn’t doing anything about it, and taking a step to do some sort of progress made me feel better, made me more excited, and I think, genuinely, will make me more motivated to actually take steps and actions into things that I care about, or I say I care about, some of these big world problems.

Seeing how nonprofits are using technology made me feel excited about the potential of tech, again, to solve real, big world problems, or even if the problems weren’t big, real meaningful problems, and it will be continue. It will continue to be used in that way.

And so if any of you there, you’ve thought about the big problems that are going on in the world, and you feel overwhelmed, you question whether we can make a difference. Need any sort of motivation. I challenge you, why not offer your skills to a nonprofit? Why not build with them in mind you don’t have to change necessarily, what you’re doing. Why not build in mind with people who are working on these meaningful problems, or become that techie in that organization that’s helping them set up their website, helping them with their marketing campaigns, or maybe even building a nonprofit yourself. That’s a big ask, but I’m sure each one of us could volunteer an hour or two to help a nonprofit and move them forward, because it might have the effect that it had on me, which is giving them hope that we can use tech to solve meaningful problems and maybe to save the world. Thank you.

Mark Littlewood 

Right questions? Well, I’ve got a question. For you. Actually, does anybody here work in an organization that is giving some time, or are there people that are giving time to nonprofits at the moment? Chuck and Christopher, what do you do? I mean, in this

Audience Member 

I did a pro bono deal last year for a widow whose husband had died, so I helped him sell the business.

Audience Member 

And I’m on the board of a charity in Uganda, culverted wisdom, that does Education and Development mostly in, like Farmer Field schools for people there. So I’m stuck in the tech you all for them, because they have one person, kind of running everything. So I wouldn’t say stuck. I have the opportunity to be able to take you all for them. So setting up all their CRM, their website, all that stuff. So I’ve also set up websites for numerous non profits as well, 5k people

Mark Littlewood 

Nice, yes?

Audience Member 

Point of Rental that I work for, we have point the way a foundation. We’re committed to donating a percentage of our gross revenue actually, to helping nonprofits, and we have donated technology in South America, Africa, Kenya. So it’s a major component of what we do and a part of who we are as a company that we care and we actively do that. We also provide opportunities for our employees to work locally with nonprofits, including in food banks and individual opportunities to engage our employees in a lot of to participate. Our UK office has worked to provide necessities to the Ukraine, to refugees from Ukraine. So yeah, just across the board, it’s a it’s a part of who we are as a company, to participate.

Mark Littlewood 

That’s why I’ve been around for such a long time, and you keep going back to BoS every year. So I don’t know that was bit credit taking, wasn’t it wasn’t meant to be at all. That’s great.

Mark Littlewood 

Bob.

Audience Member 

In Detroit, born right in Detroit, requires 200 acres. We help people who come out of jail, basically get jobs and move to basically a place where they can have a food truck. and also a lot of school board. I also worked with the State Foundation, and I also work for all the research to help basically people around the world all the time. So I volunteer at least 20% of my time.

Audience Member 

I worked in NGOs pretty much my whole career. Set up two NGOs. I did consulting now for NGOs in Belgium technology products for them.

Mark Littlewood 

Cool.

Oyinda Bamgbose 

I think they have one person all.

Audience Member 

For example, they are partnering with other to organize the business incubator, how to start businesses migrants.

Mark Littlewood 

So my challenge, I think, to you as a group, and to people of Bos as a group, is I, I’m going to ask that question next year at this conference, and I’d love to hear some more stories, and I’d love to hear some more ideas and some more things. People have done. I hope that allenda has inspired a few people to think about how you can get involved in stuff. And yeah, I’d love to see that we and you can play a part in catalyzing that sort of stuff. Any other questions? Oyinda, thank you.

Oyinda Bamgbose 

Thank you.

Oyinda Bamgbose

Product, Percent

A life long learner with experiences in marketing, customer success and product management and leadership roles, Oyinda has spent a decade in tech companies in the for profit and for good sectors.

She has spent the last two years at Percent a venture funded startup that aims to power purpose in every business worldwide. Previously, she led product at OYNB, an organisation focused on helping high-achievers changing their relationship with alcohol. She moved into product roles at Charlie HR where she started in customer success.

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