Sarah Ford | June 2, 2014

Radical Focus and Driving Demand for Scale

叠测听

DoSomething.org just cut more than half of its programs. That鈥檚 right, we cut the majority of the programs we offered.

No, we weren鈥檛 in a financial crisis. And no, we didn鈥檛 have some sort of front-page scandal. We wanted to听. Shrinking to grow might seem counterintuitive, but remember when your mom told you to cut your hair to keep it healthy and let it grow? Yeah, it鈥檚 sort of like that.

DoSomething.org鈥檚 purpose is to make the world suck less by activating young people around the world to participate in causes they鈥檙e passionate about. Our 2.5 million members tackle campaigns on issues such as poverty, violence, and the environment. We鈥檙e not focused on the high achievers or young advocates (who would do something no matter what). We attract teens and college students who want to engage in an awesome campaign and make change happen鈥攖hose 鈥渆veryday young people鈥 that make up 80 percent of the youth market.

To truly scale, we knew we had to 鈥渁udit and cut.鈥 We looked at our programs and asked: Where do we have a competitive advantage? Where does the market truly need us? Does each program directly relate to our goal of five million active members by 2015? Can we scale this program?

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