“In this case, the how is more important than the why.”
Why I Love Homework Helpers
Not all community services are meaningful. If you’re looking for a meaningful service, you’re welcome to join every Wednesday in the Provo Area. I volunteer every Wednesday at Homework Helpers, a tutoring program for kids from K-12.
I help with providing volunteers for the program, and I also contribute to the overall direction of the program.
So why am I such a proponent for the Homework Helpers? Let’s start with my most memorable community service, ever.
My Most Memorable Community Service
We were 150-strong and ready to clean up the Provo River. We started out the day of service1 with breakfast burritos, donuts, and juices.
After a great start, we went to start cleaning up the Provo River.
Gloves on.
We went about picking all the foliage from the trail and moved it from one pile to another pile.
It’s amazing what 150 people can do with leaves in a short span of two hours. The pile was a big pile, and big pile took a lot of work to move from one side of the trail to another.
“Wait.” I said out loud to no one in particular, “Did we just move a bunch of twigs from one side of the river trail to another?”
All that work. All of that labor. All the planning. All of that enthusiasm just to do something that giant yellow machine can do in a couple of minutes. Oh. Wait here comes the giant yellow vehicle doing that exact thing.
I was furious.
Are these services designed to help the community or help us feel good about ourselves?
The How is More Important Than Why. Sometimes.
Community service, by tradition, is not supposedly motivated by money. This is what makes it great. Not everything in the world should be motivated by selfish gains.
However, once money is not the main motivator, our bleeding hearts cease to optimize on value creation. At the leaf moving activity, our hearts were at the right place, but our impact is meh.
That’s a mistake.
In this case, the how is more important than the why2.
Social Impact Model
While I was in college, I learned a pretty good model for thinking about creating a good impact in society3.
The five pillar of social impact is a helpful way to think through key questions ask about a health of any impact-based social program:
- Innovation: How am I combining good ideas to create a new idea?
- Value: What kind of value am I really creating?
- Replication: Will I be able to repeat the success multiple times? Will I be able to do this else where?
- Sustainability: How are we paying for this?
- Scale4: Once I nail the small version of this project, can I do the same thing else where just as successfully?
Each of these question would require in-depth discussion, but for now these sample questions provide a sound basis on questioning a lot of the services that we are tasks to accomplish.
Homework Helpers Checks a Lot of the Boxes
Homework Helpers uses local young adults from a local college town to provide academic tutoring and social support for the kids in less wealthy area of town. The kids come and learn and we provide food, school supplies, and even winter jackets for them.
This form of community service is very innovative in that it combines both local religious community who have direct connection and understanding of the local needs with a huge near unlimited supply of college educated young adults looking for meaningful services.
The model is highly replicable, scalable, and sustainable. The direct partnership with the local church which provides the place, network, and funding to support the local tutoring efforts. The cost of the program is not too crazy, as each night would cost around $120 worth of food. Not too bad for educating 30 kids and feeding everyone including the volunteers.
The current question mark in the project is whether the program generates enough value.
Challenges for Homework Helpers
We are facing several challenges in regards to value. We know that tutors are helpful for any students interested in learning, but not all students who attend are interested in learning.
So how do we incentivize learning? I’ve been trying candies, games, and other incentives.
Capturing the attention and interest of the students is an age old question that many teachers asked. We will improve as we learn, but perhaps helping inform the parents better may increase our impact in the program.
Either way, this is much more interesting the raking leaves without a clear value add in mind. In Homework Helpers, we obviously have a long way to go, but we’ll get there.
1 I am an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Every year, every congregations throughout the world each choose a local community project and provide labor for that activity for that day.
2 This may or may not be a direct stab at Simon Sinek’s Start With Why. I find Simon’s many takes to lack nuance, specific action, or recommendations that actually helps people. I think I’m especially annoyed at all his comments about generations younger than him. To me, it seemed like he doesn’t necessarily believe in the things he says about “kids.” He just wants views.
3 The Ballard Center for Social Impact at BYU played a huge role in my life at BYU. I don’t think I’ve done a good job of telling all my friends about it. However, they were some of the first people in the college space that really seeks to use all the skills of entrepreneur to really think carefully on how to make big changes.
4 Each of these topics need its own blog or even their own book. For those interested in scaling, I recommend the book The Voltage Effect by the esteemed economist John A. List. The book talks carefully about how behavioral and economic issues causes successful projects to fail at scale in business and the non-profit sector.
