Engineers and designers interested in social impact work all want to use their skills to do good in the world.  After all, there are billions of people in need and over a million worthy causes to work with. But “doing good” does not necessarily correlate to impact.  You, as an individual or as an organization, could be the best at what you do and spend thousands of hours on the world’s most innovative solution to a problem.  But if that solution is never implemented or implemented poorly, your time and effort are futile.

There are millions socially driven organizations around the world with limited or no access to needed technical and design expertise, yet few have the capacity to effectively use that expertise.  Over the years I’ve witnessed several NGOs, big and small, flub technology and product initiatives due to a lack of product development and implementation knowledge.  So if you’re interested in the BOP design space, consider this:  success isn’t about completing a defined scope or work, it may not even be about sales or revenue, it’s about impact.

After five years I’m just starting to figure out what that means.  Tim Prestero, the Executive Director of Design That Matters, has a four-year head start on me and has it drilled down to a science.  We compared notes recently and distilled our thoughts.  So here it goes – if you’re an individual designer, engineer, or a design firm thinking of taking on client work in the BOP sector, here’s our list of 9 things that will increase the probability of impact:

1. Adopt the mindset of an investor. Vet the project and financial viability thoroughly as well as organizational capacity, impact, and the team behind the organization.  You want to make sure the organization you place your bet on can and will fulfill its objective.  Tim’s rule of thumb:  an organization must have been in business for 10 years and pushed products before.

2. The organization has previously demonstrated innovation capacity.

3. The organization has a solid, trustworthy reputation with their user base.

4.  Put special consideration and extra due diligence when considering working with international clients.  Tim points out that business development costs are significantly higher due to travel, language and cultural differences, and the extra time spent on partnership-building, due diligence, and need-finding.

5. Your lead contact is the CEO.  Meaning, you have access to and support from decision makers.

6.  Avoid pro bono project work.  This is hard, but free labor is often valued as such.  To get the information, time, and skin-in-the-game you need to get the job done, charge a fee or find a way to get your client emotionally committed.  Catapult Design also requires a minimum of 33% of the project budget up front.

7. The end product of your efforts will impact a minimum of 10,000 people, but preferably in the millions.

8.  Before taking on a design thinking or research proposal, develop concrete outcomes. For example, if your research results spare a client from investing time and resources into a misguided idea, how would you show that?

9.  Ensure the design accounts for failure.  If you’re assisting with the development of a water sanitation project within a community, could project failure leave the community in a worse situation?   Failure on part of the design or implementation should not be to the detriment of the end-user.

Of course, we would love to hear from others who have their own pitfalls to contribute to this list.   Drop them in the comments below!

[This blog was co-authored by Heather Fleming of Catapult Design and Tim Prestero of Design that Matters]

President Obama declared a state of emergency in Arizona this winter after 54 inches of snow fell on the Navajo Nation, leaving many rural families stranded without heat, electricity, or fresh food.  Traditionally a population of sheepherders, a majority of Navajo families live rurally and sometimes completely cut off from the outside world when winter snow and summer rain make the network of reservation dirt roads impassible.  I met Lena and her brother Nelson outside Kinlichee, AZ just before the heavy snow fell earlier this year.  Lena’s modest five foot by ten foot concrete home had two kerosene lanterns for lighting, a cast iron stove for heat, a mattress for sleeping, a basin for bathing, and a propane tank sitting outside the house with a hose snaking through a cracked window to a stovetop.

Wood for heating, and re-used milk jugs for daily water collection

Needless to say, Lena and Nelson, both in their forties, have never had access to electricity or running water.  An outhouse 50 yards from Lena’s home serves as their bathroom; a local stream provides the water they need for cooking, bathing, and cleaning.  Ironically, a high voltage power line buzzes overhead about five-minute from their house.

The Native American population is the most poverty-stricken community in the United States and continually plagued by health and environmental issues, gang activity, and political drama that overshadow efforts to retain and strengthen tribal culture.  After decades of sovereignty, many Native American communities mimic the conditions you would find in developing countries.

I made a second trip to Lena and Nelson’s community a few months after meeting them, long after the snow melted and this time with the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority (NTUA), the entity responsible for providing Navajo reservation residents with electricity, water and natural gas.  The NTUA is turning to off-grid, renewable solutions for its most remote customers.   We drove one hour to a home just west of Monument Valley with an 880W (not enough for most US homes, but respectable) hybrid wind-solar energy system.  The distance alone makes servicing the system a huge time-commitment and requires a heavy-duty truck to take on the precarious “roads.”

Hybrid wind-solar system near Monument Valley

For Navajo families waiting for electricity, basic math reveals that their chance of receiving a grid connection in their lifetime is slim to none.  The NTUA estimates the cost of a power line at $20,000 per mile.  Even if each of the 18,000 people without electricity lived a mere five miles from the nearest line, that’s an estimated $1.8 billion dollars to electrify all remaining homes.  The NTUA collects approximately $50 per month from each electrified home – at that rate, payback for grid connection is on the order of 1000 years.

The Navajo Reservation has the largest landmass of any tribe at 27,000 square miles and housing roughly 175,000 people.  Urban areas are sparse and the number of people living in them and paying for utilities is not enough to effectively subsidize the infrastructure development for those living remotely, as it did in the rest of the country.  Which means that on the Navajo Nation, off-grid renewable sources of power are less about dependence on oil and more about necessity.  But beyond that, it’s also about alleviating poverty.  De-centralized energy systems hold great potential for rural, impoverished areas worldwide.  The tangible effects of electricity include refrigeration of vaccines, powering of small electronics (radios, cell phones) that create a virtual bridge to the rest of the world, and lighting that doesn’t spew black carbon into the home.  $1.8B is not a trivial amount.  But it prompts the question:  what is the price tag on health and well-being here at home and abroad?