An Open-Source Solution for Social Change: The Goodpush Alliance

Abstract

The case outlines the development of Skateistan as a concept, its launch of the Goodpush Alliance, and the organization’s approach to support a global community of skateboarding-for-youth-development programs spanning 60 countries through social marketing. This case explores how multiple stakeholders co-engage at multiple levels—individual (micro), communities and networks (meso), and non-government and societies (macro)—to co-create solutions to address disparities in marginalized populations through skateboarding.

Teaching/Classroom Notes

1.1 Synopsis

Social marketing is embracing a wider use of digital technologies, beyond promotion and communication, to influence human behavior for the betterment of society. This case outlines the development of a novel international non-government organization called Skateistan, its launch of the Goodpush Alliance, and the organization’s approach to support a global community of skateboarding-for-youth-development programs spanning 60 countries through social marketing. The aim of this case is to demonstrate how multiple stakeholders co-engage at multiple levels—individual (micro), communities and networks (meso), and non-government and societies (macro)—to co-create solutions to address disparities in marginalized populations through skateboarding. Highlighted are the interlinkages and progression toward achievement of three Sustainable Development Goals (United Nations, 2020): quality education (Goal 4), gender equality (Goal 5), and inequality reduction (Goal 10).

1.2 Potential Audiences and Instructor’s Material

This case has been developed for use in a variety of marketing classes, such as core marketing, corporate social responsibility, marketing innovation, and social innovation at the undergraduate and graduate level (e.g., MBA and masters in marketing).

1.3 Learning

• 1. To examine how social marketing is being used by Skateistan, an international non-government organization, to globally scale social impact.

• 2. To understand how a social marketing effort can and should adapt to the backgrounds and ethnicities of the international communities that it works with and the importance of bridging these differences.

• 3. To analyze how digital technologies can facilitate change through social marketing efforts.

• 4. To understand how multiple stakeholders co-engage to co-create solutions.

• 5. To recognize the role played by social marketing to alleviate gender inequalities.

1.4 Time Frame for Class Discussion

The time frame for this case discussion is 60–75 minutes, depending on the class size and students’ prior knowledge of social marketing and the Sustainable Development Goals by the United Nations. Below are links to videos that the instructor may choose to use along with the case:

• Skateistan Youth Leadership: https://youtu.be/ACZRmLpKSYU

• Skateistan Educational Youth Programs: https://youtu.be/GUysBRC9D7A

1.5 Suggested Discussion Questions

The following is a suggested sequence of discussions questions to achieve the stated learning objectives.

Question 1—What SDGs did the Goodpush Alliance seek to address? How?

Question 2—How did the Goodpush Alliance use social marketing to scale the social impact of their organization?

Question 3—How did the Goodpush Alliance facilitate and nurture collaborative impact in a local-to-global context? Describe the differences among the nations they operate in, their backgrounds, and ethnicities. What is the importance of bridging these differences?

Question 4—Who are the multiple stakeholders co-engaged in the Goodpush Alliance? How do they co-create solutions?

Question 5—What role did digital technologies play in fueling system change through Skateistan’s Goodpush Alliance?

1.6 Analysis

Answer to Question 1— What SDGs did the Goodpush Alliance seek to address? How?

The Goodpush Alliance sought to address:

• Goal 4: Quality Education, by ensuring an inclusive and equitable quality education through their programs and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all

• Goal 5: Gender Equality, by including and empowering women and girls to engage in skateboarding activities and educational opportunities that would not be available to them otherwise and

• Goal 10: Reduce Inequalities, by offering social skating programs in some of the least developed areas in some of the least developed countries.

Answer to Question 2— How did the Goodpush Alliance use social marketing to scale the social impact of their organization?

Goodpush is an exemplar of co-discovering, co-designing, and co-delivering value with stakeholders to (1) authentically engaging stakeholders without exploitive intent, (2) represent the genuine interests of all stakeholders, and especially those which are the most disadvantaged, (3) commit to long-term behavior change and relationship management and consider their part in that process through taking a systems perspective (Kennedy & Santos, 2019, p. 533). Goodpush and its partners seek to bring about system wide change through changing the institutional norms that perpetuate the problem (e.g., demonstrating inclusivity and gender equality through its programs) and look at shaping the social context for change at a societal level in the communities that it serves.

Goodpush’s programs include many different interventions, at the individual (micro), organizational and community (mezzo), and society and policy (macro) levels together with the goal of instilling long-lasting systemic change. As Domegan (2021) argues, social marketing does not change behavior through one single intervention at one single level at one point in time, but rather change happens over time across these three levels (micro, mezzo, and macro), and Goodpush is engaging both top-down and bottom-up stakeholders through social mechanisms, including cooperation, collaboration, and self-organization. Also important is the highly participatory approach that Goodpush and its partners (e.g., Make Life Skate Life involving the community in building parks and developing programs) use to drive behavioral change as a result of their social marketing efforts. Again, Domegan (2021) states “Group model building is a highly participatory and successful way of involving community participants and other stakeholders in problem definition to intervention design and implementation” (p. 3). Instructors may wish to discuss with the class how this participatory approach enables successful adaptation to the various cultural contexts in which Goodpush finds itself.

Below are links to websites of Goodpush’s First Three Partners that the instructor may choose to use along with the case:

• Make Life Skate Life’s Suli Skatepark in Iraq: https://www.makelifeskatelife.org/iraq

• 7Hills Skatepark in Jordan: https://www.makelifeskatelife.org/jordan

• SkateQilya’s Jayyous Skatepark in Palestine: http://www.skateqilya.org/

Answer to Question 3— How did the Goodpush Alliance facilitate and nurture collaborative impact in a local-to-global context? Describe the differences among the nations they operate in, their backgrounds, and ethnicities. What is the importance of bridging these differences?

The instructor may discuss the tensions, benefits, and drawbacks in the standardization vs. adaptation decision. Taking the participative approach discussed in the answer to question 2 allows Goodpush and its partners to adapt their services to the cultural and institutional environment of each community in which it operates. Instructors may have students briefly research a few of the cultures and institutional environments in which Goodpush operates to identify some critical differences that would have to be bridged or adapted for. Then, the class can discuss the underlying values and objectives of Goodpush, which may be shared by all the communities in which they operate (e.g., child protection and safety, positive educational outcomes, inclusion, and equality). Focusing on the underlying interests that are shared by each community can act as a bridge across the more surface-level issues that may divide the various communities, so that Goodpush can make a positive global impact.

Answer to Question 4— Who are the multiple stakeholders co-engaged in the Goodpush Alliance? How do they co-create solutions?

Goodpush’s multiple stakeholders include, among others, (1) their various non-profit organization partners at the local level (e.g., 7Hills), (2) skateboarding brands who fund and sponsor many programs (e.g., Lenovo, WeWork), (3) governmental agencies (e.g., The Embassy of the United States in Kabul, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), (4) related NGOs, who provide funding and consulting resources (e.g., Tony Hawk Foundation, SkatePal), (5) volunteers who build skateparks and advise the NGOs (e.g., Tony Hawk, SkatePal volunteers), and (6) the individuals in the communities in which their programs operate (e.g., Qalqilya). Each of these stakeholders plays its own role (funding, manpower, knowledge resources, etc.) in the ongoing operations of Goodpush and the programs that it supports, and this should be discussed by students.

Answer to Question 5— What role did digital technologies play in fueling system change through Skateistan’s Goodpush Alliance?

Some critical technologies for Goodpush include social media, such as Facebook and Instagram, Internet and mobile phones, text messaging, websites, online programs, blogs, discussion boards, and emails which facilitate formative research, online services, delivery, and access and monitoring intervention engagement. As Domegan (2021; p. 3) suggests:

Such digital technologies pave the way for multilevel, multistakeholder interactions and collaborations to take place that can fuel systems change. These digital technologies unlock positive behavioural change outcomes… in numerous ways. Digital technologies facilitate diversity of self-organisation, connect topdown decision-makers with bottom-up citizen and community lived experiences, reframe old self-interest values into new shared values based on mutuality and morality and facilitate and nurture co-operation and collaboration for collaborative impact in local-to-global contexts. In effect, digital technologies in social marketing drive the macro-meso-micro-micro-meso-macro social mechanisms in social systems.