Opinion Blog : Entries Tagged With 'information+technology'
| March 31, 2008 03:26 PM |
Is Philanthropy Going Open Source?Several years ago, I wrote a book chapter about open source philanthropy. It is in The World We Want, edited by Peter Karoff and Jane Maddox and includes an interview with me called, “Open Sesame: Networks of Cooperation and Open Source Solutions.” It presented seven building blocks for bringing open source principles to philanthropy. These seven building blocks of open philanthropy are:
And more recently I’ve been thinking about public ideas, crowdsourcing innovation through Kluster or Social Innovation Camp, and now the folks at Social Edge are onto the idea - read this discussion on open source social entrepreneurship. If nothing else, the basic premises of seeking diverse input, trying some design methodologies such as rapid prototyping, and drawing from multiple disciplines are strategic approaches to solving social problems that are starting to gain some traction. These concepts are all exciting, and they also raise some questions for philanthropy. Where are the lines between public and private when it comes to ideas for the public good? Can or should someone be able to own a policy innovation? Protect a service delivery process? Are all socially positive ideas public? How will new entities like L3Cs or B corporations re-mix the assumptions about ideas and innovation as proprietary sources of business proposition - or are they public goods? What are the best ways to encourage creative thinking and bring the ideas to action? Is social entrepreneurship better at this than anything else? Are social entrepreneurs even paying attention to raging intellectual property debates - and, if so, how and why? What should they be asking? What should philanthropy be asking?
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| April 1, 2008 11:11 AM |
Openness for Technology and for Techies!
We may have a special lingo and geeky open source stickers, but what we techies can bring to the larger team is a very valuable leadership position: We can make work more efficient for staff, help align programs and strategies, and provide tools for staff and departments to work collaboratively and share knowledge. We can also guide decisions for the organization with our unique and important perspective. The discussion made me think about user-generated content and the two-way flow of information that comes with adopting new social media components. This is usually one of the biggest sources of fear for organizations just beginning on the road to web 2.0. But isn’t the openness to letting go of control of the message and specific content similar to the opening of leadership opportunities for staff? (And shouldn’t it be that neither creates fear in the organization and its leadership team?) Organizations that are the most successful in building community online are those that can distribute information AND listen, create conversations AND follow those of others. Isn’t this true of organizations that are successful in building dynamic leaders? If organizations’ leadership teams enable tech staff to provide input and insight, those techies move away from the “just techie” side of things, and into being a leader. If organizations’ leadership teams enable tech staff to be part of the strategy development process, I would bet that the strategy would look different and that there would be less confusion, delay, and/or implementation time. The biggest requirement for the technologist (and the leadership team) in this situation (moving from the techie to the leader) is the knowledge of and involvement in the creation of the organization’s “business” goals - how else one can provide the technology piece of the equation properly. “New media” has many terrific tools, but the technology layer should be put in place only after the other goals are worked out. Social media tools are put to the best use in outreach campaigns when the campaign is designed first, and the technology is integrated as it aligns. Just like this process, tech leaders need to be a part of the development and shared knowledge of the organization’s goals so that the best technologies can be used in the most appropriate ways. So how are you, as a techie, working on becoming a leader for your organization? Or, how are you, as a non-techie, enabling those who are “just techies” to become leaders?
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| April 14, 2008 02:42 PM |
Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic AdaptationLate on a Friday afternoon (April 8), feeling a little punchy after a long week, I posted Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic Adaptation 1.0. Then I wound up thinking about it most of the weekend. Here is the first upgrade. Bernholz’s Law of Philanthropic Adaptation, 1.1: The rate and cycles of philanthropic adoption of new technology follow a fairly predictable pattern, regardless of technology. This pattern is:
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| April 30, 2008 11:23 AM |
Root Causes vs. Facebook Causes
The attention lavished on these platforms is a net gain for micro-philanthropy. With each blog post, more people find innovative ways to support grassroots initiatives. Recently, even mainstream media outlets such as MSNBC (Facebook Causes), Oprah (Kiva), Steven Colbert (DonorsChoose), The Wall Street Journal (Change.org), and CNN (SixDegrees) are covering micro-philanthropy. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement that surrounds these initiatives. But maintaining a critical lens is equally important. I am concerned that few, if any, social action platforms are currently leveraging the self-organizing potential of social media to address the root causes that make online social activism necessary in the first place. As food for thought, here are two excerpts from Wikipedia’s entry for “root causes”:
As legions of digital natives start to self-identify as citizen philanthropists, they should be given online tools that permit them to do more than donate to an existing organization or recruit friends to a cause. The following exemplify deeper level corrective actions that social action platforms could facilitate:
Will platforms like Facebook Causes, DonorsChoose, Kiva, Change.org, and SixDegrees render top-down organizations obsolete? Do they bypass old-school methods of fundraising and grant-making? Have they planted the seeds for a society composed of highly motivated micro-philanthropists?
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| May 20, 2008 09:30 AM |
Micro-Innovation: Bringing Billions into the ConversationBase of the Pyramid (BoP) strategy has a few key tenets, one of which is the power of aggregated demand. Those living at the base of the economic pyramid may have little buying power on their own, but when they are pooled together, their consolidated demand amounts to a viable market. Companies are increasingly aware of and planning around this aggregated demand approach, as we have seen through such examples as the William J. Clinton Foundation’s ability to bring down the prices of AIDS drugs through a guaranteed high volume of sales. That said, there is a need for not only existing products and services, but even more so for innovation at the BoP – so what about aggregating demand in those cases? How do you assess the ability and willingness of the poor to pay for products and services that do not already exist, and how do you convince companies to take a risk on such a vast and fragmented market? I asked myself this question while researching the myriad of innovative water filtration systems designed for the BoP. As I was getting ready to critique a few of the designs and business models, I realized that I wasn’t qualified to make those judgments. I have only had to use a water filtration system a handful of times, and I don’t know the numerous local realities well enough to criticize one design over another. However, the targeted population for these systems is geographically scattered, linguistically diverse, and resource-intensive to reach, so who would decide which innovations would move forward? While many in the base of the pyramid movement have hoped that innovations to serve both developing and developed markets will come from BoP communities themselves, co-creation has been lengthy, intricate, complex and time-consuming. Hart and Simanis have invested countless hours in the field practicing their embedded innovation model, and although they have had numerous success stories, the businesses that have been created through this model are still primarily community-centric versus globally-reaching. As Al Hammond’s recent writings on transformative sector scaling have pointed out, “A number of community-initiated business models have produced good results, but they aren’t easily replicable and don’t scale.” Going from community to community and engaging each in participatory design may be the ideal for embedded innovation, but it is certainly not at the scale that is necessary to reach efficiency gains and profitability through aggregated demand. So, how do we engage with and understand the needs of millions of geographically dispersed people? Part of the solution may come from the model of Internet-based networks that consolidate demand – which I was first introduced to through Pop!Tech’s curator Andrew Zolli. Zolli spoke recently at Columbia Business School about forces shaping our society. One of the key determinants that he laid out was the power of networks. Zolli, who is known as an expert in global foresight and innovation, said that understanding networks will be an increasingly invaluable skill, and the power that networks yield will also grow in enormity. He was not just referring to social networks or to personal networks, but also to technology-based demand networks. These are online communities that have been created to aggregate the demand of multiple users in order to attract events, boycott businesses, and even design new gadgets. He cited Eventful and CrowdSpirit as two leading examples of these technology-based demand networks. Thanks to the Internet, individual actors who would normally not yield much power on their own are able to connect virtually with people with similar demands and make something happen. CrowdSpirit, though very much a start-up, is the type of platform that I feel could help bridge the divide between innovation and high-volume demand at the BoP. It was launched to “co-create” electronic gadgets through an online design community. In essence, innovators from anywhere can submit ideas to the site, and numerous people vote for their favorite designs and aspects and then agree to purchase the device if the producer adopts their preferences. The inventor decides to go forward with the idea if he or she sees that there is sufficient demand. CrowdSpirit is built on community-based and participative design, and takes some risk out of the equation for the producer/inventor, since there’s an advance purchase commitment at the end of the R&D pipeline. Although it is built for high-end electronics, the model is fascinating. The Internet is enabling people to overcome traditional boundaries and bringing together the voices of millions. In 1983 Pierre Bourdieu, an early economic sociologist, realized the power that could be created through networks of relationships, “enabling numerous, varied, scattered agents to act as one and overcome the limitations of space and time.” That sounds like exactly the type of model that would work for the BoP, and with technology that Bourdieu could not imagine only two decades ago, it may be possible. In C.K. Prahalad’s latest book The New Age of Innovation, the author notes that “we have finally reached the point where the confluence of connectivity, digitization, and the convergence of industry and technology boundaries are creating a new dynamic between consumers and the firm.” He continues by observing that “today, instead of a small group of people sitting and thinking about innovation, you can have three billion people not only being micro-producers and micro-consumers, but micro-innovators…everybody has an opportunity to contribute to innovation.” I am certainly not saying that the ideal of participatory design and on-the-ground co-creation or the marrying of resources and shared risk should be scrapped altogether in favor of a tool such as CrowdSpirit, but perhaps more individuals could be brought into the conversation over a shorter period of time if we can use technological advances to enable these numerous, varied, scattered agents to act as one and have a voice in innovation. An example of this more democratized design platform may be the collaborative competition put on by the Global Water Challenge and Ashoka’s Changemakers to find disruptive technologies and solutions to the water sanitation challenge. By sourcing design ideas from all over the world and opening up the judging to anyone with an Internet connection, Ashoka’s Changemakers may prove to be a leader in demand consolidation and technology-enabled participatory design. In a recent MIT Press article, Charlie Brown, Executive Director of Ashoka’s Changemakers, wrote that
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| May 30, 2008 08:00 AM |
Wiki Adoption in NonprofitsLast night at the Portland Net Tuesday event for May, we discussed the myriad ways nonprofits could use a wiki. Many people wondered, how do we ease a wiki into an organization? What are the first steps? To introduce a wiki, you should: 1. Ask yourself this question: What goal do we want to accomplish by using this wiki? Having the end goal in mind helps guide both initial set-up of the wiki and conversations with staff as it’s introduced. Do you want to use the wiki as an internal collaboration tool for restaurants close to the office, a place to share ideas about future projects, a shared space for event planning, or for working together on grant applications and letters? All of these goals are fine, but they all indicate very different uses of the wiki. 2. Start the wiki off on the right foot. For people who have never participated in a wiki, a single blank white page is not inviting—even for those who have used a wiki before. You are only setting yourself up for a lot more work if you send out a link to the wiki, with nothing but a title and the hope that people will dive right in. It is a wiki, so its initial structure may or may not last. It is important to have something in the wiki for people to edit, read, and slowly participate in. Include the goal in a short introduction on the main page—why are you introducing the tool to the organization? Next, add a couple of links and new pages to explain the spread of topics and conversations, and suggest possibilities for content on those pages and on new ones. Some people even add spelling or grammatical errors so people click “edit” at least once to fix the glaring mistakes! 3. Invite them and ask them, over and over. The ”invite” happens mostly outside and the “ask” mostly inside the wiki. Invite your group (just a few staff members, a team, the whole organization, or your membership base) to use it! This goes beyond the initial introduction. Inviting is something that you should do as often as possible. For example, if you get an email from someone on staff asking about a project that you know is discussed in the wiki, keep your content in the wiki and include a link to it in the email; invite the person to continue the conversation with you and the rest of the staff there. As a participant, and as an organizer in the wiki, it’s helpful to include actionable tasks throughout the wiki, especially in the initial phase; this encourages participation. Someone may read a page that explains the early planning of an after-school program your organization might be spearheading and think, “well, that’s nice,” but they won’t immediately see what they should edit on the page. Instead, after an explanation of the project, include a few questions, such as: Do you have kids participating in an after-school program in town? How many staffers should be hired? Which school(s) should we interview? Those questions are actionable—everyone has an answer that is valid and can be included just by hitting edit, typing a quick response, and saving. Plus, once a few folks have entered their answers, the door opens for conversation around their input or even similarities between staff and programs. To sum it up: Choose a goal, plant some content, invite, and ask. There is a plethora of information available on wiki adoption including nonprofits that already use wikis internally and externally. Do you have a project that could benefit from using a shared space, instead of hundreds of emails or lost hand-written notes? Has your organization already considered a wiki? I’d love you to share your success stories.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| June 6, 2008 09:00 AM |
Games for ChangeGlobal Kids, a New York-based urban youth nonprofit, launched a video game yesterday (from the fifth annual Games for Change conference in New York City) called Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City. In the game, set in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster, players follow the struggle of a fictional character named Vivica Water as she searches for her mother and helps her neighbors during the storm. Targeted toward inner-city high school students—and made in collaboration with a group of them at Canarsie High School in Brooklyn—this most recent offering from the new “cause gaming” movement aims to “celebrate New Orleans culture and draw attention to the continuing struggle in New Orleans as residents fight for housing in 2008.” Similarly, a video game released in February called ICED: I Can End Deportation also seeks to engage the voices of society’s dispossessed. Made by the small human rights nonprofit Breakthrough, this game tries to promote immigration policy reform, Breakthrough’s mission. Both games, thanks to their interactivity, pack emotional resonance as they tell the stories of the victims of social problems and policy disputes. To be sure, this is important, as empathy is the first step toward effective social problem-solving. But consumer, beware. Some of these games don’t go far enough. ICED profiles five teens of different ethnic backgrounds and invites players to “walk in their shoes” to “learn how immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights to all immigrants.” Gen X and Y care a lot about social issues and there’s an opportunity for game-makers to influence these future leaders and decision-makers. But wouldn’t this game be even more powerful (and socially responsible) if players were given more shoes to fill? What if you could also play the role of an immigration officer, or a border patrol cop, or a senator fighting immigration reforms on Capitol Hill? Wouldn’t the nonprofit’s work be even more credible among policymakers or wealthy donors looking for social issues to support with their dollars? There’s no question that the games for change movement represents an exciting and deservedly hot new trend for tech-savvy nonprofits: Games can be a powerful new way to raise funds and bolster waning membership rosters. Further, letting people of all ages “live” in new worlds and try on new behaviors can help nonprofits better engage the people they serve, as well as draw more public and private aid to the plight of society’s dispossessed. But how carefully these games portray all sides of the social issues they’re advocating will be critical to their effectiveness and credibility in the long term. Indeed, solutions to social problems don’t occur simply because people gain a better understanding of the victims of poor social policy-making. Exploring the complexity of social problems, all sides, is what games can do best. Consider World Without Oil, for example, a year-old game that bills itself as “a serious game for the public good” and attempts to capture multiple viewpoints by letting players imagine the first 32 weeks of a global oil crisis and how it affects their lives—oil company leaders included. Or take a look at Peacemaker, a game about the Middle East conflict developed by a team at Carnegie Mellon University. It lets players take on the role of either the Israeli or the Palestinian leader, so as to better understand the kinds of decisions either one of them might be forced to make. It puts people into the decision-making shoes of one, or ideally both, of the leaders in that conflict. Additionally, the United Nation’s Food Force engages kids aged 8-13 years old by sending them out on six realistic aid missions. It had more than 2 million downloads in its first couple of months of release in 2006 and it’s now up to 4 million. One key feature of this game is its ability to effectively portray the challenges of delivering aid amid a variety of real-world challenges. A newer game that focuses on complex problem-solving from the start is UNICEF’s Ayiti: The Cost of Life. As journalists have long realized, quality content is not simply about how well one can argue one side of an issue, but rather how deft one is at arguing multiple sides of it—indeed, acknowledging that multiple sides even have an argument to make. Don’t believe it? Just ask some of the kids starting to play ICED. In a soon-to-be-released survey, a majority of them said that while they like the game and find it an authentic portrayal of the impact of current immigration policies, many students also “felt manipulated and like they were being asked to play politics for somebody else,” says Shelley Pasnik, director of the Center for Children and Technology, which collaborated with developers on the game. “These games represent a good start, but there’s no question that they will need to become more sophisticated as the games for change movement evolves.” Viva the evolution. In the dawn of new media, the public’s ability to understand the multiple grays of an issue should count the most when it comes to making change that matters—and that sticks. Says MIT professor Henry Jenkins, an expert in youth media and an enthusiastic supporter of the emerging social games movement: “We have to think of ways to use games not just to escape reality but to re-engage with reality.” Amen.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| June 11, 2008 01:00 PM |
One Click Giving InfrastructureOver the last few years we’ve grown accustomed to:
Heck, we’ll even turn loose our inner word nerds to support the World Food Programme. But how do you know which site to use for your $50 gift?
We need a one-stop directory of these sites. Just as foundations of all kinds began organizing themselves a few decades back, it is time these online marketplaces do the same, to enhance public awareness, regulatory input, joint research, and shared interests in developments regarding technological/infrastructure/charitable law. The “disintermediation” that the Internet promised way back in the 20th century is now an assumed part of the philanthropic landscape. I predict it will soon be building its own industry supports (infrastructure). One thing I noticed as I compiled the bullets above is the absence of two key sectors—the arts and the environment. Scanning my memory bank, I came up blank on online giving sites/communities/intermediaries focused broadly on environmental or arts/cultural giving. Help me out; send me the sites I’m missing. Or better yet, start the directory and build the new infrastructure. Full disclosure: I’ve worked with or know individuals involved in running the sites listed above. I’ve used some of these services but am not formally affiliated with any of them at the moment.
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| June 12, 2008 07:00 AM |
Maps for Driving ChangeSteve Jobs unveiled the new iPhone 3-G, to oohs and aahs. One of its most impressive features is a pairing of GPS and mapping that allows users to instantly locate themselves and search for nearby items of interest – restaurants, shops, etc. What will really impress me, though, is when we’re all able to see more information about people and resources. I’d bet anyone reading this can quickly search for a Starbucks, or some other commercial resource, anywhere around the globe. But what if you wanted to find which neighborhoods in your community had the highest rates of lower income Latinos with diabetes, or children living in poverty? What if you wanted to map the flow of foundation grants to various regions or neighborhoods? What if you also wanted to find, and contribute to, that information through your cell phone? As Buckaroo Banzai and Buddhist sages put it, “wherever you go, there you are.” But for too many people around the world, the inverse is true—wherever you are determines where you can go. Place matters to our quality of life far more than whether we can find good coffee or a particular kind of food or entertainment. Our prospects for enjoying clean air and water, healthy food, freedom from violence, and opportunities to learn may be tied more closely to where we live than any other characteristic. Place is where the intersection of race, class, and power is shown in starkest relief. Advocates, planners and funders are increasingly using GIS mapping to analyze a host of issues. Civil rights lawyers, environmental justice activists, and community organizers are using maps to anchor dialogue with community members, adding their on-the-ground knowledge to “official” data, and also to make their case to policy makers and judges. The same day as the iPhone launch, a group of academics and advocates gathered in Oakland to inform an Opportunity Agenda study on the use of maps to support health equity advocacy. Bill Lann Lee, former assistant U.S. Attorney for Civil Rights during the Clinton Administration and a co-founder of Opportunity Agenda, noted how much he and his colleagues would have liked to use maps (the way modern technology makes possible) when suing to stop the lead poisoning of low-income children or to prevent violations of voting rights. Participants heard how the Kirwan Institute and Legal Services of Northern California use maps to make powerful cases for the harmful effects of structural racism, and also about how health researchers and government agencies are using GIS to analyze health and environmental issues. Mapping also shows great promise for making visible the flow of grant dollars to specific places, the demographic and other attributes of those places, and even the specific subsets of people served in those places. HealthyCity.org has developed innovative methods for mapping the service areas and branch locations of grantees and graphically displaying the relative size of grants, all on top of a set of more than 60 demographic and health indicators and the locations of resources such as schools, parks, fire and police stations, and other nonprofit organizations, for funders like The California Endowment, First 5 Los Angeles, and a coalition of 22 private and public funders supporting early childhood programs. As I’ve written elsewhere, this approach holds promise not just for planning, but also for accountability and philanthropic equity issues. Mapping the reach of grants may be far better than asking individual foundations and their grantees to gather demographic and other information, as a bill in the California Assembly, AB 624, would do. To take this approach to scale, we’d need to make the grants data already disclosed by foundations more accessible to advocates, and supplement that with data about the geographic and demographic reach of those grant funds. (This would mean bringing the grants databases out from behind the firewalls of services like the Foundation Center or Foundation Search, or paying the costs of providing free public access to that data.) At the recent NetSquared conference on innovative use of technology for social good, GIS mapping was at the core of 7 of the 21 featured projects, out of 180 nominations from around the world. Here are short summaries, in alphabetical order (complete descriptions here):
Early ancestors of Web-based GIS include Neighborhood Knowledge California (developed at UCLA by Neal Richman, one of the foremost evangelists of using GIS for community benefit), and the network of sites in the National Neighborhood Indicators Project, such as Metro Boston Data Common. Recent notable developments are VolunteerMatch, which adds the ability to map volunteer opportunities, and the launch of Policy Map.
Whatever you think about the potential benefits and shortcomings of GIS, we should expect this use of GIS mapping with in-depth demographic and resource data to grow quickly, and to be available over future generations of iPhones and other cell devices very soon. Questions to address are:
Are there any questions or concerns you have about pro-social uses of GIS? Are there examples of the successful use of GIS that you’d like to share? [Full disclosure: I am a proud co-founder and member of the governing partnership of HealthyCity.org, a project sponsored by Advancement Project, and am involved in supporting its continued development.]
Posted by Katie Harrington
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| June 13, 2008 07:00 AM |
Learning from LaunchingPhew! That was a sigh of happiness, relief, excitement, and wonder; if such a sigh can be expressed in text. Why such emotions all wrapped in a sigh? Yesterday afternoon was the public launch of connec+ipedia. I have been fortunate to be part of the team developing this free, open source tool designed for those working for the common good—it is a wiki tool with database functionality, allowing you to create content for people, places and things and all the connections between them. I learned a lot during the last 18 months of work and think many of those lessons apply to many other projects, wikis, and start-ups.
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| June 30, 2008 06:30 AM |
Information Is Essential to Building CommunityA new initiative by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation aims to fill a gaping hole in the civic marketplace. The foundation is investing $24 million over five years to help community foundations make better use of media and technology to keep communities informed and citizens involved. The effort should serve as an important example for all nonprofits and foundations, which need to do a better job telling their story and that of their communities. In an increasingly complex and confusing global marketplace, people and organizations need news and information they can use to make smart decisions geared to making their communities better places to live and work. The mainstream news media once filled the critical job of delivering that news and information, which are the lifeblood of a free society. But in the face of brutal competition in a marketplace dominated and saturated by corporate media, traditional news organizations have worked themselves into a frenzied identity crisis. Their near-sighted solution has been to abandon their role as social watchdog and resource, preferring to pursue the safer goal of simply surviving by pandering to the fears and consumption preferences of readers, viewers and listeners. Yet while it no longer seems to matter to the news media, social change remains the core business of nonprofits and foundations. And social change depends on civic engagement and informed communities. With the mainstream news media failing to keep communities informed, that essential job falls to nonprofits and foundations. It is no small irony that the frantic drive for revenue and profits has blinded the media to the market value of news and information that address the core concerns of the communities they claim to serve. With the Knight initiative piloting the way, nonprofits and foundations can work to meet the demand of the civic marketplace for news and information that citizens can use to heal, repair and grow our communities.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| July 11, 2008 10:12 AM |
The Future of Philanthropy: Giving 2.0eBay disintermediated shopping. Napster initially did the same for music and Wikipedia for information. More recently it has been Prosper for the sluggish industry of unsecured loans. What paradigm shifting changes has the Internet brought to the slowest sector of them all, the philanthropic sector? The answer might be online giving markets. These organizations can be loosely defined as web-based, informational and transactional platforms that help donors and volunteers more easily identify and then contribute to or volunteer at high performing nonprofits, social projects or needy individuals. They empower pre-vetted organizations to access a wide and diverse base of primarily individual contributors and volunteers. DonorsChoose.org has been referred to in the New York Times as “the Wikipedia of hope.” GlobalGiving has been called “The Charity Long Tail.” Fortune Magazine went so boldly as to title its feature article on Kiva.org, “The only nonprofit that matters.” In the United States, these innovative online giving markets have finally started to receive the attention they deserve and have started to shape the future of philanthropy, but the full story has not been told. If it’s not apparent in this blog-post, the sector’s inability to identify and support opportunities for innovation and progress is a great source of personal frustration. The fact that it is taking the philanthropic sector a decade longer than the private sector to identify and support this inevitable and emergent trend is quite disheartening and one of the main reasons why the smartest and brightest young professionals leave the sector (let’s not only blame salaries), but more on that in later blog-posts. These online giving markets are also part of an emergent phenomenon throughout the world where home-grown but similarly modeled organizations like GiveIndia, Brazil Social Stock Exchange, Greater Good South Africa, HelpArgentina (full-disclosure: I co-founded this organization and am biased) and many more have quickly become important actors in their respective philanthropic ecosystems. Just like Kiva and DonorsChoose, these organizations are harnessing new technologies and adapting business concepts to change the face of philanthropy and increase levels of civic participation throughout the developing world. Each country brings a different history, political system, operating context, tax code, legal system, and most importantly a unique philanthropic culture. Whether or not these online giving markets become as important in the 21st century as community foundations were in the 20th century remains uncertain, but their impact is growing and must be better understood. I will talk a bit about my organization, but first let me recommend a couple of seminal papers written on the more general phenomenon:
I co-founded HelpArgentina during Argentina’s worst crisis in 2002 and directed it (along with an incredible team) for four years until passing it on to the most able reins of Milagros Olivera. She has since matured the organization into one of the country’s preeminent institutions of which I am proud to still be permitted a seat on the Board. I have much to say about the organization but will reserve the best for later blog-posts and send you to our website for a description of who we are and what we do. Instead I’ll clue you in on a deep, dark secret: giving or philanthropy as we know it is over. Small organizations like Biblioteca Popular San Antonio, off the map in the forgotten Formosa province (ARG), have been able to fund enormously successful sustainable-business initiatives without corrupt government support; they used HelpArgentina to get access and then win the trust, hearts and minds of Argentines living in Madrid, London and New York. Led by social ambassadors like Agustina Blanco, these groups organized fundraisers to support the organization. This experience is happening everyday all over the world. It has no borders and no centralized authority: just HelpArgentina as a facilitator. In fact, last year’s third annual HelpArgentina Nights fundraiser drew more than 6000 people to participate in 191 separate events in 14 countries raising money for 25 organizations. HelpArgentina’s diaspora philanthropy/cross-border donation model is not used by all online giving markets but in some form, each of these organizations is changing the rules. Even politicians are starting to catch hold of this trend. It’s no coincidence Obama is the greatest fundraiser in the history of American politics, his campaign team has simply embraced a networked America whose grassroots are empowered more than ever before. Many organizations have started to harness this newly linked force of people but this is only the beginning. Without the infrastructure in place, we’re still driving horse and buggy. The exciting thing is not the rise of online giving markets, but rather the implications this new social financial infrastructure will have on civil society and in the end, our way of life. Will it be the push needed to help quasi-democracies fully convert? Am I including the USA in that quasi-democratic category? I’ll leave it up to you to speculate. Examples of Online Giving Markets (OGM) include:
The list above includes the OGMs participating in the Omidyar Network-sponsored annual OGM meetings. For the many that are operating independently, please add yourself in the comments. Thank you and I encourage you to collaborate more with your partners in this space; only together can we create the change our mission so ambitiously promises.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| July 18, 2008 12:03 PM |
Data, Data, Everywhere…But How Do You Find What You Need?Ever noticed that we seem to be simultaneously drowning in information but can’t find what we need when we need it? We’ve got data everywhere, but not what we need, when we need it, and the knowledge of how we can use it. Several efforts at addressing information in social capital markets make recommendations to address the availability, accessibility, comparability, and value of performance, outcome, indicators data. These efforts are focused on the need for emerging philanthropic capital markets to be able to track, compare, and discuss social outcomes in comparable, meaningful ways. Here are some of the data efforts that I know of:
Of course, existing data providers such as Guidestar, Center for Effective Philanthropy, Charity Navigator, GiveWell, Charity Scorecard, the IRS, Attorneys General, Better Business Bureau, etc. form a core component of this expanding marketplace of data. These efforts are exciting, and, be there necessity, duplicative. Why is this duplication necessary? Because we don’t know what data matter, to whom, and for what purposes. This is a period of experimentation and market sizing, and many of the organizations above are seeking ways to price their products, entice potential customers, massage business plans, and source their data. Several factors drive what happens to these various providers. Some of these forces are fairly obvious - donor motivation, economic trends, demographics of donors, growing reliance on the internet for information, and continuing shifts in the marketplace of financial products for donors. Other forces, such as regulation of nonprofits, new hybrid organizations such as L3Cs and B Corporations, and changes in the capital markets themselves, also matter. And then there is a circle of influences another level removed which matter - decisions about who owns and can resell certain data. The Guardian Newspaper company in the UK is experimenting with some ideasthat may hold lessons for purveyors above. Legislation and regulation about net neutrality, data access and ownership currently in play in the US are added to the list of what matters and influences what happens providers. The future of newspapers matters to these efforts - they have been trusted sources of information for decision makers for years - but what does the future hold? From my perspective this is all exciting, and utterly predictable. It represents a moment when we can truly see how philanthropy operates within many of the same forces of creativity, maturity, and disruption that mark other industry cycles. Is the answer to the “data problem” in philanthropy contained somewhere in the list above? Possibly - but it probably has roots and tendrils in several of the efforts/organizations above and the next few years will be a process of teasing out the key pieces and re-organizing this cycle of providers into a sustainable set of credible and independent sources. A good portion of what will determine success for any of these ventures is the degree to which they can develop their products and services with a keen eye on the needs, wants, and willingness of their final customer. Who is that customer? What does s/he need? What does s/he want? And what will s/he pay for? Sadly, most of the reports, papers, and proposals that I have read are woefully thin on real answers to these questions. Without those answers, these “supply side” proposals and business plans can get us only so far in building new markets for information. We may be at the point where all of these “information suppliers” should turn their attention to really understanding what thirsts the “info users” really have, will really use, and will really pay for. I am working with a colleague, Steve Goldberg, to build out this list as comprehensively as possible. We also want to see if the minds behind these efforts will join us in thinking about what this all means, where it all may be going, what else might be needed. Here is how can you get involved:
**Disclosure: I have or have had board, advisory board, or some kind of professional working relationships with several of the individuals/organizations on this list, including, but not limited to, GiveWell, Nonprofit Reporter, SmartLink, Keystone, Aspen Institute, Center for Effective Philanthropy, and Jed Emerson.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| July 21, 2008 10:59 AM |
Multiplication Beats DivisionHere’s an intriguing development in the ongoing process of trying to connect residents of deep-poverty nations with the resources of the Internet and, thus, the world economy: a computing device and software that enables up to 30 people to use a PC at one time, as if each person had a computer of his or her own. While this may sound like the sort of triumph only a gearhead could appreciate, what it really means is computer access costing less than $70 per person–all the world’s knowledge in a form approaching the affordability level of bednets and clean water. The Nonprofiteer is rarely enthusiastic about e-this or cyber-that; but making information commonly available to people who have been deprived of it is an unalloyed Good Thing, and even she’s not churlish enough to withhold her thanks and praise from people who’ve figured out how to accomplish it and make a profit at the same time. Excerpts from the company’s press release appear below. REDWOOD CITY, CALIF., July 15, 2008– NComputing, the leading provider of desktop virtualization software and hardware, today announced it is working with leading non-governmental organizations (NGOs) worldwide to help reduce the digital divide between developed and developing countries. The company has already deployed successful partnerships with such leading NGOs as U.S.-based Save the Children, France-based Ateliers Sans Frontières (ASF), Bangladesh-based BRAC, Latin America-based Organization for American States (OAS), UNESCO, and India-based Azim Premji Foundation to name just a few. NComputing further announced special discounts and programs to help NGOs on every continent reach their goals for digital inclusion in emerging markets. The NComputing solution is based on a simple fact: Today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of applications only use a small fraction of the computer’s capacity. NComputing’s virtualization software and hardware tap this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by multiple users. Each user’s monitor, keyboard, and mouse connect to the shared PC through a small and very durable NComputing access device. The access device itself has no CPU, memory, or moving parts so it is rugged, durable, and easy to deploy and maintain—especially critical in developing nations. The NComputing software and hardware costs as little as $70 per seat. With NComputing, people and organizations around the world are maximizing their investments in PCs. No other attempts at bridging the digital divide have been as successful. Low-priced laptop solutions, such as the $188 OLPC XO, carry very high hidden costs—like maintenance and support—that far outweigh their benefits. [S]aid Medhy Davary, director of DSF[,] “The virtual desktops are extremely affordable and durable, require very little maintenance, and use only one watt of electricity. This allows users in even the world’s poorest countries to benefit from computer access and the Internet.” “Almost one billion users around the world who would benefit from access to computing have been unable to afford it—until now,” said Stephen Dukker, chairman and CEO of NComputing. “It is only by fundamentally changing the economics of computing that our industry can bridge the digital divide. We are going to deploy more than a million virtual desktops in the coming year and are honored to work with such prestigious NGOs to improve the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world.” “In response to increasing interest from NGOs, NComputing is developing programs to help them better leverage their skills and funds,” said Ms. Lindsay Petrillose, Government Liaison for NComputing. “We offer seed units and special NGO discounts that multiply the impact of an NGO’s limited funds.” Interested NGOs and governmental institutions seeking NGO assistance can contact Ms. Petrillose at lpetrillose@ncomputing.com; (650) 454-4991.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| July 31, 2008 02:45 PM |
Censorship.orgYesterday’s news out of Beijing—that reporters covering the Olympics will not have access to an uncensored Web—should come as no surprise to cause-wired social activists everywhere. To be sure, as more nonprofits turn to social media to organize citizen support for social change, more groups are being pulled—like it or not—into the escalating battle over Net censorship around the globe. In recent weeks and months, authorities from Burma to Brazil to Belarus to the Sudan have been blocking the digital flow of information on issues ranging from child pornography to genocide to human rights abuses to global aid shipments. YouTube, the video-sharing site, has been blocked in the Sudan and in at least nine other countries by authorities. China’s efforts have included a crackdown on Twitter. But rather than silence calls for social change, the battle against Net censorship is giving many Net-wired groups of all stripes some new opportunities to energize supporters and recruit more of them into the fold. Consider Amnesty International. The human rights group whose core mission is to free political prisoners around the world, is using the censorship war to boost its own visibility, dust off its image, and add younger members to its membership roster. The group’s new Uncensor Web site, has named July 30, a Day of Protest against Internet censorship in China. The Uncensor campaign is a joint fundraising effort with an Australian Facebook Cause group and organizers hope the partnership will last well beyond the Olympics.
Indeed, for most global advocacy groups—whether their mission is to work for better public health, population control, improved access to the arts, more food for the hungry, or women’s empowerment—somebody somewhere is using the Net (or not using it) to keep those in power from doing more for those in need. Thanks to the rise of social media as a new tool for social change, transparency is becoming the “new black” in advocacy today. Indeed, Net freedom is now everybody’s business and should be part of everyone’s battle. Still not convinced? Go ahead. Re-read your mission statement and take it global. Can’t do it offline anymore? Welcome to the war.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| August 6, 2008 09:45 AM |
We Are Media Project: A Lesson in Eating Your Own Dog FoodFirst things first, have you ever had to eat your own dog food? I’m talking about the idea of having to take your own advice, use the strategies and approaches yourself that you advocate to others. The We Are Media Project from NTEN and Beth Kanter is a lesson in just that! The goal of the project is to “build a toolkit and instructional guides about how social media strategies and tools can enable nonprofit organizations to create, compile, and distribute their stories and change the world.” Sounds great, but the catch is that it is all being done remotely, with social media experts all contributing to the project wiki. This means collective lessons in community building, community engagement, participant retention and working wikily! So, will it work? We have just entered week 6, Considering the ROI of Social Media. Topics already covered include: Why Should Your Nonprofit Embrace Social Media? (Or Not?), Thinking Strategically About Social Media, The Social Media Ready Nonprofit: Dealing with Resistance, The Art of Storytelling, and Online Community Engagement Strategies and Skills. I have been a participant from the start and have paid thoughtful attention to the way the project has grown and the ways Beth has encouraged participation. If you have ever worked on a collaborative project, especially in a wiki, you may have noticed participants that only lurk in the shadows, contributors who burn out, conversations that get abandoned, or even just an overall loss of momentum as people revert to sending individual emails or not participating at all. There is an assumption when working on something like the We Are Media Project that those involved will be less likely to abandon the work or feel intimidated by the technology (after all, these are the folks advocating for others to use the technologies!). Even though the community involved is already sold on the topic and approach, it still doesn’t guarantee success. In these first six weeks, I have seen a great deal of participation, positive interaction, and real collaboration. For example, when one contributor offers up an idea that gets others thinking, the other participants turn that one idea into a list of ideas. Beth has done a great job of energizing contributors and the evidence is in all of the content throughout the wiki. Some of the the hardest parts of the project so far for the organizer (Beth), from my perspective, include:
Whether you are interested in social media tools for nonprofits, or not, this is a great example of a collaborative project - successfully eating the dog food! There are tremendous offerings from social media experts that are valuable on their own, but when combined in to a training kit will produce an invaluable package for nonprofits and those working with them on social media strategy and implementation. If you are a social media expert, be sure to check it out and share some of your knowledge! Have you ever been part of a collaborative project where you were the organizer or community builder? What lessons did you learn (maybe even the hard way)?
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| September 24, 2008 10:15 AM |
Dollar DaysA panel talk on social media that I moderated today at the Harvard Business School Club of New York underscored what cash-crunched nonprofits ailing in the current financial crisis are just beginning to figure out: “crowdsourcing”—using the Web and online social media to invite mass collaboration—will become ever-more critical to 21st century advocacy. Those on my panel at the Club’s first-ever social enterprise summit—Vinay Bhagat, Greg McHale, Katrin Verclas, and Shelley Bernstein—agreed that the rise of social media, from mobile phones to online social networks to digital video-sharing, is forcing many charities to expand and rapidly accelerate their use of new Web capabilities to drum up much-needed new converts, dollars, and ideas. I call it the Engagement Imperative; panelists agreed the description is spot-on. “It’s true that [nonprofits] need to engage people they haven’t reached before,” said Bhagat, founder of Convio. “They need to reinvent the way they build support.” Given the week’s financial meltdown on Wall Street, all four panelists acknowledged new levels of skittishness about the U.S. and global economies. “If you doubted it before,” Bhagat said, “engaging supporters in this way is now mandatory.” Added McHale, founder of Good2Gether, a Boston-based Web service that helps nonprofits promote their work by placing widgets next to online news stories relevant to their cause: “The word out there [among nonprofits] is terror.” Organizations that have not previously taken big strides with technology, he said, are being forced now to play catch-up—and not all groups are going to make it. “This economy is really focusing people on finding ways to use social media to get to more people, faster,” he said. But Bernstein, manager of information systems for the Brooklyn Museum, cautioned that marketing shouldn’t be the sole focus of the Web’s new social engagement tools. “It’s really important that people participate in a cause, and feel like they’ve had some input,” she said. “That must come first…If people feel personally engaged and part of [your cause], they will contribute. But first and foremost, this is about engagement, not marketing. It’s a critical distinction to understand. If you’re not personally more engaged with your supporters using these tools in authentic, sustainable ways, they’ll go somewhere else.” To be sure, the rise of social media will trigger structural changes at many nonprofit organizations, panelists agreed. “Organizations as we knew them are dead,” said Verclas, co-founder of MobileActive.org, when asked to come up with a quick phrase summarizing the impact of this so-called Web 2.0 on philanthropy. Elaborating, Verclas said social media are so powerfully reshaping the way people organize themselves into groups for change, that not only do nonprofits need to manage donors differently—they also must rethink the way they manage themselves. For more on the push by some nonprofits to use crowdsourcing and other forms of social engagement to boost support in this flagging economy, see my story on MSNBC.com, the first in a series I’m producing to explore the rise of social media and their influence on the nonprofit sector during the current economic downturn. One final note: Worries about the future of philanthropy similarly dominated the conversation at a private book party hosted tonight by Economist North America Publisher Paul Rossi to celebrate the September 30 release of U.S. Editor Matthew Bishop’s new book about America’s new class of philanthropic billionaires, “Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World.” Co-authored by Michael Green, the book describes how these wealth titans are reshaping philanthropy, using big-business-style strategies and expecting results and accountability to match. Do these new giving powerhouses like Bill Gates, Bill Clinton, George Soros and others have too much power? Who holds them accountable, Bishop and Green ask—and, perhaps most urgently, will these leaders continue to give generously through the financial sector’s meltdown? Bishop, for his part, told guests assembled at The Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Station that the new climate on Wall Street will put the much-professed commitment of these new philanthrocapitalists to its first real test. “We’ll know soon enough if this was just a hobby born of a company’s or an individual’s desire to burnish an image or whether today’s activism represents the deep commitment to change that has been expressed these past years,” Bishop said. Either way, Bishop added, “the rich will probably get richer, regardless”—and philanthropy, ever-more critical. Said Green: “The huge cost of bailing out the financial system will mean that the government will have far less to spend on everything else.” As if to emphasize that point, next door to the Harvard Club—where Bishop and I addressed side-by-side panels earlier in the day—someone put a sign made out of masking tape on the cornerstone of the old New York Trust building. Just beneath the chiseled granite that heralded the bank’s founding in the late 1800s, the sign added the postscript: “Floundered, 2008.”
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| September 30, 2008 10:03 AM |
The Shotgun Approach to Streamlined WorkThanks to the rapidly, if not exponentially, expanding world of social media tools, those of us who are ‘plugged in’ all day at work have an unmanageable amount of options for making our work day more efficient. But, by having so many tools at our disposal, is our work day actually becoming less efficient? This isn’t a new question. It’s come up when technology is introduced to anything, but especially social media . There are so many tools already that we have to start categorizing them by utility to keep track! Smart people, like Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas, have even created charts, graphs, and this conversation prism as a way to separate and approach the vast world of social media. A Comparison An average day (at least in my opinion):
Seems standard enough, at least for our application here. So, now let’s brainstorm some of the tools in use by many people already:
A Test I gave it a shot just to see what it was like, disconnecting from everything that I could, for one day. I survived, believe it or not. I only used the internet/browser for submitting specific pieces of work that needed to be delivered, used email only to gather a list of priorities for the day and then to report back at the end of the day on status, and sent one message to Twitter to update my family and friends about our moving status/situation. That was it. And I got a lot done! Though, it was still quite tempting to sign on, log in, etc. and just check in on the internet, make sure everything was as it should be. But I didn’t. I stayed on task and got my work done in less time than I budgeted for. At least for one day, it worked, but it made me question why I use all of the social media tools that I do if they are actually not necessary. Evaluation Where do you stand? Social media tools: love ‘em or leave ‘em?
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| October 7, 2008 11:15 AM |
Social Media: Means vs EndsLet’s take a short foray into some theorizing with social media and community—won’t you join me? Let’s assume social media is the means to an end. That ‘end’ is going to be different depending on whether you are using it as an organization or an individual, for conversations or for advertising, for profit or for community, for fun or for policies. So, when social media meets up, in person or online, and communities form, is it mostly around the means (specific tools, advocating for adoption, etc.) or the end (people using social media in general for the same purpose or cause)? So, asked again: Do we come together around social media because of affinity toward specific platforms, tools, or programs or because of similarities in usage of those platforms, tools, or programs? Personally, I’m more attracted to communities or events that discuss using various tools for a specific ends. Working in the nonprofit technology field, I gravitate toward conversations about how nonprofits can better engage their members online or share resources between staff and volunteers, rather than conversations solely about Flickr, for example. That isn’t to say that Flickr isn’t included, but it is just an example, an option, a means, for engaging the community around an event or program. Is the preference based on my field? I can think of many communities that would focus on just one tool, though, and (to answer my question from above) are focusing on the tool because of the field. For example, urban photographers could very easily come together specifically to discuss their use of Flickr, the community on Flickr, site developments, changes in the way they use the tool, and more. Why? Because as one of the most popular photo sharing websites, it is probably used by all of the photographers in the group and by their colleagues or friends. It makes sense that they would come together about the tool specifically, even though it is a means to their end of sharing photos online. Does it then, really matter if social media communities and conversations are focused on either the means or the ends? It isn’t as if we are discussing war, right? The uses, developments, and constant permutations of social media are so diverse and evolving so quickly—is it enough to help each other just keep pace? What do you think? Do you find that you are more drawn to conversations, collaborations, or communities that focus on a specific tool or tool set or that focus on the uses and applications of social media generally?
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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| October 13, 2008 02:24 PM |
Clout-SourcingForget about the wisdom of crowds. For Andrew Mason, creator of The Point, it’s more about tapping into their clout. Want to stage a quick boycott against, say, Pepsi? Or gather enough people online to buy chickens for poor women in Nicaragua? Or wait. Maybe you just want to crowdsource an audience for your favorite indie rock band—to convince it that showing up in your town would be worth the trip? The point of The Point? To reduce the risks of collective action—like the angry backlash of an employer or an embarrassingly sparse turnout at a well-publicized rally. Mason tries to commit people before they actually have to engage. It works like a tipping point in that way: the site attempts to guarantee critical mass. “By delaying action until you know that you have all the pieces in place for the action to be successful and get the outcome you desire,” Mason told public radio earlier this year, “you’re reducing the risk of acting as a group.” Click here for further explanation. Mason’s site, which garnered some interest last week at the Convergence conference at the Desmond Tutu Center in Manhattan, is one of the early examples of how social media is helping people to self-assemble for social action. So far, there have been a few dozen demonstrations, more than 50 charity fundraisers, and dozens of petition drives launched from the site. Posted today, for example, are efforts to crowdsource funding for a documentary on youth poetry in Chicago; the construction of a new animal adoption center and rescue kennel; and the rental of billboards around Lansing to support Barack Obama’s presidential bid. Not all campaigns seek money. One calls for collective action to force Exxon to lower gas prices. (Good luck!) Does it work? Not very often—but that’s the point, Mason says. Only those campaigns able to gather a serious, committed crowd—before they get down to work—end up progressing offline. Click here to watch a video on Vimeo about how one woman crowdsourced action on The Point to beautify her neighborhood. Or watch this video, about one woman’s effort to organize change in her workplace.
Posted by Kelsey Walker
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Lucy Bernholz is the founder and president of 
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