Think of this as a 44-page road map anticipating those events, issues, and trends that are most likely to impact what happens to your social investment this year. A few of the topics included:

• Which innovations should I understand and which are just buzzwords?
• What are the key policy issues that might influence philanthropy?
• What wildcard events will matter and what should I look out for?

You can buy other books about philanthropy trends, but by the time you get them, they’re dusty inside and out. Lucy’s pretty smart. I’m running to get my copy.

This is one of the highest-profile campaigns by a corporate giant to promote volunteering and giving back in the community, and it’s also a good way to “sample” volunteering at a local non-profit without having to make a long-term volunteering commitment.

Here’s How it Works
Disney has collaborated with the HandsOn Network, the volunteering arm of the Points of Light Institute, to offer one-day volunteer opportunities. In exchange for spending a certified day “on the job,” Disney Parks awards a free theme park ticket to up to 1 million volunteers.

What Does This Mean For Philanthropy?
Here are a few thoughts about how this promotion is innovative in today’s philanthropy landscape:

• Exposure of a new generation to volunteering: Corporations have long used their philanthropic efforts in marketing campaigns, but this is a little different. Instead of awarding dollars to worthy non-profits, Disney has created an incentive for an entire population to learn more about volunteering, philanthropy, and the work of the non-profit sector. While this may stymie non-profits in the short-term (many might rather have the money), I have to believe that the long-term benefits of a new generation having volunteering experience will break down potential barriers to philanthropy in the future. Over three million people signed up for Disney’s “Free Ticket on Your Birthday” promotion last year, so the one million person goal in this year’s promotion isn’t far-reaching; and many families are signing up together, meaning the kids get exposure to the needs as well.
• Exemplifying a mutually beneficial relationship between donor and recipient: Disney’s theme park attendance will increase as a result of this promotion, which means food, lodging, and merchandise sales have great potential to increase as well. This is a great example of a mutually beneficial donor/recipient relationship — even financially.
• Combining individual efforts into a greater overall outcome: This is another example of Longtail Philanthropy. Through this program, many people will offer a small gift (a day of time) in order to create a much larger overall impact. If one million individuals volunteer through this promotion, a significant impact can be made within the participating non-profits.

So while this promotion may not change the face of corporate philanthropy, it will surely give some social responsibility departments something to think about.

How to Learn More or Get Involved
If you’re interested in volunteering, you can sign up via the Disney Parks Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. Official Site.

Simply enter your volunteer interests and zip code, and start searching for a volunteer opportunity that interests you. Volunteer opportunities will vary throughout the year, so if there isn’t one listed that catches your eye now, log in later for more options.

Give a Day. Get a Disney Day. Screen Shot

If you’d like to learn more about the promotion, Disney has been advertising “Give a day. Get a Disney day.” nationwide. Here’s a short video with more information:

About The HandsOn Network
From Disney’s press release:

The volunteer-focused arm of Points of Light Institute, HandsOn Network is the largest volunteer network in the nation and includes more than 250 HandsOn Action Centers that reach more than 83 percent of the nation’s population and extend to 10 countries. HandsOn includes a powerful network of more than 70,000 corporate, faith and nonprofit organizations that are answering the call to serve and creating scaled impact. In 2008, the network delivered approximately 30 million hours of volunteer service.

More About Longtail Philanthropy
For more suggestions about how you can combine your volunteer and philanthropic efforts with those of others in order to create a more significant impact, check out these posts describing Longtail Philanthropy efforts:
The Kiva.org Model of Longtail Philanthropy
Meetup Philanthropy

Fact #1: Funders get bogged down in due diligence, report review, and grant follow-up when they could be developing more effective and efficient funding strategies.

Fact #2: Nonprofits spend too much time and money meeting specific funder requirements for application and reporting.

Fact #3: Due diligence, grant applications, and reporting have to happen.

Can we make all of this waste less time?

Well, the answer is…maybe. There have been a few efforts to streamline grant processes regionally, and even a large effort nationally. The jury is still out as to whether or not these efforts are the silver bullet.

Local Efforts
Many local grantmaking associations, like Philanthropy New York (formerly the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers), have been streamlining their process for years. This means that the funders aligned with Philanthropy New York agree to accept a standard grant application from nonprofit agencies and a standard reporting format from nonprofit agencies, ensuring that agencies with programs funded by association members don’t have to write different reports for each funder — they only have to write one.

While this is happening in several regional areas, there are still many funders in those regions who decline to jump on board.

National Efforts
Managed by Grants Managers Network, Project Streamline is a national initiative developed by the following partner agencies:

• Grants Managers Network (GMN)
• Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP)
• Association of Small Foundations (ASF)
• Council on Foundations (CoF)
• Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers (Forum)
• Foundation Center
• Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO)
• National Council of Nonprofits (NCN)

Currently in Phase II of a three-phase campaign, Project Streamline focuses on four core principles: Take a fresh look at reporting and application requirements, Right-size grant expectations, Relieve the burden on grantees, and Make communication and grantmaking process clear and straightforward.

To date, the initiative has picked up some heavy-hitting sponsors, including the Gates, Hewlett, Ford, Robert Wood Johnson, and Packard Foundations.

Analysis
While regional efforts have had lukewarm results, I’m very interested to see how these theories work in practice nationally. This isn’t a new problem, and it’s been exacerbated over the years by resistance to change, a lack of trust between funder and grant recipient, and even a lack of trust within the funding community.

Institutional funders spend time and money developing targeted grantmaking strategies, and there’s a concern that standardizing processes might lessen the control currently held by foundations over what outcomes are being measured, reported, and publicized by individual agencies. If there is any remaining competition between institutional funders to be the most successful and most innovative, and if there is any remaining competition between nonprofit agencies motivating some to go above and beyond, you’re going to end up with people coloring outside the lines: funders will continue to require more targeted and specific information, and agencies will still spend hours customizing their applications and reports in order to stand out among the crowd.

So Can We Fix It?
Those three truths I mention in the beginning of the piece are ingrained into the current grantmaking process, and a lot of people in the nonprofit arena have internalized those truths.

That said, the more we can move toward at least the option of standardization, the better. It will take time, and it will take some shifts in thought between funders and agencies, but it is possible.

And the time savings and efficiencies picked up along the way will no doubt be useful to those funders and agencies striving to leave the competition behind them and focus on the real work.

Kiva is an organization that not only allows the opportunity to combine your cash with other people’s to make a greater impact, but also completely redefines giving. In fact, what you’re doing with Kiva isn’t “giving” at all. It’s lending.

Kiva.org “connects people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty,” and it does so in a strikingly innovative way. Called peer-to-peer lending, Kiva’s model allows many small loans from individuals like you and me to be pooled into bigger loans, then administered to entrepreneurs around the world via third-party micro-lending partners.

How Do I Do It?
It’s a bit like online dating. You log onto Kiva’s website, search through the online profiles of qualified entrepreneurs, and determine who will receive your loan. Your money (amount is determined by you, and can be as low as you’d like) is then pooled with that of other lenders who have chosen the same entrepreneur, and the funds are disbursed to a Kiva partner micro-lender who has made a loan to this entrepreneur.

When the entrepreneur pays the micro-lender back, the micro-lender pays Kiva, and Kiva pays you. You can then go on to re-invest (and by “invest,” I mean social investment — you aren’t making any cold hard cash on this deal) the repaid funds in another entrepreneur, or have them placed back into your paypal account.

What’s My Risk?
According to the Kiva.org website, out of $53,000,535 in ended loans, 97.87% have been paid back in full. So while Kiva does not absorb the risk of lost funds (if your chosen entrepreneur does not pay the loan back, you’ve essentially lost that money), your chance of being paid back in full is very high. If you’re just starting out, consider making a $25 loan, or another amount that you’re comfortable losing in the worst case scenario.

The Latest News
While Kiva has made its name as a facilitator of lending internationally, recently the organization has blurred the lines between third-world countries and the USA, introducing its collaborative micro-lending to the United States market of low-income entrepreneurs. This controversial decision to bring the process stateside has fueled much discussion in the micro- and peer-to-peer lending communities, and may make your decision easier or more difficult depending on your desired outcome and political leanings.

If you’ve got some time (and an ability to deal with a scant amount of cheesiness), check out this video about how Kiva works. Those of you who are visual learners will benefit:

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.

Be sure to check out the first post in this series, Meetup Philanthropy.

This is a great resource for any philanthropist or non-profit entity — whether solo or part of a larger organization — as reading tweets gives rare insight into real-time discussions and foci in those organizations. It also offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn from and collaborate with one another — something that happens too little in the philanthropy arena but is beginning to be recognized as a benefit to both foundation and grantee.

Here’s why tweeting is a mode of community communication you’re going to have to get on board with, at least for a while:

1. Tweeting is informal. One of the greatest breakdowns between a non-profit entity and a philanthropic body is cultural inequality. With twitter, everyone (more or less) is on the same class-level.

2. Tweeting is broadcasting. You never know who could be reading, so tweets need to be comprehensible to anyone and everyone. This means there’s very little room for specific audience manipulation.

3. Tweeting is non-committal. Twitter is a forum for discussion. People tend to finalize deals over more traditional communication streams like email, snail mail, phone, and face-to-face meetings. Whereas twitter is considered a place where you can show interest without committing yourself to a deal. This is the place to learn more, ask questions, and then take it to the next level (usually email) if necessary.

4. (At least for now) Tweeting circumvents bureaucratic barriers like calendar scheduling and gatekeepers. If you have a good idea, tweet it @ the person you think would find it interesting; no need to get time on their calendar. I strongly believe that, as the service becomes more widely used, VIPs will continue to institute stronger barricades. But, while it’s new and fun, you can often reach them directly.

Twitter remains a means to an end, but it can be a mode of conversation providing exposure to new ideas and connections without the weight of commitment.

Potential Pros: Crowdsourcing exposes more “real people” to philanthropy — and the organizations working to provide needed goods and services — and the concept of weighing which organizations are doing the best and most beneficial work. Also, the majority voting together will discover the greatest need (a bell curve theory).

Potential Cons: A danger that crowdsourcing will lead to popularity contests, giving an edge to organizations who are savvy with marketing or who have full coffers for influence. Also, a fear that the masses will agree on philanthropic risktaking, which some philanthropists deem necessary for the development of truly innovative ideas.

More Examples

And here are a few more examples of philanthropic crowdsourcing — let me know your thoughts:

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Through the Knight News Challenge, the Knight Foundation is crowdsourcing ideas for funding. In this initiative, the foundation planned to “invest at least $25 million over five years in the search for bold community news and social media experiments.”

Target projects are “innovations that use new or available technology to distribute content in local communities,” with the following parameters:
1. Use digital, open-source technology.
2. Distribute news in the public interest.
3. Test your project in a local community.

To date, three years of funding has been awarded. And while the initiative itself is an example of crowdsourcing funding ideas, several of the funded projects involve crowdsourcing.

One example is Ushahidi, an organization that seeks to expand an initiative to crowdsource crisis information. The strategy is to develop a free web map and timeline that journalists and citizens can use to contribute multiple reports of large news events. By allowing anyone to contribute news stories, the service would broaden information distribution even in places too dangerous for or inaccessible to mainstream media. Imagine the difference in news coverage of the recent demonstrations and uprisings worldwide had this been in place.

The British Government
Just this week, Britain suggested it was time to begin dabbling in crowdsourced giving, reports The Independent.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy gave the details stating, “Under the proposal, Britain’s Department for International Development would set aside about $65-million that the public would control by voting online between 10 aid projects in Africa and elsewhere.”

Everyone’s Doing It?

Small to Large; Corporate and Foundation; Open and Controlled. A breadth of organizations including the Case Foundation, NetSqaured, and American Express have tested their theories of crowdsourcing in philanthropy, including:

• Controlled experiments, wherein foundations maintain the role of determining grantees, but the public is sourced for suggestions and input, and
• Open experiments, which more resemble “contests”

You can read more about these foundations and their crowdsourcing programs at The Chronicle of Philanthropy.

“I’m going to donate a bunch of money, but I want random people on the Internet to decide where it goes.”

This is crowdsourced philanthropy. You remember crowdsourcing from Who Wants to be a Millionaire. That lifeline — “ask the audience” — was the perfect example: asking a large group of people to offer their ideas on a solution to a problem. Wikipedia is another great example.

But why would we try this with philanthropy?

Well, it’s a simple case of market majority. While a lone philanthropist doesn’t necessarily have the breadth of knowledge to determine the best grant recipient, the market majority — the crowd — will most likely be able to shake out the highest priority need.

And one of crowdsourcing’s biggest benefits in the philanthropic field may be transparency. Making decisions based significantly on the suggestion of public majority means less chance of ethics or bias being called into question. And making your values and conditions clear to your “crowd” simply demands greater public transparency in order to ensure an informed decision.

There are still many unanswered questions about crowdsourced philanthropy: Will it be successful? Will it become a trend or a viable model for giving? Who exactly is the audience? Perhaps Paul Buchheit’s experiment will help us begin to understand the answers to those questions, but many more experiments will be needed to label this a success.

And one thing is certain — philanthropy will need to master technology in order to get the most benefit out of this, and most other, field trends.

Good Examples of How Philanthropy Can Use Crowdsourcing

I recently participated in a regional health care panel with a group of field experts. Our task, over seven meetings, was developing a strategy for health care improvement in our region. As you’d expect, we began by identifying some major health care problems; then, we isolated several broad goals. Soon, we were discussing solutions and moving ahead like wildfire.

Until we hit the roadblock.

“All we have to do is figure out how to fix it. Paying for it is their problem.”

“Whose problem?”

“The big boys’ and girls’ problem!”

Unfortunately, quotes like this are all too common when solutions are being developed. Somehow, it’s always someone else’s job to figure out how to make all of the pieces — program, finance, and policy — work together.

What could be considered instead is that sustainable solutions require everyone to speak all three different languages. Delineations are quickly becoming blurred between the nonprofit, for-profit, and policy arenas, and those fuzzy edges can be beneficial — assuming the ability to identify with each unique perspective.

The Equation for Success

With that thought in mind, let’s suggest there’s a simple equation for sustainable social improvements:

money + public influence + programmatic excellence = change

If true, then sustainable solutions can only be achieved if there is an end to compartmentalizing the way programs are developed. By understanding and incorporating economic and political factors into how solutions are created, richer programs can be developed that are wholly supported and championed by for-profit and public representatives.

With these three sectors working in tandem, obstacles are virtually eliminated.

What it Could Look Like

Back to my health care group from the first paragraph. Ideally, my colleague wouldn’t be expecting that our group determine solutions while suggesting that it’s the job of a hypothetical group of financiers and public officials to figure out how to pay for those solutions.

Ideally, that conversation would have progressed with our group identifying not only the programmatic solutions to our health care issues, but also the payment models and incentives that would ensure buy-in to the program from for-profit payers and physicians, and the cost-reducing and quality-enhancing care models that would entice public officials to endorse the program.

Truly understanding the costs and benefits to all sectors — even when it seems like we’re all speaking different languages — will help to lay the groundwork for successful social innovations.

Philanthropy’s Role — Collaboration

So how does Philanthropy fit into all of this? It might be able to act as mortar. Those in the field of Philanthropy are tied to all three sectors as either financial supporters or colleagues; as such, their role may be as a connector and instigator of collaboration — a translator.

This will all be facilitated if Philanthropy learns to speak the individual “language” of each sector; understanding not only the lexicon, but also the goals, challenges, and motivational drivers. Only then can the best and most strategic connections between the sectors be made.

These questions may lay some groundwork for how to think about each sector’s concerns:

1. Understanding and leveraging current and potential economic considerations: Who are the payers, and how can we build in benefit to them? How can economic incentives be used effectively? Could there be a market strategy? Is there a way for this program to produce not only social benefits, but also revenue?
2. Understanding and leveraging current and potential public relations and policy considerations: Does/Will this have the backing of local, state, and federal government? Will an advocacy-based approach provide for the sustainability of this program? Is this complimentary to current or potential legislative items? Are there potential collaborations we can build that would affect how we develop this program? How will this be perceived in the public eye; will it demand public attention?
3. Understanding and leveraging programmatic considerations: Does the program produce consistent, measureable results? Does the program have enough financial support to not only make ends meet, but to scale up to capacity — whether that’s local, regional, or national? Does the program have a strong management and governance base? Does the program have enough support from the public and government sectors to thrive should legislation development be called for?

Sectors aren’t quite as distinct today as they used to be, and many social innovators have proven that the closer we all work together to solve global problems, the closer we get to sustainable solutions. While we all have different incentives and motivations, taking them all  into consideration dissolves roadblocks and allows even broader answers to develop.