All right, philanthropy fans — what’s Pepsi been doing these days? Taking Crowdsourcing Philanthropy mainstream, that’s what.
Do the folks who are submitting ideas and voting for their favorites over on RefreshEverything.comknow that they’re taking part in one of the most forward-thinking forms of philanthropy currently being practiced or that they’re taking part in an experiment that many nationally branded companies would find extremely risky? Who knows. What we do know is that America loves voting for things, and they’re jumping in with both feet on this one.
Premise
The basics of the program are the following: Pepsi is accepting up to 1,000 wannabe grant projects each month throughout 2010 via online submission. Submissions are accepted between the 1st and the 15th of each month. Voting on each month’s submissions takes place in the subsequent month. For example, you can vote on April submissions in May. Continue reading →
Lucy Bernholz (who writes the rockin’ Philanthropy 2173 blog) and her company, Blueprint Research and Design, have recently released their Blueprint 2010 for Philanthropy and Social Investing.
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.
If you’ve wanted to volunteer in your community but aren’t sure where to make a long-term commitment, consider taking part in Disney’s “Give a Day, Get a Disney Day” promotion, which runs throughout 2010.
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 Continue reading →
I received comments via twitter suggesting numerous other ways philanthropy is using/funding crowdsourcing. While the jury is still out on whether crowdsourcing will provide true benefit as a new funding model, the experimentation going on is garnering lots of discussion. I’ve distilled a few of the arguments here:
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.
By now, you’ve likely heard of Gmail and Google AdSense creator Paul Buchheit’s blog post titled Collaborative Charity. In it, he declares,
“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
Philanthropy Enabling Crowdsourced Solution: This is an old example, but a good one. In it, the Rockefeller Foundation funded an opportunity for a non-profit in India to generate solutions to a problem via crowdsourcing.
Philanthropy Using Crowdsourcing for Strategic Planning: The Peery Foundation is currently using a twitter hashtag notation stream to publicly discuss some significant strategic planning questions. The hashtag — #PFWhiteboard — suggests that foundation representatives, and anyone else who has a thought or good suggestion toward their progress, are “whiteboarding” solutions via twitter stream. In my experience, hashtag conversations have been a bit clunky to follow, and you don’t necessarily get a broad market spectrum of input; but the Peery Foundation is experimenting in public transparency, crowdsourcing ideas toward their strategic planning process, and taking full advantage of available technology in this process. I look forward to following the conversation and to getting great ideas from their brainstorming.
These are just a couple of examples of how philanthropy can use crowdsourcing in rather low-risk ways. And while they’re no doubt just our “first steps” toward experimenting with this idea, they offer springboards for more complex ideas in the future. You don’t have to put yourself out there like Mr. Buchheit, but you can use this age-old technique to create opportunities, define solutions, or narrow down choices.
The Birth of a New Era for Innovation?
The President spoke today to a room full of “do-gooders” in the White House about the administration’s new $50 million Social Innovation Fund, a pot of money created to find and expand existing social innovations — as opposed to creating new government programs — in the hope of solving serious social problems.
The fund, as I understand it, will essentially work as a giant driver of growth capital: Melody Barnes and her team build a massive due diligence program, take a road trip to find the best social innovators in the country, offer them a matching grant (the second half is required to come from the private sector) with the sole purpose of program expansion, and voila.
This sounds ideal. It shows that the Obama administration understands the (likely) fact that social innovators and entrepreneurs know their sector better than government bureaucrats do. That trusting the people who’ve been doing this for decades, building up an understanding of what really works, might be the best course of action. Basically, instead of flying in, cape in hand, to create a panoply of new social programs, the White House has decided to…well…outsource.
All of this is good news. Growth Capital-esque funding? Good. Fewer Government programs clogging the system? Good. Letting the experts be the experts? Good. Demanding collaboration between social innovators, government, and the private sector? Good.
But I have three questions I’ll be trying to answer as this new endeavor plays out:
1. With countless private foundations around the country squabbling to define the ideal due diligence process, how does Washington know exactly how to build one? How will we be certain that those deemed the “best” programs really are the best programs? The Innovation Fund team has a considerable social and political weight to carry here; how they draw up this criteria could change the nonprofit sector.
2. How far does $50 million really go? In my experience, scaling a good program nationally — even state-wide — is hugely expensive. It can cost $20 million to scale a good program to one new site or city. With matching dollars, the fund’s amount can leverage $100m, perhaps even $200m; but is that enough to really bring about the kind of social change that was discussed this afternoon? The Education Secretary’s “What Works Fund” carries $650m, after all; why is there such a large disparity?
3. When push comes to shove, how skilled are we at expanding good programs? Matthew Bishop mentions on his Philanthrocapitalism blog that, “There is not much of a track record of scaling up non-profits to draw on for guidance.” Unfortunately, this is largely true. The sector has a few outstanding performers, many of who have come from the private sector, who scale their non-profit programs expertly. But there are countless failures for every success story. Growing a business is just as difficult for a non-profit as it is for a for-profit. There are mis-calculations in budgets, market niches, growth rates, revenue, and expenses. With just $50 million, will we be able to prove the worth of this type of support?
So, no. I don’t think the Fund’s path is completely sorted out. There will be bumps on the road, but, in my eyes, this is already a success simply because of what it represents. Besides, social innovators have charted territory before, and they will again. And Obama said himself today, “There’s no such thing as a lost cause if you’re willing to…take some risks… .”