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Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Gets a Bad Rap

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For advocates of peer-to-peer fundraising, the mood at this year's Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans came as a bit of a shock.

At least three sessions focused on the role of social networks in fundraising. All of them were aimed at lowering expectations.

Change.org founder Ben Rattray emphasized "exponential decay" instead of "exponential growth" in how person-to-person fundraising campaigns pan out.

Care2's Justin Perkins said the word viral should be dropped altogether. He also devoted several minutes to explaining why Seth Godin's notion of Flipping th Funnel may be a "pipe dream."

As someone who has written about person-to-person fundraising for the last year and a half, I am committed to identifying the sources of this pessimism. I have a few ideas on where it's coming from. Stay tuned for feature blog entries on the subject.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you the slides from "Group Fundraising: How Does It Work and What's Out There" by Change.org's Ben Rattray and "Turning Your Social Network into Donations" by Care2's Justin Perkins and Heather Holdridge.

For notes on "The Web 2.0 ROI: Are All These New Tools Really Delivering Value to the Sector," see these notes by Nancy Schwartz of the Getting Attention Blog.

Group Fundraising: How Does It Work and What's Out There

Turning Your Social Networks Into Donations

Philanthropy Stock Markets

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Sean Stannard-Stockton has written a very interesting piece in the Financial Times about the emergence of stock markets for philanthropy:

Philanthropy is undergoing a transformational shift. While most donors continue to give in the same ways they have for 100 years, the vanguard of philanthropy is busily reforming the fabric of the charitable sector.

Often referred to as the "social capital markets" and characterised by a model of giving that mirrors the financial markets, this emerging model is still in its infancy. Since you can create only that which you imagine, I thought I would take a quick trip 25 years into the future to see what philanthropy might become.

For many donors, the year 2033 does not look a whole lot different from 2008. Many people simply write cheques to charities and devote the bulk of their giving to non-profit organisations in their community.

But for some donors, the landscape is radically different. The "social stock exchanges" that became popular between 2011 and 2019 now include all but a few large non-profits and many small but ambitious start-ups.

These exchanges compete for non-profit listings. Exchanges include big national networks with some international organisations, down to small local exchanges.

Continue reading "The donor landscape of 2033 is bright"

From the perspective of social actions platfoms, I'm sitting here wondering what role will Change.org, GiveMeaning, GlobalGiving, and others play in this brave new world of trading goodness.

Kings of Philanthropy and Princes of Micro-Philanthropy

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In July 2007, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) posted two radio documentaries about the philanthropy of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Jeff Skoll, and other billionaires. The recordings originally appeared on a radio program entitled Ideas. The two part series is called "The Kings of Philanthropy" (part i and part ii).

Here's a brief description:

Some have called it the natural fall-out of a hyper-capitalist society; billionaires who've made more money from media and technology enterprises than anyone in human history. There's Bill Gates, the creator of Microsoft; Jeff Skoll, the founder of e-Bay; and, of course, Warren Buffet, who has been dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha." Now, they've reinvented themselves as philanthropists, giving away billions to help the poor. Freelance broadcaster Richard Phinney asks: can they re-make the world?

What's interesting about these podcasts is that they discuss the work of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Jeff Skoll in terms of a generational shift in attitudes toward philanthropy. These billionaires, according to the reporter, represent a new wave of philanthropists, wealthy grant-makers who emphasize transplanted business practices and social entrepreneurship over charitable giving for purely humanitarian relief.

"The Kings of Philanthropy" is an excellent documentary and casts new light on the work of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in particular. But from my perspective, the philanthropists described in this program (perhaps Jeff Skoll aside) represent an 'older' generation of philanthropy, one in which great wealth is amassed first and distributed later.

"The Princes (and Princesses) of Micro-Philanthropy" are from generation Y. They are the founders of sites like GiveMeaning, DonorsChoose, Change.org, and Project Agape. They write blogs like Tactical Philanthropy. And create mash-ups like the Social Actions search engine. The young people behind these sites have committed themselves to changing the institutions of philanthropy, with or without huge amounts of money, and certainly before reaching middle-age.

Next time the CBC does an investigative report on new trends in philanthropy, I think they should look to the off-spring of Boomers. That's where they'll find the greatest generational shift in attitudes toward philanthropy.

Here are some leads:

As far as I know, everyone listed above is under 30, and often well-under 30.

A moment ago I referred to them as the The Princes (and Princesses) of Micro-Philanthropy. But come to think of it, since the aim is to democratize philanthropy, I should abandon feudal language altogether.

If you know of other young people using the web to democratize philanthropy, please post their names and projects below.

How Social is the World According to Facebook?

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Facebook LogoA recent opinion piece from The Guardian casts new light on Facebook, and more importantly, on the investors who have helped turn the dorm-room project into one of the fastest growing multi-national companies.

For the last eight months, Facebook has had a strangle hold on the imagination of the nonprofit tech community. Technology consultants and bloggers have written endlessly about strengthening the relationships between a nonprofit and its supporters through Facebook, including myself.

But to what end? If Facebook is designed primarily to centralize resources in the hands of the few and advertise brand names that have nothing todo with the nonprofits we support, then what good could a one-off Facebook group or fundraising application do for philanthropy and the change sector?

As Facebook continues to flex its corporate identity, nonprofits and the people who support them may start looking elsewhere for social action platforms designed for social change. Purpose-driven communities like Change.org, ZaZengo, GiveMeaning and Razoo may prove safer and more credible places for organizations and independent projects to harness the power of networked individuals.

Here are a few excerpts from Tom Hodgkinson's With Friends Like These:

I despise Facebook. This enormously successful American business describes itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you". But hang on. Why on God's earth would I need a computer to connect with the people around me? Why should my relationships be mediated through the imagination of a bunch of supergeeks in California? What was wrong with the pub?

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn't it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk? A friend of mine recently told me that he had spent a Saturday night at home alone on Facebook, drinking at his desk. What a gloomy image. Far from connecting us, Facebook actually isolates us at our workstations.

...

It seems, though, that I am very much alone in my hostility. At the time of writing Facebook claims 59 million active users, including 7 million in the UK, Facebook's third-biggest customer after the US and Canada. That's 59 million suckers, all of whom have volunteered their ID card information and consumer preferences to an American business they know nothing about. Right now, 2 million new people join each week. At the present rate of growth, Facebook will have more than 200 million active users by this time next year. And I would predict that, if anything, its rate of growth will accelerate over the coming months. As its spokesman Chris Hughes says: "It's embedded itself to an extent where it's hard to get rid of."

...

Clearly, Facebook is another uber-capitalist experiment: can you make money out of friendship? Can you create communities free of national boundaries - and then sell Coca-Cola to them? Facebook is profoundly uncreative. It makes nothing at all. It simply mediates in relationships that were happening anyway.

Continue reading With Friends Like These >>>

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