Dr. O on Funding

Starting this week, social entrepreneurs will have a revolutionary new tool, CitizenGlobal (CG), to get their fund raising and friend raising message out and build a creative community while they do it. CG is a new online social-networking and video editing platform now ready for prime time and geared for social entrepreneurs.  It makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to utilize the wisdom and creativity of the crowd to produce high quality video projects.

• an online platform and social networking site  for collaborative video creation
•  tools to edit, mix and remix video clips  
• an iPhone app that links you to a cutting-edge media input system.
•  An online community you can access and contribute to for video and audio clips, as well as ideas
• A system of common rights that allows video contributors to set permissions for use and to negotiate prices quickly, simply online 

• Create fund raising videos using clips provided by members or donors
• Build a community of members and/or donors based on collaborative editing
• Launch collaborative projects as a cultivation or promotional move
• Participate in video projects launched by other NPOs
• Generate revenue from video
• Many other things not thought of yet

Shannon Farley saw the downturn coming early last year.  When Spark, the organization she runs, lost foundation grants that totaled 30% of her budget she quickly hunkered down and laid out an innovative strategy that allowed her to meet her fundraising goals while other social entrepreneurs were cutting budgets and staff.

How did this diminutive, high powered social entrepreneur in charge of a fast moving organization giving grants to women's organizations from South Africa to San Francisco do what so many social entrepreneurs could not do in the "lost year" of 2009?  She figured out how to get her members to give more than once and to give more than they ever had.  It took smarts, hard work and the highest order of social entrepreneurism and community building to do it.  There are lessons here for social entrepreneurs around the world. (full disclaimer:  I am a Spark supporter and donor).

So what is her secret?

She deepened the connection to her members – bringing them into more committed relationship than most organizations achieve. Her members are for the most part young professional women (and a few guys like me),  Many had never been involved in a NPO as a major donor or a regular donor before.  But they were just ATM machines – they grew up on Facebook and Myspace and LinkedIn.  Relationships mattered.  So Shannon built deep, strong, close relationships.  She did this by:

·        Face to face meetings with all members- from the newest non donors to the long time major donors.

·        Used the 250 volunteers she had recruited during the previous 2 years to multiply her efforts

·        Drilled down on the open rate information on her campaign emails to precisely construct small contact groups of similar donors

·        Created hyper-personal online communication with hthese groups addressing them precisely

·        Started the Spark Champions – 25 people who had not yet found a home in the organization and ask them how they could give at a higher level;  the result was a strongly engaged group of new donors and fund raising volunteers

·        Mobilized a base of unlikely donors, convincing them to become philanthropists for the first time in their young lives

·        Engaged a group of young people who had not been involved in other organizations and convinced them to think about philanthropy as a political voice.

Shannon says Spark was able to prosper during the recession while other NPOs and social entrepreneurs sank because Spark spent time and energy surveying members and getting feedback on what they needed to feel like a community – a community that understood what it was like to be a woman in a sometimes very unfriendly world. By doing so, she created opportunities for her members and their friends to buy in – to be involved in all levels of leadership in Spark.  Members appreciated that – it is a network, not a top-down hierarchy.

Spark's member network is comprised of approximately 60% women, 40% men and 40% ethnic minorities.  It is a community of young people who are largely untapped by other philanthropic organizations.  Through its signature engagement model - Engaging the Next Generation of Philanthropists -  Spark trains and cultivates a pipeline of Millennial donors to understand the issues that impact women around the world and know how to exert their influence to change patterns inequality.  Over the past 2+ years, Farley has focused her efforts on mobilizing a generation of social-justice-minded young professionals who believe in the power of women-led solutions.  Spark membership begins at only $75, making it easy for people of varying levels of income to support the organization through member-only fundraising events, volunteer opportunities and grant making for women’s organizations around the world. Her efforts paid off.

It also helps that Spark's work is tremendously compelling -  supporting organizations like Asylum Access, which  trains Colombian women refugees to lobby the Ecuadorian National Assembly for recognition of employment rights and protection from sexual violence for refugees, Amai House in South Africa which provides shelter, medical care and job training for HIV-infected pregnant Zimbabwean women refugees who are victims of politically motivated sexual violence, and  The Light Project in Vietnam which  provides health care, HIV/AIDS treatment, education, job training and housing for migrant and refugee women living in Hanoi, and its END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE campaign. To purchase surveillance system for Mati's transition house for South Asian women who have been victims of domestic violence.

Next week, Dr. O talks to CitizenGlobal, which is rolling out the first broadcast-to-broadband portal on the planet, a revolutionary new tool that enables NPO's to post video, audio and solicitations easily, cheaply and simultaneously on multiple platforms from cell phones to websites.

Listen to Dr. O's radio program, The Fairness Doctrine, on Livestream at www.wdisam.com every day from 3-5 pm EST or download it from iTunes.

Last week the United States Supreme Court decided on a 5-4 vote  in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission,  that previously settled distinction between corporate and individual expenditures in American elections are unconstitutional.  The Court gave First Amendment right  to corporations, unions and non profit organizations that most Americans thought were limited to real people. There is no indication that it applies to churches and religious organizations, although it is likely this will be asserted in future litigation.

The impact of the decision on NPOs will evolve but some indications of the effect on NPOs are emerging:

• Advocacy groups can now spend unlimited amounts of money to affect government policy;  some, especially those created by or funded by corporations or wealthy individuals, will likely do so
• Corporations, should they choose to do so, can use their funds to drown out the political voices of even the largest NPO advocacy groups
• Development Directors will have a new tool for fund raising;  candidate elections will become a basis for both mass appeals to membership and targeted appeals to top donors.  The threat of being overwhelmed by corporate campaign money may become a powerful incentive for donors to give even more

Bottom line: There is a new arms race in fund raising .

To match their corporate adversaries' very deep pockets, social entrepreneurs can do what they always do, create new ways to raise money and impact policy.  The $345 million raised for Haiti is an indication of what can be done when enough people put their mind to it.  The new Facebook Group NoLogo Congress asking people to withhold their votes from any politician who refuses to ban corporate backing is another example, as are several online petitions to amend the Constitution.

The $340 million spent by the drug-hospital-insurance industry to block reform of health can be matched by 5 million people – not a lot in the online world – each giving $100.  That  is a lot by online standards, but may be less so when donors understand the deep pockets of their corporate adversaries.  Whatever the means of raising money, the Supreme Court has spurred social entrepreneurs to raise their money raising targets and their expectations and get creative. When they do, they will change the fund raising landscape around the world.

Bea Agins is a determined social entrepreneur. She has spent the past 15 years living part-time in a remote village in the Peruvian Amazon to develop a deep relationship with the indigenous Achual people, learning the rhythms and harmonies of the village and the rain forest they have inhabited for millennia (and, as she once remarked, with every bug you could possibly imagine). During that time, she has watched the encroachment of modernity and a cash economy – the Achuals did not use money when she first joined them - and the devastation it can bring to both the people and the forest. To give the village a way to filter the onrush of a cash economy, global communications, tourism and lumbering, she established her US-based NPO, Amazon Wakini. Her goal is to enable the Achuals sustain the essence of their culture by using social entrepreneurism to adapt modernism to their lives, rather than the other way around.

 

• The economy is not likely to improve much next year anywhere in the world, especially the jobs part
• Foundations are not likely to have more money or fewer needs next year and most corporations are cutting back more
• If you don't have long relationships with development banks or government development funds, loyal members, donors and followers may be your best source of funds
• Social entrepreneurs always have an edge because they are willing to try new things and don't fear failure

Kindness.yahoo has posted a story about Jenni Ware an American mom who was stranded at the grocery checkout with her kids whne she discovered she had lost her wallet. Carolee Hazard, a complete stranger standing in line behind her, saw her anguish and performed a kindness – she paid Jenni Ware's grocery bill.  Jenni was not only spared the embarrassment of telling the clerk she had no money, but she left the store with glow from the kindness she was shown – a glow that helped overcome the panic of losing her wallet.

Yahoo wants the entire world to feel that glow and they have launched a process to make it happen. Your organization can be part of that process and that glow by helping create a ripple of happiness triggered by acts of kindness and using Yahoo's massive network to share your good deeds with others and stimulate them to commit an act of kindness.

Here is how it works.  Email a note to your organization's mailing list of members/donors/supporters. Tell them to go to http://kindness.yahoo.com/ and read about the You In? program and get ideas and inspiration for their own acts of kindess.  Then ask each member to commit an act of kindness and post a short description and their photo on their Status Update on Yahoo.  If they don't have a Yahoo profile, they should go to www.yahoo.com create a profile and add their photo from their flickr account (best if they wear a t-shirt with your organization's name and website on it). 

Be sure to  ask them to email a note to their friends asking them to do the same. 

Yahoo will monitor the program through December, and of course you can continue to commit acts of kindness and post them through the new year. And your entire  membership will be glowing.

Listen to Dr. O's radio show, The Fairness Doctrine at www.wdisam.com and on iTunes

 Over the years I have posted this blog, I have reviewed very few books.  Development officers and executive directors usually have little time for relaxed reading and when they do, have many books to choose from.  However, once in a while a book comes along that I can't pass up – in this case it is Even Bears Can Learn to Tango by Elle Koss, published by Channel Trade Books, a division of the boutique fine art book publisher,  Channel Photographics, itself a green, social entrepreneurial company publishing a limited number of exquisitly illustrated and edited titles in a  range of subjects.

November and December are rich with holidays around the world, each with its own form of celebration and protocols for fund raising.  A partial list  reminds us of the diversity of celebration in these two months.  It includes:

November

• All Soul's/Saint's Day, official holiday in France; celebrated in Europe
  
• Guy Fawkes Day, England
  
• Diwali, the Indian Festival of Light, celebrated in October or November
  
• Louis Riel Day, Canada
  
• Veteran's Day in the US; Remembrance Day in Canada
  
• St. Martin's Day, France; now in Germany, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe
• US Thanksgiving
  
• St. Catherine's Day, celebrated in Estonia and France
  
• Eed-ul-Fitr in the Muslim world
  
• St. Andrew's Day, celebrated by the  Scots, Poles and Russians 
• Deepavali, Singapore
  
• Hari Raya Haji, Singapore
•  Hari Raya Qurban, Malaysia
• National Cultural Day, Japan
• Labor Thanksgiving Day, Japan
• Idul Adha, Indonesia
  
• Bonifacio Day, Philippines
  

December

• Chanukah, celebrated throughout the Jewish world
  
• St. Nicholas Day, Holland and Germany
  
• St. Lucia Day, Sweden, Norway and Denmark
  
• Las Posadas, throughout the Hispanic world
  
• Winter Solstice, in many countries
  
• Christmas, Advent, St. Nicholas Day, and other holidays surrounding Christmas in the Christian world and Christian communities in non-Christian countries
• Yule, a pagan holiday celebrated in parts of Europe
  
• Boxing Day, Britain and Canada, Australia
  
• Kwanzaa, celebration of Africa culture, began in California, USA
  
• Mummering, celebrated in Canada
  
• Holy Innocents Day, Catholic holiday
• H.M. The King's Birthday, Thailand
  
• Constitution Day, Thailand
• The Emperor's Birthday, Japan 
• Islamic New Year, Indonesia
• Rizal Day, Philippines
  

While each holiday has its own fund raising protocol, here are three innovative ways to use holidays to augment year-end budgets:

1.  Holiday travel packages.  Charities can organize holiday travel, or contract with a travel packager for trips to countries where the NGO works or as educational packages that bring in funds and cultivate donors. In the UK,  see Travel Quest for ideas on and lists of charity tours. Charity travel can take place anytime, but can be offered during holidays because that is often when donors have time free, may be traveling anyway, or may want to give travel as a present.

2. Micro lending for holiday bazaars.  Micro lenders can underwrite craft-making collectives in developing countries to build inventory throughout the year to sell during holiday gift-giving times in developed countries. By lending throughout the year and selling during holidays, the micro-lender assumes the risk, provides the loan recipients with a year-round income, and has inventory on hand locally for immediate sale.

3. Coat checks in shopping malls.  A clever idea based on the shopping required for holiday presents and cooking and the burden of heavy clothes in cold climates in the US and Europe.  Set up a booth at a shopping mall where people can shed their heavy coats and hats for a small fee. A large local organization can set up booths in multiple shopping centers with volunteers. While collecting fees, you can also educate people about the NGO and hand out donation envelopes.

Let us know your ideas.  

Download Dr. O's radio show, The Fairness Doctrine, at www.wdisam.com/fairdoc or on iTunes

Sunit Shrestha, in his groundbreaking article, Young Development Innovators published at Beyond Tunis. Flightplan 1.5 of the Global Knowledge Partnership , wrote that

Young people understand the concept of social entrepreneurship almost immediately… Youth social enterprises led by young visionaries are a nascent force. Although small in numbers, the impact achieved by these enterprises on the ground has been quite impressive." 

He describes three such Gen-Y/Millennial youth programs: Digital Divide Data (DDD)  in Cambodia, Meal Exchange  in Canada, and TRN in Thailand.  These are only a few of the hundreds of such programs aimed at generating and training a new generation of social entrepreneurs.  I have listed below a few that I have worked with or know of directly:

• Think Impact:  connects American college students and recent graduates with rural villages in Africa to become social entrepreneurs
• Thnking beyond borders: helps gap-year youth to explore international development through global service learning and academic study.
• MBAs without Borders: Canadian organtization that empowers entrepreneurs by matching them with talented MBAs to build poverty-alleviating business solutions
• Global Citizen Year: a bridge year between high school and college that creates opportunities for youth to work as apprentices in Asia, Africa and Latin America
• Youth Venture of AShoka:  helps teams of people start new youth-led social entrepreneurial organizations. 
• New Profit Inc. invests in a  portfolio of innovative young social entrepreneurs to help them build organizations and scale their social impact.
• Coro.  Trains emerging young leaders in the US, including training in social entrepreneurism.

• US-Saudi -Women's Forum on Social Entrepreneurship:  connects women to business and social entrepreneurial skills in partner organizations

• New Leaders Council:  trains post-college youth in progressive leadership and social entrepreneurism

• Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship: does not give grants, but operates programs that connect young social entrepreneurs with resources and each other, like the Young Global Leaders
  

Along with the generating and training programs, many organizations have sprung up or expanded their programs to provide grants, logistics and other concrete resources for young people going into international social entrepreneurism.  In addition to our host, the Skoll Foundation, GenY/Millennial social entrepreneurs should explore:

• The Unreasonable Institute:  training and connection to startup capital

• Youthlearn:  small grants (US$500) to young social entrepreneurs
• DoSomething:  small grants (US$500) and other programs for youth social entrepreneurs
• Dell/University of Texas; $50,000 competitive grants for college student s who want to become global social entrepreneurs
• The Omidyar Network:  makes  market-based investments in organizations  with the potential for large-scale, catalytic impact.  Not strictly for young people, but an important resource for all social entrepreneurs. 

• Echoing Green: provides seed funding and support to young social entrepreneurs to launch organizations around the world.
• MARCsMovement: support for youth entrepreneurship organizations 

• Starbucks YouthActionNet and grants to young social entrepreneurs
• About Face International: provides a discussion area for youth social entrepreneurship
  

This a small sample of what is available.  Wikipedia lists many others here. Millennials should also get to know the Ashoka's Changemakers "open sourcing social solutions" initiative which uses an online platform for what it calls collaborative competitions to build communities of practice around pressing issues.

Causes announced last week that it was closing up shop on Myspace and focusing on Facebook.  About the same time, the ECF , a NPO online group based in England, asked its members to relate their good and bad experience with Causes. These two events caught my eye, so I decided to ask the questions this week: what is Cause, how does it work, how well does it work as a fund raiser for NPOs?

First, Causes is a company that provides an online set of tools enabling anyone to create a an advocacy group on Causes using the Causes app.  The group – called a "Cause" - may be used for fundraising if the originator wishes. NPOs that want to use Causes for fund raising can choose a beneficiary organization to receive donations automatically through Network for Good.

According to Susan Gordon, Senior Non Profit Coordinator, Causes has 94 million users and 340,000 existing Causes who generate 32 million visitors a month to its site.  Causes has raised $16.8 million to date for NPOs.  One Causes campaign, America's Giving Challenge, generated 105,420 donations from 7875 Causes totaling $2,101,914.  Organizations that have benefited from Causes include Forge, run by fellow blogger Kjerstin Erickson.,  the Alliance for Climate Protection, the Save Dafur Coalition which united over 1.1 million Facebook users and raised $86,000, and Amnesty International whose cause now has 438,000 members.

As Causes founders Joe Green and Sean Parker note, there are many ways to measure a Causes success:  money raised, members gained, wider recognition, lives changed.

However, the question on ECF asked for another success measure, the Causes experience – "what are your good and bad experiences with Causes?" The results were informative.

  A few were negative, like this one:

"…we deleted our Cause. The app has been down much of the time, we were unable to add administrators, mailing to people from our Cause was buggy and unavailable at critical moments - all to the point where we moved our entire facebook presence to a Page and ditched the Cause. We lost some people in the course of that transfer but it was worth it - it was just too frustrating an experience. "

Some were mildly positive, as from this Finish NPO:

"…We've used Facebook causes with some success although we can't use them for fundraising here in Finland."

Some went both ways, as from this organization operating in the US and the UK:

"Causes has worked well for some of our campaigns, but more so in North America … than …in Great Britain. Don't expect it to raise any  funds:  from my experience on UK and global work, Facebook users don't  like to donate money from causes or any of the other ways you can give money via facebook. Also the Causes seem to work for longer term issues rather than one off moments."

Some decided that going directly to Facebook members was more efficient, like this European affiliate of a global NPO:

"It seems people use Causes (like Facebook groups) for identity building purposes i.e. they join them to show what kind of people they are and then forget all about them. Instead I've started to experiment with Facebook pages. The good thing about pages is that you gain access to people's news feeds which leads to increased interaction. Now we have long conversations on the wall and people ask questions."

Given that Causes is strongest in North America and most of the ECF subscribers are in Europe, these tepid endorsements of Causes as a fund raising tool is not surprising. The note about bugginess is also not surprising – with 340,000 Causes, a few will have technical problems; Causes offers users not only extensive and well written instructions and Best Practices, but online help with glitches, although is it not rapid by any means.  The note about going directly to Facebook however, did give me pause, which is where the response from Frogloop with data from its study of Causes was very helpful.  Although  the research was done in April when Causes had 180,000 users instead of the current 340,000, I think the analysis still holds true:

…most groups raise very little money from Causes, but it might have value from a branding and engagement perspective…. you can probably get some "extra gravy" - a thousand dollars here or there - but it's not really scalable….we actually pulled the publicly available info from Causes and looked at all of the Causes with more than 20,000 members, and all of the Causes with 1,000-5,000 members :

• 920 of the 180,000 Causes at the time accounted for 60% of total dollars raised
• 513 causes with over 20,000 members accounted for 40% of total dollars raised
• less than 4% of all Cause "members" will donate
• The top 5 donors of a Cause account for most of the money raised (68%)
• The top donor typically accounts for about 20% of the money raised on a Cause
• The Median Gift from a Cause is a few pennies
• The chances of getting more than 20,000 members are about 1 in 500
• The chances of breaking $100,000 are 1 in 90,000
• Most Causes have fewer than 1000 members, and is likely to raise less than $100
• The median amount raised from all Causes with 1000-5000 members is about $1600

Susan notes that the Fogloop statistics don't account for the variation in effort among Causes operators. Causes is an organizing tool – not a magic money wand.  Many people launch a Cause but don't ask for money, lowering the average amounts earned from all Causes.  NPOs that ask for money through Causes usually generate donations.  But operating a Cause site and usingit for fund raising has to be active process.  And the Cause operator has to ask for money.

So, is creating and maintaining a Cause a good fund raising strategy?  My vote is yes. Causes is a vluable tool to add to your toolbox if you have teh staff resources to maintain it and use it.  But remember the founders' advice and measure your success with it in a variety of ways.  For non-US based organizations, its fund raising capability is limited but its utility as a membership and recognition driver is very useful and in some cases can be nothing short of miraculous.  On the other hand, if your primary or only concern is fund raising, you should look carefully at Causes to determine if it is the best place to put your time (use the Frogloop time allocation calculator).  It may be that a direct mail campaign will give you a better ROI. If your interest is developing a long term process for fund raising, Causes may be a good bet, but not yuor only one.  As far as shifting to Facebook – Facebook pages and Cause sites do different things and achieve different outcomes;  I would do both Facebook and a Cause app if you have the resources.

I wrote about raising money on mobile phones in my June 19, 2009 blog, and noted the cost barriers that keep most NPO's away from this technology, but apps for iPhones and other smart phones getting cheaper and are beginning to emerge from NPOs. Most are for iPhones, but are not directly fund raising apps because Apple no longer allows a “Donate Now” button on iPhone apps. That being said, there are some good examples NPO's iPhone apps that  earn money selling the app or on app-driven site visits where there is a Donate Now button.  Examples in the UK and the US include:

•  AIGA Houston   (video here  on its app)
• Africare 's  new shopping app 
• American Humane Society's Be Humane shopping app
• Ecosnoop's ap that crowdsources enforcement of environmental laws
• Greenpeace's Good Tissue Guide ap for US phones
• GoPlanit.com's Pet Earth game and donates a portion of the purchase price and ad revenue to plant trees.
• Ideablob's iGive - Micro-donating made easy and mobile with iPhone  which randomly donates money when clicked. 
• Melodeo's Christmas music streaming app which sells for $2.99 and sends $1 to the Salvation Army  
• PAVE (People Against a Violent Environment) has two domestic violence apps, making money on the sales
• PETA 's paid app, BNB (be nice to bunnies) on cruelty free shopping is available in the both the US and the UK.
• Seafood Watch's free sustainable fish guide app/widget in the UK, co-launched in the US by the Monterey Bay Aquarium
  
• Social Actions  and Games that Give are developing aps to stimulate or direct funds to NPOd  
• The Extraordinaries showcased a beta iPhone application at NetSquared this year to help people find quick volunteer opportunities.
• NABU Vogelführer launched an app for German language configured iPhones.
• Kiva is working on an iPhone app for its lenders;  you can follow the progress on Twitter  @Kiva4iPhone

For a continuing stream of information on this, check out Britt Bravo at Have Fun, Do Good, and her Twitter stream @Bbravo.

Although for the time being an iPhone app cannot include a Donate Now button, you can create apps for other phones that do and  you can create iPhone apps that can be used for:

• Awareness
• Directing donors to the Donate Now button on your site
• Special promotions
• Membership renewals
• Wish list donations
• Special projects
• Social networking features within the app for your organization

If  If your organization is thinking of launching an app, they can be expensive so explore several vendors first - several linked in the examples above. Sweb offers a plan to create and launch an app for $25 a month. Joomkit in the UK provides a range of online services to the for profit and non profit world using the open source platform joomla.  Iphone Sculptors has an online form that quickly allows you get an estimate for an app, although you will be contacted by the company (not necessarily a bad thing). 

Follow Dr. O on his radio show, The Fairness Doctrine, at www.wdisam.com/fairnessdoctrine, live streamed on Fridays at 2pm EST in the US and on iTunes.

Anthropologist Bea Agins has kept a tambo - a thatch home - in an Achual village in the Peruvian Amazon,  (also so known as Achuar)  for 15 years.  Once a senior executive at Intel, Bea left the corporate world and joined a people who were just encountering modernity.  And she realized – as so many social entrepreneurs have – that to survive the village must achieve a balance with modernity that retains its communal values, and to do that, the women have to be involved.  Not easy in a culture where men rule.

Bea’s solution was to create an entrepreneurial space for the women that allowed them to independently provide for their children while sustaining their native identity. That space is the Achual Sustainable Art Collective and Amazon Woman’s Project (website under construction), an entrepreneurial training ground and investment vehicle. And it is paying off.

Working through an NPO she set up for the village, Amazon Wakini,  Bea first created a sustainable agriculture project for the men that gave them the sense that they were strong contributors to the future.  Then, with the men feeling good about themselves and not threatened by the women, she created a collaborative made up of the women and local and global organizations that provided training in sustainable agriculture and in marketing their stunning handicrafts globally without compromising their culture.

The Woman’s Project is a three-year investment, which is a long time in a culture that lives in the now and is very risk-averse.  But by Year 3 it will produce $70 -$100 per month per woman and the dignity and respect that comes with independent income.

Now in its start-up stage, the Project was kicked off with a small initial investment  raised by Amazon Wakini from individual investors and foundations. Bea is now raising a few thousand dollars for the second round of capital to sustain the Project until it produces income on its own.

There are lessons here for social entrepreneurs working in traditional cultures:

- It takes time.  Bea spent 14 years building trust and gaining understanding

- It takes listening.  Bea immersed herself in the culture, trained with the apo in healing arts and learned to be quiet and listen to the people and the jungle. 

- Work within the culture. By giving the men their project first so they could see the results of investment for the future, Bea enabled them to feel strong.  They were not (or, were less) threatened by a changed women’s status.

- Work within the culture (again).  Traditional people like the Achual do not have the same sense of private property, persosnal ownership that westerners do.  The Project is based on communal values and clummunal sharing, which both uses and preserves the Achual tradition.

- Teach risk, but avoid early failure.   Western entrepreneurs see failure as learning; traditional cultures see it as a loss of face and financial disaster. It will take time and banked resources before the village can absorb a failure, thus, the second round of capital. The woman are learning that independence takes risk and that they cannot wait for others to support them, but all in due time.

To meet Bea Agins, see photos of the Achual village and perhaps help with her second round of capital, go to the new Amazon Wakini site.

How US financial crisis is effecting Guatemala:  Not only r remittances lower, but a lot of folks r coming back home b/c of jobs here @aidg

That was a recent tweet from the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, to publicize its programs. It is one of  26 NPOs using Twitter that Lon Choen of Mashable.com posted in a recent column – a must read post for NPOs using social media.  This example shows how Twitter has given NPOs another powerful relationship-building and fund raising tool. It allows them to become a news source about their issue and geographic area. This does two things.  First, by getting donors and members to become Twitter followers and feeding them daily news stories, NPOs can build tight  relationships with their supporters. They can get their followers to virtually  live in the reality that NPOs work in every day.  

Second, daily tweets from the front lines provides supporters with information that the media overlooks, counteracting the general media's focus on wars, disasters and politics from developing countries. In the example tweets below,  Tanzania Development Support informs its followers – and others through retweets - on untold stories and small events that shape the daily fabric of life in Tanzania.  Examples of tweets:

TZ NEWS: New report by British NGO says biofuel production may contribute to food scarcity in Tanzania (source: BBC)http://bit.ly/2w1IG8

TZ NEWS: Residents desert island anticipating heavy rains; concerns for lake environment (source: Arusha Times).http://bit.ly/4yR5HM

There are now literally hundreds, if not thousands of sites about NGO's online and on social media.  For a list of NGO's on Twitter and how they are using it as news for supporters go to http://bit.ly/19xplf. For a list of NGO twitters just in China, go here http://bit.ly/3vE6Up . For  a list of individuals from around the world who tweet from NGO's go here http://bit.ly/4BI6P1.  Finally, for news about grants, follow @CharityGiving.

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Don't forget to  listen live or download Dr. O's radio show The Fairness Doctrine on WDIS-AM every Friday at 2 pm EST.  This Friday we interview experts on global climate change and debate with a climate change denier. Go to www.wdisam.com  and click on "Listen Live" for a live stream, or download the podcast or iTunes files.  And check out his radio blog .

Are you fundraising on social media – Twitter, Facebook, Bebo, and others? Nearly 75% of 980 NPOs in  a recent NTN study said they were. While the total amount of money raised through social media is small compared to that through traditional means – fewer than 2% of respondents reported more than $10,000 -, it is growing and it brings other benefits.  Social media development is still mostly US-centered because the major player in the field is Facebook Causes, a US-based NPO that and can only raise money for US and Canadian charities. But Twitter, bebo and other networking tools are coming into their own, especially in Europe..

Facebook Causes, a Facebook ap that provides fund raising infrastructure designed for social media,  started at the Agape Foundation in San Francisco two years ago, has raised nearly $8 million and currently averages $30,000 to $45,000 a day.  Minimum gift is $10;  median gift is $25.   Charities using Facebook Causes raise anywhere from $200 to over $100,000.  Examples include:

• Karnataka Floods Relief Fund 
•  Educate Girls in Africa  
• Campaign for Cancer Prevention 
• Alex's Lemonade Stand
• Stand against genocide, which raised $20,000 directly and $140,000 in Facebook-driven donations to local chapters.   

Facebook Causes also builds relationships, recruits volunteers and long time donors, and creates buzz.  Click here for a quick seminar on FB Causes Best Practices for starting a cause, and here and here for transcripts of webinars on using FB Causes.

NPOs in Europe and elsewhere are using Twitter and bebo, neither of which have the sophisticated fund raising infrastructure that FB Causes provides, but donations can be made through Tipjoy, a online micropayment app that can now be integrated with Twitter and bebo. justgiving.com also works with Twitter in Europe.

Creativity is king with Twitter. @Drew, an early Twitterer is auctioning his great Twitter handle for cancer research.  Utodd raised money for the Olympics by posting a powerful video on his feed and asking for funds from his followers. 

Zulhal Sultan launched a campaign was to start the first National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, found the deputy prime minister's twitter account and sent him tweets with a link to The Times article about the campaign. Result -  US$50,000 to help set up the orchestra. And over GBP1.000, through justgiving.com.

 Bebo, which ahs a younger audience than Facebook or Twitter works well for European NPOs.  Face2Face Fundraising uses it in Ireland at  Individuals as well as organizations have also adapted it for breast cancer funds and Romanian Children  A good run down on UK NPOs using bebo is up on Tincan

How do you decide if you should invest the time and money (mostly time, not much money) in social networking?

Sarah Koch at Facebook Causes recommends that you look at what you want to accomplish and then figure out a strategy that makes sense for the resources and time your organization has, and then determine the role social media can play.  She notes that you will need to plan communications, progress reports and allow time to grow your community of supporters.

Tom the Scrooge at Agitator, lays out a five step plan:

1. determine the scale of the social media effort in relation to your overall fund raising

2. make sure your audience is ready for social media fund raising

3. determine how well you understand social media and who on your team can use it effectively

4.  calculate your opportunity costs, probably mostly in time spent

5. Estimate the actual value you will generate from social media fund raising and set a goal – how you will know you are successful.

Last week, when I pulled up in an old VW next to the walled compound where I was supposed to meet the young Americans preparing to work in the bush the power was out and the street was pitch black.  But no problem.  The hostess was prepared with candles and the meeting room and the lush topical garden flickered with dozens of tiny flames.  Women  in colorful robes and dresses and men in shiny suites milled noisily around an outdoor fire to keep warm as the hot day slid into a chilly night. Food was plentiful as the hostess had wisely ordered a kitchen truck with its own generator to serve native dishes.

The first night of Peace Corp volunteers in Africa or Asia?

No, it was a home in a suburb of  San Francisco and the event was the send off party for the first class of  the Global Citizen Year Fellows who were going Senegal and Guatemala a few days later to live with families in a rural communities.  They had recently completed 12 days of intensive training by youth development experts and social entrepreneurs on social innovation and sustainable development. Now they were ready to put it to work.  They were the inaugural class of Global Citizen Year and they were going to change the world. And they will.

The story of Global Citizen Year is the story of a remarkable social entrepreneur, Abigail  Falik, its founder, who spent the evening absolutely glowing with pride, even after the lights went back on and the candles were put away.

Abby, as she prefers to be called, is every inch a social innovator.  Her mission is to create opportunities for young Americans to learn about the world and social entrepreneurism. Her idea for Global Citizen Year grew during four years at NetAid where she launched a program for high school students to end global poverty – which became the flagship initiative of Mercy Corps.

And then she thought bigger –  a national movement that routinely offers young Americans the opportunity for a service year abroad in  the "gap year" between high school and college.  Abby redefined the "gap year" as a  "bridge year" between the US and the world and wants to make it an option in the education of every American high school student.  Her idea was to train and place young American high school graduates with families in rural communities around the world learning microfinance and appropriate technology by working on projects. At the end of the program they would return to their hometowns to share their experiences at local schools and through social media, and grow the program and the idea of a "bridge year" opportunity for every American.

To help launch Global Citizen Year, in 2009 Abby received the Draper Richard Fellowship to create significant social change and a Mind Trust Fellowship for education entrepreneurs.  And along the way she managed to earn a B.A. and M.Ed. from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and was named a Rainer Arnhold Fellow and a Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellow. She left no stone unturned looking for money, using grants to enearth more grants and to recruit private donors.  At some point, I hope - and I think she does to - this will be part of the education of all Americans, an option they can choose, regardless of the financial ability, as part of public eduction.

Global Citizen Year has taken its first step into the world, buttressed by over a year of planning and fund raising.  The first step is the hardest for any social entrepreneur and the scariest.  It is not the end of the work, but the beginning.  It means ongoing  fund raising, managing, recruting and growing. Abby is ready for it.

If you have a dream and an idea, keep your eye on Abby and Global Citizen Year as a model for how to make it work.  And then make it work for you.

At the close of this year's Clinton Global Initiative, President Clinton announced the next meeting of Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) to be held at the University of Miami from April 16-18, 2010.  Early acceptance to CGIU will start November 12, 2009 and applications will be received until February 1, 2010.   I would not wait that long  to apply.  Grants to students for projects can range up to $10,000.

Not quite as well-known as the CGI and the CGI Awards, GGIU has a tremendous impact, driven by the creativity of the young people who take the grants and run with them.

Like Harvard student Jessica Lin who received $1,500 to buy parts for their "sOccket" project -- a soccer ball that harnesses the energy of being kicked around for later use in a home. Or CaseWestern ReserveUniversity student Bryan Mauk  who received $10,000 for "The Metanoia Project," to renovate and sell foreclosed homes and use the proceeds for a homeless center in Cleveland, Ohio.

Or CornellUniversity students Daniela Ochoa Gonzalez and Mitchell Harrison who received $10,000 for a waste management program in Morelia, Mexico that allows local people to trade recyclable materials for local produce. Or Owl Microfinance, founded by RiceUniversity students Dillon Eng and Joshua Ozer to fund young entrepreneurs in Lesotho.

 CGIU operates by holding annual meetings at major universities for NGO leaders, students and university officials to discuss solutions to global issues. The 2010 meeting of CGIU expects to draw nearly 1,500 attendees who will focus on education, environment/climate change, peace/human rights, poverty, and public health. CGI receives over 1,000 applications and 1700 pledges annually from students at CGIU meetings and through www.cgiu.org.

CGI U is also a growing community of young leaders who act. Throughout the year students, youth directors, and university officials develop their own Commitments to Action, a specific plan to address a challenge at home or around the world. Since CGIU was launched in 2007, nearly 2,000 commitments have been made. Students are also invited to join the CGI U campus representative network of nearly 200 student representatives from over 25 countries that power the CGIU.   

 If you are a young  social entrepreneur with a good idea to help the world and willing to make a pledge to action, apply to attend.   If you are selected, you can change lives and your life will be forever changed.

Molly and Carly were devastated five years ago when their beloved grandfather "Honey" died suddenly of throat cancer at an early age. Molly was 10 and Carly was 12 and grandfather was a joy in their lives.  His loss – and the suddenness of it – created a hole in their hearts.  But they used that tragedy as an inspiration to start a project that would remember him and help others avoid the disease that had taken his life.  That project , Hives for Lives, also thrust them into a global sustainable bee keeping movement.

Their grandparents were beekeepers and Molly and Carly had helped them harvest the honey every year.  The girls set up their own hives and  harvest the honey and wax to earn funds for cancer research. They sold their first jars and rounds of honey in 2004, raising a little over $2,000 for the American Cancer Society.

In 2006 they incorporated as a non profit and expanded beyond their own 20 hives training other youth, called Helper Bees, to keep bees and now supply honey to a national food store chain, Whole Foods Markets.  They also sell honey and wax nationally on their website. As of this year, they have earned $160,000 for cancer research.

Molly and Carly may not have known it, but they became part of a global  "sustainable honey" movement that sees beekeeping as a way to create a healthy, environmentally beneficial product that people around the world can produce to raise money or support a family.  Self Help Africa supports a Beekeeping extension project working with young people in secondary schools. Heifer International provides micro loans to African and Latin American families. SLINT-Uganda operates the Gayaza Smallholder Beekeeping project with loans, smokers and bee suits. SLINT  trains farmers to harvest honey without destroying wild hives, which traditional methods called for.  The result is a sustainable income and a stronger local ecosystem.

Other projects around the world include UMCOR's micro-loans for beekeeping in Liberia, RIPPLE Africa micro loans for bee keeping in Malawi, and the Lebialem Hunter's Beekeeping Initiative  in Cameroon, established with loans from the ERuDeF Community Fund.

Social entrepreneurism can arrive through many doors.  For some it is a university trining program, in others it is volunteering in a development project.  For Molly and Carly it was the ability to turn their families loss into a gain for cancer research.

Update from last week: The US Health Care Insurance reform bill is now awaiting over 500 ammendments int he US Senate, to my knowledge, none dealing with the problem that it leaves out NPOs.  Please send your comments and suggestions on how NPOs  around the world provide health care for their staff.

Follow Dr. O's radio show, The Fairness Doctrine, at www.wdisam.com.  Live streamed every Friday at 3 pmEST

The non-profit sector of the US is not only the largest in the world, but it is the fourth largest employer in the US, with 12.8 million paid workers (2004 data).  As such, it is often an inspiration for NGO's around the world.  However, the current debate over reforming the healthcare insurance industry in the US has highlighted a problem where NGO's outside of the US may serve as a model for the US – and perhaps even help their US counterparts.

The problem: unlike the rest of the Western world, the US has no national health care program.  For profit corporations provide very expensive health care insurance through employers or directly to individuals. Approximately 80% of all NPOs in the US provide health insurance to their employees, purchased from private companies.  However, the cost of that insurance has gone up 38% since 2004. At the same time, the global recession has cut donations and increased service demands on NPOs.

The result:  chronically low NPO employee pay has been forced lower, benefits have been reduced or eliminated, staff have been cut and in some cases, programs have been downgraded. The number of NPOs not offering helath care to their employees rose 62% last year. The Listening Post Survey of  John Hopkins University's Center for Civil Society Studies found that 72% of all NPOs saw insurance cost increases and 98% of all NPOs are concerned cost increases will continue and will have serious impacts on their ability to deliver services. Solving this problem would be like every NPO in the US getting a new annual grant.

The current acrimonious debate over health care insurance reform in the US offers NPOs no help.  The only bill passed to date provides tax credits to small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance  but, since nonprofits do not pay income taxes in the US, they would not benefit.  There is nothing in the bill to subsidize the health care costs of NPOs, and neither the President nor Members of Congress have shown an awareness of the impact of health care costs on NPOs or the fact that they are left out of the current debate.

The for profit, employer-provided health care insurance model clearly is not working for US NPOs. So what models exist outside the US and how well do they work?  I think it would be useful for US NPOs and policy makers to understand that there are other ways of  meeting the health care needs of NGO staff  and how well some of these models work or don't work. 

The US debate has stunned the world with its acrimony, lies, distortions and crazy antics.  Some real facts from NGO's outside of the US who are not involved in our partisan politics could provide information and inspiration to their US counterparts to help them argue for a better way.

Post your stories in the Comments of how NGO staff in your country get their health care, what it costs, who pays and how well it works.  Facts and statistics are helpful, as are human stories. Derogatory comments are not.  Provide links when you can to sources.

 I will summarize the Comments  and send them to the US publication the Chronicle of Philanthropy and other publications to see if we can inform the debate and highlight the need for reform that helps NPOs