Video is hot online and off-the-shelf software plus creativity can give you the power to use it to find new money, volunteers and energy. And have fun.
Last week when I replied to an invitation to the 25th anniversary party in Oakland California for Rainforest Action Network, which was combined with the going away party for its Executive Director Mike Brune who is moving to the Sierra Club's top spot, I was offered an opportunity to create and submit a tribute to Mike. Clicking on the "Make a Tribute to Mike" button took me a donate page that explained:
In appreciation of Mike's exceptional leadership, RAN is assembling an online tribute book that will be presented to him at a special party at Oakland's Lake Chalet. Please join in the fun with a special donation honoring Mike's work and add your own thank you video, audio message, photo or note. Your contribution will also help to carry on RAN's brand of savvy, hard-hitting activism that has made us one of the most successful campaigning organizations for the past 25 years!
After making online line donation, I was taken to a page with tools that I could use to quickly and simply make a short video or audio recording and a text tribute. After recording my video, I clicked the UPLOAD button and my tribute became part of the celebration I would be attending the following week.
This is online fun/fund raising at is best; it convinced me to give twice: once to attend the celebration and a second time to record a tribute. Once RAN had made the initial investment in the software with their online fundraising host, Convio, there was no additional cost or staff time required until final assembly of the tribute book itself.
In another example of online fun/fund raising, I have received multiple emails from friends telling me that a conservative television commentator has attacked me on his US-based TV show. When I click on the link to the video of my being attacked on national US television, I am sent to a page that asks me to sign up with FaceBook or fill in a brief form. I sign up through Facebook and am taken to what looks like a news site (CNNBC Breaking News) where the anchor reads a story with video of my being denounced on the Glen Beck Show, a conservative US pundit on Fox News TV. After I watch the video, I am sent to a form where I can fill in my friends names and send them the video – which attacks them. The video site also links me to activist sites where I can give money and take action.
The viral software they used is not new – this technology was used during the US presidential campaign. But the organizations using it – moveon.org, the Service Employees International union and Brave New Films used it brilliantly to zero in on an issue, in this case TV pundits attacking Progressives, unions and the Obama Administration, to create a movement to boycott sponsors and pressure TV networks – and raise money.
Using online video to raise funds and awareness by asking your donors to record a short video saying why they give and then posting the video on your website – again, not new, but a technology that is off-the shelf, cheap and works really well. Send donors a script and instructions on how to make a video and send it to your site manager who posts it on your page with a donate button.. Or make a mashup of clips from popular movies or TV shows with your images and messages added in (check with your attorney to ensure that your use of downloaded video is "fair use" and not a violation of copyright.
Update: Homeward bound IPO
Last year I blogged about the innovative IPO issued by Homeward bound a SF Bay area NPO that builds low income housing. A year later they have:
· Raised $1 million in their IPO
· Working on the last $250K to pay off the loan
· Can count Warren Buffet, Bob Weir and Sammy Hagar as buyers
Their investors come from the US and overseas. Most are long-time supporters who cherish the "stock certificate" they receive;' some are new investors who are intrigued by the idea of a NPO IPO – knowing that the return is in satisfaction, not cash.
Below are photos of the housing built by Homeward Bound with the IPO funds.
If you want to be part of this as an investor, go to Homeward Bound, click on Invest Like Warren Buffet and follow the screens.
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TAMID, a student founded and run investment fund and training group at the University of Michigan, offers powerful lessons to young social entrepreneurs with a global vision.
When Sasha Gribov and Eitan Ingall, both students at the University of Michigan, looked around the college scene at their campus and others, they saw a lot of information about Israel and middle-east politics, but nothing about the Israel they knew – the hotbed of entrepreneurial start-ups and world-class high tech firms. So they decided to do something about it. They started TAMID, a student run investment firm and training program to acquaint American Jewish students and others with the entrepreneurial side of Israel.
The TAMID Israel Investment Group gives students hands-on business experience in Israel firms. In the process, the founders hope to change - or at least expand- the public discourse about Israel.
TAMID is being piloted on the Michigan campus with a little over $5000 invested in stock in Israeli companies along with a comprehensive education and training program:
·seminars on investing in Israel, often taught by visiting business leaders
·management of the Fund's portfolio ,
·internships in Israel firms combined community service in Israel
·working on consulting projects for Israel start-ups
TAMID's twist on the larger student investment groups is to approach a single country with a dual agenda – invest in the country and learn about its entrepreneurism. In doing so, it has created a model that students with connections to other countries should consider as a powerful tool for learning global investment, and for helping people around the world they feel an affinity for. And American Jewish students should definitely take note.
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This is a speculative blog, not one packed with grant sources. But its about Bill Gates.
Bill Gate’s presentation at this year’s TED conference was about energy – the need to make radical change in how we produce and use energy to prevent climate change. Being the world’s super geek, he put up a PowerPoint Slide with a formula:
CO2=PxSxExC
CO2 = the energy based emissions of the human race
P= population
S= the services we expend energy on
E= the energy sources we use
C=the carbon density of the energy services we use
He wants to reduce the C02 number to zero by 2050. To do this – which no one has projected as being possible – will require radical new energy sources, ones that don’t exist today. It will also require energy sources on different scales than we use now, some that power a single home, some that power a small company, some that power a city.
On his blog Gates wrote:
There are many promising approaches which we need to continue pursuing aggressively: CCS, Nuclear, Wind, Solar PV and Solar Thermal – but they all have challenges that must be addressed. And the only way to get there is through innovation.
I come to these issues as someone who spends most of his time thinking about problems that touch the poorest 2 billion people on the planet. Giving people access to cheap (and clean) energy is a huge step in reducing poverty. To drive home that point, at the end of the talk, I said that if I had only one wish – it would be for zero-carbon energy that is half the price of today’s. That would be quite an achievement, and would do massive good for the poor.
The Gates Foundation hasn’t posted new grant guidelines for energy, so there is no immediate impact on funding. But if the Foundation gets behind Bill’s focus on energy sources, the opportunities for large scale funding for innovation could increase by orders of magnitude. The social investment community will also get behind it, as will the venture community.
This is not funding for small scale, village level energy sources, but for highly efficient, highly scaleable energy sources, both distributed and centralized. And it is likely to involve nuclear of some kind – a power source anathema to many social entrepreneurs because of the destructive mining and milling process and the ever-present danger of diversion to terrorists weapons.
CarbonFreeNuclear Free .org is developing a carbon free/nuclear free plan for the US to build a technically and economically efficient energy economy based entirely on renewable energy sources by 2050. The Plan doesn’t touch on how these innovations will be funded, much less deployed. There are many sites and organizations dedicated to bringing nuclear power back, but investors are not interested in old style large, centralized plants , but are looking for radical innovations – small modular plants, plants that don’t require highly enriched uranium, plants than run on liquid nuclear fuels. The nuclear industry, meanwhile, is lobbying for 100% government funding for old style plants.
Gates has invested in a design that uses the waste fuel rods from large plants as its fuel and burns it in an underground facility that becomes its own container to recycle its own waste, eventually eliminating the need for waste storage. This does not address the mining problems, but it does provide energy and solves the waste problem.
Are there opportunities here for social entrepreneurs? Eventually, yes. For the present, there are a few programs, for instance, the state of California and Connecticut are offering small grants programs for energy innovation, but for the time being, set your Google alerts for energy grants at the Gate’s foundation..
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Mark Hovarth was homeless and begging on the street. He stopped begging. Instead he created a powerful tool to fight homeless. He doesn't ask for money, but it keeps on coming.
Last week I wrote that social entrepreneurs should stop begging. Today I want to introduce a social entrepreneur who did exactly that - literally, he stopped begging on the street and created InvisibleTV. And the donations come in without an ask.
On any given night, over one million people are homeless in the US – they have nowhere to sleep they can call their own. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, 80 percent of individuals and 90 percent of families are homeless due to economic reasons – not drugs, not alcohol, not laziness, but lack of money. In many communities, there are not enough shelter beds for them and some shelters are more dangerous than the street.
The experience of being displaced and without a home is devastating – and it means you are invisible to most people. No one cares about you, no one sees you. So being asked to share your story is powerful. For those not homeless, coming face-to-face with people who are often shunned by society is both eye-opening and deeply moving.
InvisiblePeople.tv Road Trip U.S.A. brings you face to face, eye to eye in powerful video interviews with homeless people shot during a cross-country trip last year to capture the stories of people without a home, visiting tent cities, motels, the streets.
Mark Horvath, a former TV executive who lost his job and became homeless himself after getting into drugs and who is nearly homeless himself now. He decided to document the face of homelessness, using Twitter to document his journey. He didn't wait to raise money, he didn't write a proposal and get a grant, he didn't find a sponsor – he just did it. And he created a powerful tool to raise awareness and generate help for the homeless.
Even today, he does not ask for money. You have to search his website (put "donations" into the search box) to find out how to give him money. And when you get to the donations page, you get a list of things you can do for the homeless before you get to the place where you can donate to him.
But people – and companies – are donating to Invisible TV: Ford Motor Co has given him a car for his travels, people have paid his rent; Haines has donated socks to give away on the street, Hertz is underwriting one of his trips, and hundreds of people find the donate button and send him money without being asked.
Invisible TV lives through social media. Facebook, Twitter, Bloglines, Myspace, Flickr, YouTube – they are all platforms to spread the video, the word, the message. Horvath has stopped begging, literally – and started doing.
It is time we stopped begging and changed our model from begging to earning. Fortunately, we are living in a perfect storm of change that can make that possible – crisis, technology and attitude are coming together in a way that will change fund raising forever.
I have been raising money since 1972, when I received my first corporate grant from Del Monte Foods and my first foundation grant from the Ford Foundation. Over the years, more and more I seen that traditional NPO fundraising is systematic, organized begging. We cynically cultivate foundation staff, twist our programs to promote corporate marketing campaigns, wine and dine major donors who could pay for it themselves, send out pleading fund raising letters and email, run ads with photos of starving children, all begging for money. It is time we stopped. It is time we changed our model from begging to earning. Fortunately, we are living in a perfect storm of change that can make that possible – crisis, technology and attitude have combine to make it possible.
Crisis. The American politician Rham Emanuel is credited with the quote “Never let a good crises go to waste”. It is doubly true for social entrepreneurs. The reason is simple: in a crises we are open to new ideas and driven to reach for new solutions – we become innovators, social entrepreneurs, radicals almost – out of necessity.
Technology. New technologies that allow people to pay for things easily and quickly are all around us, even for intangibles like satisfaction, fun, compassion and security. Those technologies enable us to sell (not beg) to tens or hundreds of thousands of people quickly and cheaply – to a market, not a constituency.
Attitude. A new generation of NPO leaders has emerged with business talent and an appreciation for markets, scale and invention. They are paralleled by a new generation of donor-investors – working alone and within an infrastructure of social investment - who are willing to back social businesses, micro-lenders, and hybrid NPO’s/FPO’s.
The economic crises has cut deeply into foundation and corporate giving, leaving many NPOs scrambling for their regular support. This has forced them to try revolutionary new ideas, like Kjerstin Erickson's online chronicle of Forge’s successful struggle to stay afloat, the Nameste-DirectFoundation’s shift of their operations to Guatemala where their borrowers are and costs are lower, of Tech Soup’s development a global business of transferring equipment and software from corporations to NGO’s, of Yahoo for Good’sleverage of a half a billion web visitors a month to spread good works around the world.
The technology of social networking gave rise to Causes, a totally new form of fund raising that multiplies other people’s good works, and Charity USA, LLC, operators of the Greater Good Network, a profit making business that multiples the impact of NPOs online, and a company like M-Givng , a major player in opening the text donation channel .
Social innovating is replacing the systematic begging that has characterized NPO fund raising. We will still need to make our case, to write proposals, met with donors. But the pitch is different. Sustainability, not need, is the theme. Investment, not charity is the goal. Good ideas, not sympathy, is the product.
So stop begging. Tell foundation staff, donors, members that you are an opportunity for them to invest in, not a tin cup to drop nickles into. You use technology, you scale, you innovate – and you make an impact. Your train is leaving the station and they need to get on board.
Thousands of people uploaded and edited video clips to the beta site of Citizen Global, edited them into 1000 finished products shown on the Times Square Jumbotron for the launch of The International Day of Climate Action - in 24hrs! Now you can do it too.
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.
Citizen Global beta launched in October in partnership with 350.org and received 1000 videos from 100+ countries, facilitated their editing and final production into finished products which were then shown on the Times Square (NYC) Jumbotron for the launch of .
The CG platform – which is used by organizations from major TV broadcasters to community organizations, allows NPOs to tell their story using video from a huge online community at a fraction of the cost of traditional production.
What is it:
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
What can Social entrepreneurs do with it?
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
CG is releasing a studio designed specifically for social entrepreneurs a place for social entrepreneurs from investors to NPOs to users to tell their stories in rich media. It will aggregate stories about social entrepreneurism from around the world, view them in the original uncompressed format, upload embed codes or full video to YouTube or their own sites, and manage all rights and finances quickly and easily online. CG has built a data base of hundreds of organizations and individuals who will be contacted to submit videos to build the common inventory, but anyone can submit a video here.
Any NPO or FPO can set up a studio for an annual licensing fee, (reduced rate for NPOs – contact studios@citizen global) and several NPOs can save money by sharing a studio. Heerad Sabeti of the Fourth Sector Network told Dr.O that he set up a studio quickly and cheaply and is now using it heavily for their programs. Try it for yours.
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Shannon Farley saw the downturn coming early last year. When Spark lost foundation grants making up 30% of her budget she quickly laid out an innovative strategy to meet her fund raising goals while other social entrepreneurs were cutting budgets and staff.
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
·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, andThe 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 toCitizenGlobal, 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 US Supreme Court decided that corporations -including NPOs - have the same free speech rights as people to spend as much money as they want electing candidates. Should we put the US Congress on eBay and just skip elections, because advocacy and citizen groups can't compete now? I don't think so. There is a new political arms race now. Let's see if it can kick start fund raising creativity among social entrepreneurs and raise our sights and our limits.
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 rightto 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.
As of last Friday morning, Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean's charity foundation had raised more than $2 million from texts and the Red Cross has collected $6 million. Is the mobile phone now the donation machine in everyone's pocket? Yes, but maybe not the way you think.
Has Haiti finally trained us to use the mobile phone to give money? If so, it may be the beginning of a revolution in how development directors will operate, knowing that every potential donor carries an instant giving machine in her pocket.
As of last Friday morning, Yele Haiti, Wyclef Jean's charity foundation had raised more than $2 million from texts. Jean promoted the text donations on his Twitter feed, on news interviews and talk shows asking Supporters to text "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5. Many, many did, and many donated to the Red Cross, sending $6 million through Verizon.
The technology behind mobile giving - simple text messaging through SMS - has been around for years. Some nonprofits have teamed up with technology companies and wireless providers to set up the technical systems they need to collect donations via text messages and then forward the funds to their accounts. It never really took off because the wireless providers charged extremely high fees on each donation. However the Mobile Giving Foundation recently negotiated a waiver of the fees so NPOs now pay a much smaller service fee to the MGF or to a facilitating company and donors see the contribution on their monthly wireless bill. However, even with the waiver, the system is still expensive.
Give on the Go, M-give, Mobile Commons (which has a difficult telephone phone tree) and other mobile giving firms charge $400 to $500 a month and more in some cases and up to 45 cents per $5 donation plus some require a percentage on top of the fee and demand a year's contract even for one campaign. That can add up to over $10,000 a year for a small amount of revenue - less than the same NPO can earn from a small to medium foundation for a proposal. This puts mobile donations off the radar of most small and medium social start-ups.
A cheaper way to raise mobile money is to create a cell phone app that connects a donor to the NPO's donation site - cutting out the mobile giving middleman costs. The donor sees an ad, a news story, or receives a text or email asking her to click on her phone app. The app gives her more information and then connects her to the donations page of the NPO, where she makes a donation. It is not quite as quick and easy as a text donation, but it uses the cell phone and avoids the per donation fee and the monthly charges of mobile giving (credit card fees will apply).
Britt Bravo decribes NPO uses for aps on her blog Have Fun Do Good, which should give you some good ideas for apps for your NPO. The Toy Lounge creates phone apps for NPOs for a range of uses, including fund raising. C.J. Stolee, spokesperson for the Toy Lounge, says that a simple iPhone app with a few basic functions, including connecting to the donation page on a website, will cost about $900 and usually takes about 5 weeks to implement (Apple's approval process can extend this). Apps for Blackberries are available but cost about 3 times as much because of additional programming.
The phone app strategy does not work for emergency fund raising like Haiti relief because of the time lag. But the low cost of apps allows NPOs to make them available to their members and others to carry around with them to provide updated information and then contact their donors by text or email and ask them to use the app to donate. A good strategy for social entrepreneurs!
Dr. O's annual predictions, trendspotting and advice to development staff.
The first decade of the 21st Century began well enough but ended very badly for fund raising and investing. Two thousand AD started with a strong stock market worldwide, a new crop of million- and billionaires, the transfer of wealth from the WWII generation to their children and grandchildren, the emergence of social entrepreneurship as a major sector and an alignment of the stars for online fund raising and mobile giving.
And then it all crashed – well, a lot of it did. Beginning with the toxic mortgages and derivative investment products created by reckless - mostly American - banks and sold worldwide. The net worth of individual donors plummeted as jobs and even homes were lost, foundations saw endowments cut in half or more, and some NPOs simply went out of business. To make things worse, the Maddox pyramid scheme literally destroyed foundations and took a long list of major donors out of the picture.
But on the bright side, the decade ended with online and mobile giving finally working. This was combined with a new generation of activists and young donors who opened up what I think will be a revolution and democratization of the NGO world. More donors, more activists donors, and more small donors may free NGO's from some of the influence of the big check writers and cumbersome foundation guidelines.
So what does the next decade look like. Here are my predictions for the major trends of the next decade and the 10 fund raising tools that development officers will need to take advantage of them.
The Big Trends
Climate change will accelerate, causing expensive, tragic and worldwide impacts like flooding and crop failure. It will play growing havoc with agriculture, infrastructure, travel and markets. Water will become the oil of the 21st century, partly because of climate change and partly because of overuse, waste and pollution.
More states will fail, sucking up both aid dollars and military resources and generating refugees and conflict.
Terrorism will continue to be a global problem with an increasing level of violence by militaries trying to prevent it, leading to a constant low-level war/police action globally. Terrorists will not get nuclear weapons but will get better at delivering death and mayhem anywhere they choose.
Cyberwar and cyber terror will impact daily lives in the west. Computers controlling airports, water systems, utilities, banks and other essential infrastructure will come under constatnt attack and the defenders will always be one step behind the attackers.
Religious fundamentalism and tribalism/nationalism will continue to grow in both intensity and scope. This will lead to the emergence of large religious and culture-based parallel cultures worldwide.
Despite the growth of religious fundamentalism, women will make a major leap in both political and economic influence, even in the most religious, repressive and male-oriented countries and cultures.
The mobile phone will become the ubiquitous communication, sales and media device of the world. Landlines, desktops and even laptops will slowly disappear.
The trend of major corporations paying more attention to sustainability will continue, and a new world of socially aware companies will emerge and challenge pure greed-based corporations in some markets.
The next decade will see China and India emerge as global economic and technology leaders; but Western culture – led by the US – will remain influential, although with nation by nation modifications.
Baby Boomers in the West will retire or die leading to a wealth transfer to NPO and foundation endowments and to their children; but longevity and impact of the market crash of 2009 will limit the amount of the transfer.
Fund raising tools in the next decade
1. As baby boomers retired and die, some of their wealth will be transferred. Development officers should track their 60-plus donors and look for new financial tools and grow the use of CRT's and social investment to capture some of the transfer.
2. As immigration leads to the large scale development of parallel societies – immigrants living in a large religion/language/culture enclave in a majority nation - parallel foundations and charities will form. Development officers should work to ensure that their board and staff are diverse to allow them to work and fund raise in the parallel societies.
3. Foundations will need five or more years to rebuild their endowments, assuming the stock markets continue to rise. Grants will be more restricted and more targeted as the needs generated by climate change, war and immigration grow faster than income. Development officers should work hard to retain their foundation funders, but work even harder to diversity their funding streams as foundations become a smaller piece of the donation pie.
4. Social entrepreneurism and hybrid organizations will do best in the next decade as they diversify vertically into for profit income streams as well as horizontally into more types of non profit income sources. NPO development officers and their staffs should be well-trained and experienced in FPO/NPO hybrid combinations, social entrepreneurism, and FPO asset monetization (new ways to use what we have to make money).
5. Women, already a major force in NPO and foundation management, will become a major force in giving and they will give broadly, not just to "women's" causes. Development officers need to focus more of their time and resources on their female supporters, especially "self-made women" who start and grow corporations.
6. Online and mobile will be the dominant wide-scale fund raising tools of the next decade. Direct mail will become a highly specialized and rarely used tool. Telephone solicitation will die out as people prefer the "opt-in" of mobile aps to the interruption of a phone bank. Development officers need to stay abreast of online and mobile fundraising technologies and organizations, train their boards or bring in savvy board members, create apps for their organizations, and insure that their staffing is very strong in online and mobile fund raising.
7. Social networking will (has?) become tightly woven into daily life for much of the world. The social networking consultant will replace the direct mail or fundraising consultant. Social networking, Causes, etc. make campaigns a constant part of everyday life. Capital campaigns will give way to constant networking. Development officers need to develop ongoing, working relationships with networking specialists like Fission Strategy, or add networking specialists to their staff to embed social networking in their annual development strategy and workplan process
8. Internet and social networking access will be done mostly through mobile phones. Development officers will need to understand that the cell phone is a fund raising device that every donor and every would-be donor carries around; they must get supporters mobile numbers and text address and educate supporters that they can use their phones to give anytime, and anywhere.
9. Socially responsible corporations started by social entrepreneurs will become the leading source of corporate funding, but they will also offer much more than money. Development officers should retain their current greed-based corporation grants, but work hard to establish visibility and relationships in the social venture world, and ask for more than money – partnerships with the company that might involve sales of company products, advising the company on emerging markets, etc. New models of for/non profit like Tech Soup will emerge.
10. New needs will present themselves in the next decade and NGO's will have to be nimble and flexible to respond to them and to educate donors. EDs and DO's should be prepared to consider changing focus or constituencies, merging with other NGO's or even merging with a for profit social venture if this seems to be the best way to survive and meet their larger mission.
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A determined social entrepreneur helps Achual women build a business in the Amazon rainforest- despite the high water.
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.
Bea's first project was a sustainable agriculture project growing Camu Camu and indigenous hardwoods. (Camu Camu is a tropical fruit rich in vitamin C and is used in ice creams, beverages, and nutritional supplements.) The village men are looking forward to the first harvest to providing cash the village needs to keep away the money lenders and lumbermen who use debt to get trees from the village preserve.
The village women are a very small part of this project; women have always been second class citizens in this patriarchal society. But for centuries, it has been the women who have produced the elaborate woven jewelry and headdresses that are at the heart of their culture and worn by everyone in the village, especially the apu. Building on this women's tradition, Amazon Wakini launched the Achual Sustainable Art Collective, a for-profit hand craft project that will provide the women a vehicle for doing business with the outside world while reinforcing their native values against the encroachment of that world.
This project melds non-profit microfinance and sustainability tools with for-profit business principles. Microfinance, together with links to both non- and for- profit partner organizations, provide business education, start-up costs and distribution and marketing infrastructure beyond the village; permaculture techniques produce renewable forest materials within the village for the handcrafts; and Achual communal values propel the collective handicraft production process and community distribution of eventual income.
The Art Collective has been launched. Marketing and distribution infrastructure is in place (thanks to partners like Red Pal Peru). The women have been trained in business skills and the Village Women's Council tapped to serve as the Collective's board of directors. The next step is production, which will require small loans to the Collective to produce and sell their goods, set up village banking and microfinance education and solidify distribution so the women receive fair trade value for their products – the first time any of them will have earned their own cash. What will they do with it? Bea knows exactly – pay for their children's education and provide medical services to the village.
As with all start-ups, the Collective has had it's setbacks, in this case due to weather. High water, which floods the village and the Camu Camu. trees the Achual harvest as a cash crop, came a month early this year making harvest impossible until the water level drops. The Achual women were counting on the Camu Camu harvest to provide money for medicine and school fees until they could start selling their handicrafts. To fill this gap and make sure the Collective can launch on schedule regardless of the high water Amazon Wakini is raising $2500 in to tied them over until the water level drops in February when they can harvest (flooding does not harm Camu Camu, one reason it is a good crop for the Achuals).
If you would like to contribute to this tied-me over fund to help the Achuali Women launch their business, you can donate through the website of the Protect An Acre Fund of Rainforest Action Network. Put the word "Achual" in the ADD YOUR MESSAGE box. This will let Protect An Acre staff know you want it to go to the Achual Sustainable Art Collective.
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SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS FROM THE ACHUAL SUSTAINABLE ART COLLECTIVE
Next year will not be any better than this year for social entrepreneurs in the NPO space. Two revenue generators to add to your calendar.
Now that you have sent out your year-end email (or snail mail) and are wrapping up next year's budget, there are a few things to keep in mind for next year's fund raising if you have not mulled them over already.
The economy is not likely to improve much next year anywhere in the world, especially the jobs part
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
That being the case, here are two things to plan for next year.
Online auctions. Once the province of hospitals and national charities, auctions have moved into the social entrepreneurial space with an online vengeance. Amazon.com reported an 18% increase in funds raised by online auctions last year and the trend is up. Whether it is NetRoots Nation raising $5000 through an online "bake sale" or online casino site Goldenpalace.com biding $650,000 the right to name a new species of monkey discovered in Bolivia by the Wildlife Conservation Society, they bring in real money and are a natural for social entrepreneurs.
My advice is to plan two auctions per year, one around a holiday and one linked to an event or an action by your organization or a particular annual need (like conference scholarships). Membership organizations can "crowdsource" donations, asking members to create something to donate if they have skills, or offering a resource they own, like a sailboat, vacation home or guitar signed by a rock star they have a connection with. The technology is simple, with many auction sites available from eBay to Amazon, Bidding for Good or Charity Online Auctions.
Online campaigns. I covered Facebook Causes in an earlier blog, but other campaign possibilities include Twitter. Twestival (Local and Global), is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales to bring people offline for a great cause. Tweetsgiving is another example – a campaign by Epic which raised $32,000 for a classroom in Tanzania. TweetsforBoobs raised money for breast cancer research.
Twitter campaigns are based on using Twitter to send people to a website where they can take an action like write what they are grateful for or what they wish for the world, etc., share it on a flickr page or YouTube channel and donate a specified amount of money. The You in? program at yahoo.com I described in last week's blog operates on this model.
If you have a large membership that uses Twitter, plan a campaign pegged to some event during the year (launching a well-digging project, setting up a refugee hospital, getting the patent for your technology) and launch a campaign. Be strategic in planning an online campaign: pick your time and your online medium to gain maximum support from your donor constituency without competing with other fundraising. I prefer to schedule an online campaign in the summer when people are on vacation and not going to events, but are still reading emails.
Yahoo wants the entire world to glow with kindness and you can be a part of making it happen.
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.
"Tango", as it is known in NPO circles, is the One Minute Manager for non profit leaders - a short, pithy book that succinctly and beautifully provides "leadership wisdom for the ages". It is wisdom we all know, but forget. And it is wisdom we can profit from being reminded gently that we do know and should put to work. Koss's delightful little book reminds us that we know it and shows us in prose and art how to put it to work.
Some examples:
Did you ever try to build a structure starting with small stones at the bottom?
Try it and watch it crumble!
Build a solid foundation with the big rocks – with what matters most!
Your vision, your values, the root of your purpose.
A simple reminder of why we do what we do. And a powerful reminder of the test we need to apply when a board member offers to match funds raised for a project she is enthusiastic about, but which is off target with our purpose.
If you ask 5 or 10 people what your organization's purpose is, will you get the same answer?
This was a frequent exercise for me before every fundraising campaign. It instantly highlighted problems in my message, my organization's message and in its communications. But over the years, I sometimes skipped this step, plunging into the direct mail copy or development committee agenda without thinking and being sorry later when I discovered we were off course.
Be an 'empossibler!
The laws of physics suggest that the bumble bees should not be able to fly – yet they do! In the 1950's, computer pioneer Admiral Grace Hopper would give her young programmers (without telling them) problems that were deemed impossible by the rest of the world. Not knowing any better they would routinely solve them.
This is what social entrepreneurs do - the impossible, routinely. It is this wisdom of the "empossibler" that enables us to be social entrepreneurs.
Koss has gathered together the wisdom of social entrepreneurial empossiblers in a slim paperback with striking page design by Anna Hernandez and whimsical drawings by Kathryn Adams that drive the points home with a smile. It should be in every social entrepreneur's backpack or briefcase to take out and thumb through while waiting for a plane or a bus.
As the author Elle Koss reminds us, the successful entrepreneur is the one who builds a foundation with the bricks other people throw at her.
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If you are American, it's that time when many NGO's collect half their income. But its time to ask for donations regardless of your location. The "how" may differ, but the why is the same regardless of country.
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
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, andTRNin 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.
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:
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 is making changes so it is time to review: what is it, how does it work, how well does it work as a fund raiser for NPOs?
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.
This is a link-dense article on NPO's using phone apps, who is doing it and who to call if you want to do it. Apple's current policy of no "Donate Now" buttons in apps makes the iPhone not quite as useful for app-based fund raising as it could be, but there are still many reasons to explore apps and ways to raise money with them even on the iPhone.
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:
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.
After 15 years in an Achual village in the Peruvian Amazon, anthropologist and former Intel executive Bea Agins has launched a entrepreneurial project to help the village survive modernity. Women are a key part of it - not easy in a culture where men have ruled for centuries. The women have taught her - and all of us - some very valuable lessons.
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 investmentraised 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 offace 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.
NGOs using Twitter as targeted news source to supporters to build relationships, counter mainstream media bias and gaps and let donors walk virtually in the NGO's shoes.
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 of26 NPOs using Twitterthat 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.
Don't forget to listen live or download Dr. O's radio showThe Fairness Doctrineon WDIS-AMevery 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 .
When I learn the Social Edge and Skoll Foundation Sites the Individual and Rootless peoples come into my mind and they never achieved the Social Edge and Skoll Foundation’s benefits. I ask that is there any program for Individual and Rootless Peoples in this world. The Grants and achievements come through Projects Sponsors and not to directly for needy and thirsty peoples. In my opinion all the programs made to improve the funding organization on basis to take more and give less and it is not possible to get benefits without investment in Enterpreneurship Program, Social Edge Program or Skoll Foundation Program. And it is not possible to invest without having a worth Capital or Sum of Money. If I suppose that the above organization or projects funding to the needy Enterpreneurs or needy peoples but this funding not come directly but through a project sponsor and an individual and rootless never have the reference to achieve the funds from them. So, I advise the Social Edge Groups or Skoll Foundation that they should discuss on the matter of Individual and Rootless, there are many things to say but it will be useless and may be hazardous language to the Capitalist mania organization who never like this kind of headache like individual rights and rootless rights. There are uncounted Project and organizations are working for Individual and Rootless Rights but this is only their business to earn money by giving less and taking more to setup their Standards of Life. There are Millions of People stranded in the world of Refugee Camps and they remained in same situation but their situation not changed because they/the projects and organizational personnel are earning through them in the name of Social Edge, Enterpreneurship and Skoll Foundation. But they remained in the Refugee Camps and through their Network of Skoll Foundation Social Edge the Refugees and Stateless are increasing day by day in this world and thus the Network of Social Edge, Skoll Foundation and Social Enterpreneurship will be remained in running position, the people be remained in ruining situation and the standradization of Social Enterpreneurship and Social Edge and Skoll Foundation will remain alive. Skoll Fopundation, Social Edge and Enterpreneurs should be long live.
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Rootless Individuals
When I learn the Social Edge and Skoll Foundation Sites the Individual and Rootless peoples come into my mind and they never achieved the Social Edge and Skoll Foundation’s benefits. I ask that is there any program for Individual and Rootless Peoples in this world. The Grants and achievements come through Projects Sponsors and not to directly for needy and thirsty peoples. In my opinion all the programs made to improve the funding organization on basis to take more and give less and it is not possible to get benefits without investment in Enterpreneurship Program, Social Edge Program or Skoll Foundation Program. And it is not possible to invest without having a worth Capital or Sum of Money. If I suppose that the above organization or projects funding to the needy Enterpreneurs or needy peoples but this funding not come directly but through a project sponsor and an individual and rootless never have the reference to achieve the funds from them. So, I advise the Social Edge Groups or Skoll Foundation that they should discuss on the matter of Individual and Rootless, there are many things to say but it will be useless and may be hazardous language to the Capitalist mania organization who never like this kind of headache like individual rights and rootless rights. There are uncounted Project and organizations are working for Individual and Rootless Rights but this is only their business to earn money by giving less and taking more to setup their Standards of Life. There are Millions of People stranded in the world of Refugee Camps and they remained in same situation but their situation not changed because they/the projects and organizational personnel are earning through them in the name of Social Edge, Enterpreneurship and Skoll Foundation. But they remained in the Refugee Camps and through their Network of Skoll Foundation Social Edge the Refugees and Stateless are increasing day by day in this world and thus the Network of Social Edge, Skoll Foundation and Social Enterpreneurship will be remained in running position, the people be remained in ruining situation and the standradization of Social Enterpreneurship and Social Edge and Skoll Foundation will remain alive. Skoll Fopundation, Social Edge and Enterpreneurs should be long live.