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| Thought Leaders: Philanthropy |
Digital Do-Gooders
Tom Watson
11/01/2007
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A few weeks
ago, my 15-year-old daughter and I started a
bank, and now we make loans to businesses all over the world. The mechanism that
allowed us to do this is Kiva.org, one of the hottest startup organizations in
the fast-growing and bustling public commons that exists between social networks
and social causes.
Kiva, Swahili for "unity," is a registered 501(c)(3) in
California and a microfinance organization that connects small entrepreneurs in
developing countries with a network of connected, online lenders. But Kiva is
also something of a social network: Not only do you "meet" storekeepers and
business owners in Ghana, Mexico and other places, but you can also read the
profiles of your co-lenders. Participation is transparent, and the site
encourages some degree of virtual partnership.
Individuals will begin to "wear" their causes as manifestations
of their personalities. |
Needless to say, Kiva also has a Facebook group, and this is
where it gets interesting. Websites such as Kiva, MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook
hold the promise of connecting social entrepreneurship with mass markets of
consumers—of linking the motivation behind philanthropy with the aspiration to
bring about change—and the results may transform how we come to view charity and
causes, particularly as individuals begin to "wear" their causes as public
manifestations of their personalities.
Facebook, the vast social-networking platform that began among
college students and alumni and has now spread throughout the wired world, is
particularly interesting in terms of philanthropy. Recently, the site opened its
platform to outside software developers, who quickly added a multitude of
services to entertain and connect members.
Replace "application" with "cause" and you get a sense of what
a social network with the power of Facebook and its 24 million users can mean to
larger organizations—and why social ventures need to seriously consider building
social-networking applications, even while they fund and build world-changing
organizations.
Portal Power
Of course, a few groups are already hard at work building these
types of applications. PlayPumps International is one good example. The
organization will install 4,000 water systems (which operate via
children-powered playground equipment) throughout sub-Sahara Africa and bring
clean water to 10 million people by 2010. More than 900 PlayPumps systems have
already been installed in four countries.
While efforts like this are laudable, building support for the
mission is tricky in a media landscape where stories about African poverty are
vast. Enter the social network. PlayPumps has built a following of more than 500
Facebook members. The practical goal of supporting small-scale fundraising
operations is modest. However, the organization’s overall aim is grander in
scope: sustainability through a network of linked supporters. More
organizations, particularly those that rely on real-world members, and startups
trying to gain a foothold will turn to digital social networks to help solve the sustainability question.
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