Welcome BRAC!

"I am wondering whether you would consider adding BRAC projects to GlobalGiving?"

Would we?! We would love to. That is what I told my friend Susan Davis on the phone a couple of months ago. She was calling to say that she was helping BRAC launch an enhanced US presence.I get a lot of calls like this, but few that make me so happy. In my view, BRAC is one of the absolute best community-based NGOs operating in the world today. Founded in Bangladesh 1972, BRAC has helped millions of people better their lives through training, education, health programs, and job creation. They have recently expanded their programs to Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Tanzania, Uganda and Southern Sudan.

I like BRAC's programs and impact, but I also like its high "impact-to-ego ratio." The organization's DNA comes from its founder, Fazle Abed. His exceptional competence is matched only by his modesty and quiet sense of humor. No grandstanding or flashy speeches with Fazle Abed - just quiet action, on a large scale, with a smile.

BRAC has two projects in Sudan listed on GlobalGiving. Check out this one: you can fund a child's entire education for a year for only $100. And what's best is that you know BRAC will be there to oversee the education and other services the child needs to grow up to be healthy, happy, and prosperous.

[GlobalGiving]

Giving Challenge Results are In...

Check out the results of the America's Giving Challenge, backed by the Case Foundation, promoted by Parade Magazine, and implemented by GlobalGiving and Network for Good.

Earlier I blogged about how the Challenge was promoting the democratization of philanthropy. There were many great stories emerging from the Challenge that demonstrated this. Since I love pulling for the underdog, I want to share the following story about the fundraiser who won second place in the global competition:

Erin Kelly, a junior at University of Mary Washington in Virginia,
wrote to GlobalGiving on January 19th asking if she could participate in the Challenge. Erin is a member of Students Helping Honduras, founded by another UMW student after a trip organized by a campus association. Erin wanted to fundraise for a project providing fuel efficient cook stoves, addressing indoor air pollution – the fourth most lethal killer in the developing world (after malnutrition, unsafe sex and lack of safe water and sanitation).

When Erin contacted GlobalGiving, there were less than two weeks to go in the contest. Worse, the leading fundraiser had already mobilized almost 1,000 donors. GlobalGiving team member Manmeet Mehta told her that the odds of winning were slim, but that she was welcome to try if she was willing to pull out all stops.
Erin’s fundraiser was set-up and listed on the site on Jan 22nd, a mere nine days before the competition ended. She and her colleagues responded with amazing enthusiasm, a clear strategy and a flurry of activity. They mobilized their networks and encouraged those networks to reach out to other friends and family.

Erin and her friends rapidly raised hundreds of donations. They constantly refreshed the “Leaderboard” on the GlobalGiving site to check their status. Amazingly, they were soon among the top ten fundraisers. But the deadline was fast approaching, and they needed to be in the top four to win a $50,000 prize. The other fundraisers were collecting donors at an ever-faster clip as the deadline grew near. So Erin and her friends poured it on: they held phone-a-thons for four days straight, emailed all their contacts again, and used instant messenging and Facebook to mobilize students at other campuses including Virginia Tech, William&Mary, and Christopher Newport.

When the final bell rang on January 31 at 3 pm EST, Erin Kelly and her friends were in second place, having amassed more than 1600 donors. They were exhausted but elated: between the donations they raised from friends and the Case Foundation prize, they would be able to provide more than $70,000 in funding to the cook stove project. These funds will improve the health and well being of hundreds of families, especially pregnant women and children. In addition, Erin’s group is now listed with GlobalGiving and can fundraise from around the world on a year-round basis.

[GlobalGiving]

We don't have it in stock, but they do.

In the financial markets, there are rules that if a particular exchange is unable to execute an order, they must route that order to a competing exchange immediately.

This is from a nice blog post by Sean Stannard-Stockton. He points out that in the nascent philanthropic financial markets, there is no obligation to re-route donors to another philanthropic exchange under similar circumstances.

At GlobalGiving, we have informal agreements with a number of other exchanges, and we do refer donors to partners when it makes sense. This helps us meet our pledge to donors that they will be satisfied with their experience at GlobalGiving. It also helps our partners grow, and it generates goodwill for all involved, which pays off over the long term.

Together with a loose coalition of other philanthropic exchanges from around the world, we have been exploring whether it makes sense to develop a formal inter-operability framework. This framework might include common standards and the ability to automatically fulfill donations referred by other exchanges.

Sean is right: making the non-profit social capital market more effective means that this type of collaboration needs to be accelerated.

[GlobalGiving]

Underdog Giants beat Patriots

In one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, New York shattered New England's unbeaten season 17-14 Sunday night as Manning hit Plaxico Burress on a 13-yard fade with 35 seconds left.

I have to admit I was pulling for the underdog. But still, who would have ever thought?

[GlobalGiving]

Underdogs winning America's Challenge

Here is a nice article from Stephanie Strom in today's NY Times about the dynamics behind the America's Giving Challenge. Strom notes that "Fledgling charities...are among the leading contenders for prizes in an experimental online fund-raising contest."

The Challenge is backed by Case Foundation and Parade Magazine, and is being run by GlobalGiving, Network For Good, and Facebook. The Challenge, which ends at 3 pm today, is awarding prizes to those causes that can mobilize the largest number of online donors.

Strom points out that smaller (often newer) organizations are often outmaneuvering the larger, more established organizations, with much better results. For example, Amnesty International had raised only $540 as of Wednesday, while a group of former Peace Corps Volunteers called Friends of Burkina Faso had raised over $21,000 from over 1,300 donors. Atlas Service Corps, another new group, is at the same level, and a few other small groups have mobilized even more donors and money. Even a UNC student has raised over $6,000 from 380 donors for scholarships for Latino students.

The point is not that the smaller groups are necessarily better than the larger, more established groups. The point is that this online giving Challenge is leveling the playing field for all concerned, including the underdogs. The underdogs include international groups, which have typically received only a small portion of philanthropy. They are doing exceptionally well in the Challenge relative to their traditional share of the pie.

Well functioning online giving marketplaces create a more level playing field by reducing the marginal cost of marketing well below the costs of direct mail and other traditional methods, and by increasing transparency about where the money is going and the impact it makes.

This is an important development in the non-profit sector, which has been characterized by sluggish innovation in the past. As I noted in an earlier post:

The non-profit sector faces a number of challenges that both inhibit growth and impede allocation of resources to their best use. Consider the following. Of the Fortune 500 companies that started among the top ten in 1990, only three remained in the top ten by the end of the decade. Open competition meant that successful newcomers displaced the rest.

But in the non-profit sector, the picture was reversed. Seven out of the top ten non-profits not only stayed in the top ten but increased their share of the market during the decade. So much for competition! And according to Jed Emerson and Paul Carrtar, only 6% of non-profits accounted for four fifths of all revenues in the sector.

[GlobalGiving]

GlobalGoodness...

Check our our new GlobalGiving Team Blog called "GlobalGoodness."

It features posts from GlobalGiving team members on many topics. Most recently, Saima wrote about the situation in Pakistan and Kenya and Kevin proposed a Donor Bill of Rights.

Soon we will begin featuring guest posts by people whose insights and views we think you will like.

So check it out, and subscribe below to get notified when new posts are made.

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You should have two long-term objectives in college

A couple of days ago I was reflecting on how aimlessly I wandered through high school, college, and even grad school. I had no plan, and no idea how to think about my coursework (or even about my life, to be honest). I did well grade-wise because my older brother was very smart and I wanted to emulate him.

What I wish I had had, in retrospect, was someone to help me put it all in context, and in particular to help me balance the competing demands of what is fulfilling and what is needed to make a living.

Today I ran across a blog post by Paul Gowder that I wish I had read in 1979. Its relevance goes well beyond what to do in college. Here is an excerpt, but there is much more, and it is funny as well as serious. (He promises that a future post will be entitled "So you went to law school; how to get out of this mess.")

You should have two long-term objectives in college. The first is to learn what you love and try to make a life where you can be personally fulfilled and hopefully contribute something to the rest of the world, be it in art, in politics and community service, in knowledge, or (even) in wealth. The second is to handle the economic realities of the world and maximize your human capital to enable you to meet your material needs.

PS: I got this link from the same older brother....

[GlobalGiving]

Ready...Go!

Many people have asked me about my last post. So let me allow Robert to elaborate here via video, because it is a *very* good deal.



If you have a favorite project on GlobalGiving, now is the time to act. With relatively modest effort, you can dramatically increase the chance the project may be awarded an additional $50,000.

This is the democratization of philanthropy at work. The Case Foundation and Parade Magazine are putting up $50,000 for each of the four projects on GlobalGiving that attract the most donors through a single fundraiser.

That's right - the highest number of donors, not the largest amount of donations. Minimum donation size is $10.

Go here to get started.

And even if your project does not win $50,000, it will still be eligible for one of fifty $1,000 runners-up prizes. Seriously, this is a great deal - don't pass it up.

[GlobalGiving]

Online Giving Challenge with $500,000 in prizes

The old thinking goes that to change the world, you have to give millions. But young tech-savvy philanthropists are trying to prove otherwise.

Leveraging new technologies and the growth of social networking Web sites, several online-giving pioneers have been trying to expand the pool of potential donors by democratizing philanthropy and making it more transparent.

"This is pretty revolutionary, that technology allows us to do this," Whittle said. "It used to be that if you wanted to give and have an impact, people thought you had to be Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey. But because of the way the technology works, you can be an 'ordinary Oprah.' If you've got $10 or $100 or $1,000, you can come and find a school in Africa to support, and you can get updates from the field to get responses to your support.

This is from a very nice article by Philip Rucker in today's Washington Post talking about how the Case Foundation is working with GlobalGiving, Network For Good, and Parade Magazine to encourage online giving. Parade Magazine has 70 million readers!

The Case Foundation is providing $500,000 to the causes that attract the most donors - not necessarily the ones that raise the most money. This makes this a real exercise in the democratization of philanthropy.

You can participate in the $500,000 challenge here. It goes live on the web today at 3 pm EST.


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Smart + savvy = successful

Tyler Cowan is a rare combination of a good academic and a savvy self marketer. His blog is one of the most widely read in the world. One reason for this is that the content is good. But what separates Cowan from many others is that he reassures his readers early and often that he is an authority by prominently citing what others say about him.

Today, he quotes Arnold Kling's most recent compilation of the best economics books of 2007:

Two books that show economic intellect to advantage are Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen and One Economics, Many Recipes, by Dani Rodrik. Cowen's book is a set of observations on everyday life, while Rodrik's book looks at the high-level issue of which economic institutions to recommend for underdeveloped countries. I made the case for Cowen's book here and the case for Rodrik's book here.

Note that in this quote, he is careful not to single himself out to make himself seem to self-aggrandizing. Instead, he adds Dani Rodrik into the mix. This serves the additional function of signalling to the reader that he is in the same league with Dani Rodrik, someone who (at least until recently) was much more widely known and respected.

[GlobalGiving]