Competitions and Fellowships
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Unreasonable Institute Launches $150,000 "Village Fund"
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2009 Purpose Prize Honors "Encore Career" Innovators
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Win $50,000 for Your Nonprofit with America's Giving Challenge
Kellogg Foundation Pumps $75K More Into America's Giving Challenge
Published November 02, 2009 @ 04:58PM PT
At the end of last week, the Case Foundation announced that the W.K. Kellogg Foundation had just anted up an additional $75,000 to support the second annual America's Giving Challenge. The new money is really awesome, but the real story is China kicking the crap out of everyone else.
The new money will be used to fund five additional awards, including another $25,000 prize and four more $10,000 prizes. Additionally, it will fund additional $1,500 daily prizes between now and the end of the challenge.
The challenge has had a big response so far this year, with almost 70,000 people donating $1.3 million to about 7,500 different nonprofits. This a great example of a leveraged model, where just under $250,000 in ultimate award money has produced almost five times that in user-generated donations.
Vote For Philanthropy Game Changers on Huffington Post Today!
Published October 30, 2009 @ 05:47PM PT
The media network Huffington Post is identifying the folks in a variety of fields who are changing the shape of their industries. In ten different areas, they've nominated 10 "game changers," and it's up to the masses to decide who is really changing things.
They've just opened the voting on the Philanthropy game changer and there are some familiar faces:
- Matt Flannery: founder of microlending portal Kiva
- Perla Ni: founder of Great Nonprofits, a rating and review site for people to share their feedback about civil society organizations
- Ben Rigby, Jacob Colker, Sundeep Ahuja: founders of The Extraordinaries, the new platform for translating spare time into social action
- Lucy Bernholz: Philanthropy blogger and expert who is constantly pushing the field
Vote in Google's Project 10 to the 100
Published October 07, 2009 @ 03:18PM PT
To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Google announced last year that they would be investing $10 million in special projects designed to figure out how to make the world a better place. A year on, the finalists have been selected and Google is asking you to go to project10tothe100.com and vote for the winners.
The basic idea is that last fall, average people could propose ideas they thought were particularly important. Google then looked at the trends and grouped ideas together into sixteen finalists categories, ranging from create more efficient landmine removal programs to drive innovation in public transportation.
Now, the same 150,000 people that submitted ideas and more are now being asked to vote for the category they think is most important. When a single category has risen to the top, Google will begin the process of identifying organizations best suited to carrying out the mission, and will fund them. It's an interesting twist on the contest model that ensures probably both quality of projects and (and this may not be a compelling thing to everyone) but control by Google.
Of the project areas, there is one about promoting social entrepreneurship. This would be a good one to vote for, as I do think that the more regular funding and support is - particularly for young social entrepreneurs - the more the field will grow.
For one of the first times in a context like this, there are some projects that I think actually shouldn't get your vote. This is not because they are bad, but because I question whether nonprofit dollars are best spend here. As it relates to the fact that it is Google doing the funding, it seems that categories such as "collect and organize the world's urban data" are things that are potentially commercially in line with Google's mission, and actually might not be addressed by donor dolors. "Build better banking tools for everyone" is the type of thing where extremely significant financial incentives exist for companies like Mint to make that happen. If anything, accessible banking tools for the bottom billion would be perhaps a better use of nonprofit dollars. "Encourage positive media depiction of scientists and engineers" is the type of thing that, while I understand the logic behind it, just sort of seems silly to invest in like this. The guardians of cool - whoever they may be - make decisions about how cool or uncool people are depicted, and I don't think a fraction of $10 million is going to make a difference.
Now all that said, I think that there are some very compelling choices here as well. Investing in landmind removal programs (particularly scaling up promising solutions) seems like an area where even the relatively low $10 million at hand could make a big difference, for example.
But at the end of the day, the point is that it's your decision. Get over to Project10tothe100.com and vote!
What's Cooking in the Kitchen of Good? Madecasse Wins!
Published October 02, 2009 @ 09:09AM PT
Dude.
I'm not usually impressed by pitch competitions, but the Kitchen has done a totally awesome job of finding a diverse group of great projects.
Held at the Tribeca Grand Hotel and put on by All Day Buffet as part of The Feast conference, the Kitchen gave nine great entrepreneurs the chance to leave it all on the field and give us their best pitch. At the end of the day, the winner was Madecasse, a fully integrated chocolate for good from Madagascar.
But while one group one, they were all compelling. I particularly liked:
Parent Earth: Parent Earth is trying to create a place for parents and children to learn together about how to do food well. This is an incredibly important issue in a huge space. If they can provide real-value for the "mommy-blogger" market, they could totally kick it.
International Transparency Solutions: My friend Marco did a great job bringing home the barrier that corruption is to investment in the developing world.
VotaVox: VotaVox is trying to get real life, real time information about what people in different communities think about pressing issues, making money by selling highly customized and sliceable demographic data.
See the full list here.
(Photo: Madecasse)
Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious.
Published October 02, 2009 @ 08:44AM PT
Society is not always quick to understand game-changing innovation. In fact, according to MIT professor Lant Pritchett, there is a very particular pattern of acceptance and understanding we go through that can be summarized as "Crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Obvious."
This is what I spoke about this morning at the beginning of The Feast's Kitchen event. The Kitchen gives nine very cool startups the chance to pitch in front of interested observers and excellent judges representing groups like Investor's Circle and Union Square Ventures. The winners will get free brand consulting from a top agency and a number of other supports.
I had the chance to kick off the event, and wanted to light a fire. I think that Pritchett's idea of crazy, crazy, crazy, obvious is dead on, and that we're living at a time that's often right on the cusp of that third crazy and obvious.
I told the story of three innovations that were once crazy but have become obvious. I told the story of Thomas Clarkson and his band of former slaves, Quakers, women, press-ganged naval officers, and other misfits who launched the British Abolitionist movement and within the span of one generation had transformed Britain from the greatest slave owning nation in the world to the first to ban the trade entirely.
I told the story of Muhammad Yunus, who at a time when no banks would make loans to poor people began the global microfinance movement with a $27 loan to women, who he recognized would apply social pressure within their communities to get the loans repaid. Particularly since Yunus won the Nobel Prize in 2006 and as Kiva approaches $100 million in loans, the value and importance of microfinance is increasingly obvious.
I told the story finally of Twitter. While for many, Twitter is still in the "crazy" category, the ability to distribute messages rapidly across our networks is, I'm confident, here to stay. We've seen in Iran and during earthquakes in China just how powerful and disruptive this medium can be.
So what is it that's increasingly obvious, particularly for people in our space? It's obvious that something has gotta give. The earth and society are heaving under the weight of climate change, health care costs, and dozens of other problems.
It's obvious that waiting for the rest of "them" to solve our problems is a bankrupt strategy. Do we really think that the government - no matter how well intentioned - is going to be able to pass health care reform that solves all the problems that system faces?
It's increasingly obvious that the world is not going to change through a sequence of vertical interventions, but instead will be a network of related and complementary projects addressing related issues.
Finally, it's obvious that the power is shifting. Company's brands are exposed in entirely new ways, and consumers have more influence than ever. People can organize without organizations and are doing so to create new movements and new organizations for change.
Where I think it leaves us is with an obligation to push even harder. At the cusp of that last gasp of crazy, the forces that wish to uphold the status quo kick and fight even harder. The former gatekeepers will not leave without a fight.
We need to be even more bold, because at the end of the day, I don't want 20% better nonprofits with a fundraising strategy better optimized for online giving. I want disruptive change that rights wrongs and realigns incentives for a more sustainable, just future.
(Photo: Pixel Addict)
Entrepreneurs By Another Name: MacArthur Announces New "Geniuses"
Published September 22, 2009 @ 08:26AM PT
Each year, the MacArthur Foundation selects a handful of brilliant innovators as MacArthur Fellows. The award - more commonly known as the "Genius" grant - comes with a totally unrestricted $500,000, and perhaps even more importantly one of the single most powerful brands and platforms that a person can have. The foundation has just announced it's new crop, and as you might expect, the list if chock full of world changers.
I was particularly excited to see Rebecca Onie, founder of Project HEALTH honored. Project HEALTH is a young, health focused organization of the type I was discussing in last weekend's article "A New Approach to Health (Systems) Education." Their Family Help Desk program focuses on the so-called social determinants of health, giving physicians the ability to "prescribe" things like job training, food, housing, and more. Undergraduate volunteers who man the Help Desks then work with clients to help fill those prescriptions.
I think it's a great program, but I think it's also a tremendous validation of the notion that young, new ideas can change the world. When you're an undergraduate looking out to what you can do to make a difference, the only real asset you have is your fresh eyes, your creativity, and your ability to get your friends to help you out. To have the MacArthur Foundation recognize that that spark can create brilliant programs is awesome in the literal sense of the word.
There are many other new Fellows that also have a stake in solving the world's pressing social problems. MIT Economist Esther Duflo is trying to analyze cycles of poverty to better understand how to help people climb out. Filmmaker James Longley is trying to expose the human side of the Middle East conflict through intimate portraits of the people involved. Investigative Reporter Jerry Mitchell is unconvering new facts from unsolved and unprosecuted Civil Rights era violence. Physicians Jill Seaman is adapting modern medical techniques to address infectious diseases in South Sudan. The list goes on and on.
Few of these people call themselves "social entrepreneurs." But what they share is a capacity to think differently and look for creative solutions, and perhaps most important of all, an unwillingness to accept the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. Read all their profiles on MacArthur's site.
(Photo: Myklroventine)
Demos and Dreams at TechCrunch50 Day 2
Published September 15, 2009 @ 10:56AM PT
The TechCrunch50 conference is happening just down the street in San Francisco, and although I can't be there, I'm following the streaming video and keeping track of the new companies that have the potential for direct and indirect social impact. As business increasingly moves online, web tools are increasingly providing an apparatus for good, as these companies demonstrate.
Since the early sessions when I first posted about TC50, a number of additional companies of potential social significance have pitched.
Healthywage enables employers to give employees cash incentives for better health. They're running a challenge that will enable some participants who meet a set of pre-determined weight loss goals to win $1000, paid for by advertising and referral fees. I'm not totally convinced about the model, but the cash incentive could be a context that catalyzes someone who's been "meaning to get healthy" take the plunge. With skyrocketing rates of obesity that cost individuals and society both in terms of health and economics, creative solutions are worth trying.
Redbeacon and Crowdflower both offer busy people a potentially easier way to get things done. Redbeacon connects local service providers (think plumbers) with people who need their services in a fast, reliable, and automated way. While it's not directly social, this could improve the general efficiency of local economies. Crowdflower is a Mechanical Turk-like service that crowdsources small tasks more easily accomplished by humans. Depending on how they run their service, it can not only be a more efficient way for businesses to accomplish goals, but could provide decent supplementary income for participants.
Maybe the company I'm most excited about is CitySourced. CitySourced gives citizens and governments a platform to collaborate around identifying and solving basic persistent municipal issues like potholes and grafitti. This sort of basic level of civic engagement is not only immediately useful, but can potentially deepen and broaden the way citizens view their relationships with government.
I'll post one more update later with more information about companies that present this afternoon and the winners of the competition.
(photo: TechCrunch50-2009)
