Vote in Google's Project 10 to the 100

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: Competitions and Fellowships

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!