How Online Fundraising Got Faster

January 7th, 2009, 2 Comments »

David Armano did a lovely thing yesterday, asking people to help out a family in need. It was, as they say, an overnight success, and he’s raised nearly $15,000. There are lots of stories to tell about this worthy effort–the power of crowd-sourcing and influence, the importance of personalizing a charity appeal and so forth.

A conversation I was having with Sean Moffitt on Twitter, however, highlighted another angle. Sean remarked that David had said that the flurry of fundraising wasn’t repeatable. I’m not sure exactly what he meant by that, but I was reminded of Flowers for Al and Don, a project I was involved with about five (Good Lord, was it been that long ago?) years ago. We raised a similar amount of money through an ad hoc (even, one might say, accidental) online campaign.

But here’s the difference: David did in two days what it took us two weeks to do.

So, I see David’s project as a story of the real-time web, and the power of microblogging services like Twitter. We’re able to compress activity into a shorter time frame, and focus attention in a way that was hard to imagine in 2004.

One other interesting observation: the payment system is pretty much exactly the same. We used PayPal for Flowers for Al and Don, and the service that David’s using, ChipIn, is just a kind of widgety layer on top of PayPal. As far as I can tell (and I’m certainly no expert), we’ve really gotten nowhere with micropayments or, I don’t know, web-based accounts which might further streamline this kind of project.

David’s project reminded me that I need to wrap up my little Kiva loan project. More on that next week.

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Let’s Loan Some Money to a Panamanian Entrepeneur

December 18th, 2008, 6 Comments »

It’s the holiday season, and I’m down near the equator. I thought it’d be a great idea to try to raise some money to make a Kiva loan to somebody in the region.

I’m using ChipIn to collect the money, and then I’ll choose an entrepreneur on Kiva to donate it to (suggestions will be welcome). I’ll follow up in the new year with details of where the money went.

If you’ve enjoyed my blog this year, here’s a good way of saying thanks. Skip your mochaccino and pumpkin scone this morning and donate five bucks to the cause. It’ll go to good use, and as it’s a loan that can be used over and over again once it’s paid back, it’s money that will, as the kids say, keep on giving:

If you’re unfamiliar with Kiva, they’re an extraordinary success story in micro-lending to the developing world. Instead of donating money to a charity for food or development aid, you loan money to an entrepreneur who pays it back over a specified period. It’s that old teach-a-man-to-fish thing, writ large. They’ve loaned $1.2 million dollars in the last seven days. Seven days!

I’d like to post, as the kids once said, shout-outs to those who made donations. Feel free to leave a comment here, or in the payment process, or drop me an email. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: I should have mentioned that once the first loan is paid back (the default rate at Kiva is 2.8%, so the odds are good), I’ll loan the money out again. And again and again.

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