Last month, I asked for donations to make a Kiva loan to some Central American entrepreneur who needs a helping hand. Many thanks to those who have already given.You are all stars of the rock variety. You are:
If I missed any links for anybody, just let me know.
Then I forgot about it for a couple of weeks. But Ed’s post reminded me about it, so we’re back on.
In case you’re unfamiliar with Kiva, it’s a ridiculously successful charity that enables microlending to worthy small business owners and entrepreneurs in the developing world. Here’s a cool little video (great use of video + Google Earth for storytelling) that explains how it works (again, thanks to Ed):
And your money is the gift that keeps on giving. Once the first loan is paid back, we’ll re-invest the money in another deserving businessman or woman. And we’ll do it again and again. How cool is that?
We raised $165 from the site. Julie and I decided to match that, so we’ve got $330 to loan to a worthy entrepreneur.
Choosing the Recipient
Now we need to choose who should receive the money. As it happens, there’s hardly any entrepreneurs in the system right now. It’s a happy problem, as Kiva describes:
Thanks Kiva Lenders! You’ve funded EVERY loan on the site!! To date, Kiva has enabled lenders to send $57,650,285 to the working poor around the world. Currently, we are experiencing a traffic spike and all previously fundraising loans have been fully funded. Our team is working with Kiva’s Field Partners around the globe to approve new loan applications every day.
$57 million in tiny loans is pretty amazing. But what should we do with the cash? Maybe hang onto it for a week or so to see if any new loans come on stream? Any suggestions?
In the early years of Capulet, as with most businesses, we said ‘yes’ to nearly everything (we did refuse the mail order bride project). For the past couple of years, we’ve had the luxury of being selective about who we take on. These days we have to decline most enquiries because we’re too busy.
We obviously try to choose winners and avoid those companies that give us a queasy feeling in our stomach. But it’s nice every once in a while to take on a client who’s social goals really align with my own. DreamBank happens to be one of those.
On a more ascetic level, I have so much stuff already. So does everybody else in my family (with the exception, perhaps, of my more ascetic brother, and he doesn’t want anything). I have more difficulty creating a wishlist for myself than I do choosing gifts for other people (with the exception, perhaps, of the aforementioned Spartan brother). This isn’t humility on my part, it’s just a lack of wanting things. Particularly things that I don’t choose for myself. I suppose I should just ask everyone to give me vouchers for travelling. Hmm…that’s not a bad idea.
DreamBank is a Vancouver start-up with a mission that addresses this issue. Here’s the elevator pitch:
DreamBank.org is about helping dreams come true and doing it in a way that helps the planet and important social causes. Instead of giving gifts that, although appreciated may not really be wanted, with DreamBank you contribute to someone’s dream. As well as helping fulfill a dream, your contribution helps spare the planet some of the nasty side effects of manufacturing and packaging unused gifts. Plus your gift automatically generates funds that are given to important social causes.
It’s essentially collaborative giving with a charity angle. Or, if you prefer, a gift registry for everything. Here are a few sample dreams:
Last year, while in Malta, I had the not-very-original idea to launch a series of RSS aggregation sites in the style of PopURLs.com. There’d be one for food blogs (MenuBender.com), one for marketing blogs (Promophobe.com), one for movie blogs (BestBoyBlues.com) and so forth. The fun part, really, was choosing the domains.
You can actually see a bit of a prototype at BestBoyBlues.com. I hadn’t actually put the blogs in yet, and the design was pretty basic, but you get the idea. I was going to use a Digg-esque voting mechanism to let the communities choose the sites. I planned to run advertising, and give half the profits to charity.
I got a little ways along with the project, but then got busy with work, writing a book, swimming in the Med, and so forth. I was reluctant to do it in part because I’m inherently lazy, and knew if would be a lot of manual work and then a ton of promotional effort. It’s been nagging at me ever since.
Happily, I can let it go, because Guy Kawasaki would have eaten my breakfast, lunch and dinner with the recently launched Alltop. It’s a ‘digital magazine rack’ of blogs and news sites, organized into specific categories. I like the implementation a lot–it’s minimalist, fast and the website choices seem to be pretty rational. I think it’s a bit lame to have a ‘Women’ category in among ‘Dads’, ‘Celebrities’ and ‘Twitterati’, but I suppose it’s reflective of the web’s social structure.
This will also be a boon to marketers trying to find online influencers in a particular category. It’s still a tricky prospect, and a site like this will definitely help.
