Posts Tagged “charity”

Last week, we took Book Club to a new level with a guest appearance by the author – Belmont’s own Toby Lester – of our chosen book, The Fourth Part of the World.  I had worried that such an august presence would impede the club’s traditional focus on wine, gossip and whingeing about our jobs, but we had plenty of time for all four parts.

Lester’s book is a vivd and polymathematical ramble across a few centuries of history leading up to the European “age of discovery” largely seen through the prism of mapmakers, especially a certain Waldseemüller, who in 1507 first printed “America” on a map of the hemisphere from which I am now writing.  We got a fresh look at some familiar figures like Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus and some wonderfully-told new (to most of us) stories.  Have you heard of Prester John?

The Fourth Part of the World reminds us that Columbus was nowhere near the first to conceive of the world as round, and it tells the story of many approximations close and not so close of the actual size of the globe, and the gradual discovery by Europeans of the true arrangement of the continents and their contents.  Looking at the beautiful plates I was reminded that while today’s schoolchildren are pretty clear on the roundness of the earth, they might not be as clear on the arrangement or content of the lands upon it.

Perhaps you remember last Fall’s grumbling about non-educational globes for sale at Target?  Well, a quick scan of DonorsChoose shows over 100 classrooms in the US in need of globes and maps.  So, as if you haven’t been harangued enough on this blog to do some good in the world, I urge you to consider giving some of your holiday charity budget to one of these worthy projects – our children need the best understanding of the shape of the world and its different people that they can get.

Podcamp Boston #4 is coming this weekend.  It’s an “unconference” which means that anybody can give a session.  If you need proof, look no further than the fact that they’re letting me present.  I’m doing a discussion session with the estimable Gradon Tripp called, “Are you a Gates or Buffett?“on Saturday at 4pm in the ballroom.

The somewhat cryptic title used to have a clarifying subtitle but the podcamperati truncated it, so let me explain a little.  Gradon and I were pondering why so many people seem to want to start their own nonprofit organizations for causes that already have lots of existing NPOs.  (There are over 1.7 million NPOs in the USA)  There seems to be a real divide between people wanting to build their own social change solution and those who want to channel their energies (or monies, or both) into supporting existing social change solutions.  Sort of a build vs buy discussion like we get in tech companies all the time.

The framing device of Gates and Buffett refers to the two billionaires’ approaches to charitable foundations.  Gates used his massive wealth to create a new one, and Buffett decided to simply add his massive wealth to Gates‘ rather than establish another whole new foundation.  Both commendable acts, to be sure, but which model prevails for regular folks trying to figure out how to use their own meager resources for good?

In our podcamp session, we’ll kick that ball around, focusing on how social media can make those meager resources go a long way and how social technologies can mitigate the advantage previously held by incumbent organizations.  In keeping with the podcamp ethos, we’re not going to script or structure things too much, but I expect that there will be talk of Twestival, Uncharitable, Facebook Causes, Lance Armstrong, the Staley Foundation, and whatever else the crowd brings.  I hope you’ll join us.

Last Wednesday I had a double dose of interesting thinking about giving.  First, I talked at a Harvard Extension social media class about Firstgiving and Twestival, then I popped in at the Philosophy Cafe to hear some deeper discussion of the limits of altrusim.  And then it snowed.

Act I: giving for free

At the kind invitation of Professor, author, educator and consultant Mary Lou Roberts, I led discussion in her Harvard Extension class, Social Media Marketing.  First, I talked about my employer, Firstgiving, and how they do business serving nonprofit organizations and people who support them.  I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about Firstgiving, so it should be enough for now to say it’s a social enterprise and uses social connections to do business and to do good, more than using what’s commonly called “social media” these days.

The second part of the class was a case-style discussion of Twestival.  There are far better recaps of Twestival (notably Beth Kanter’s) so I’ll simplify again.  Twestival was a global, all-volunteer fundraising event that raised a huge amount of money in many creative ways, but fell short of its perhaps over-ambitious $1M goal.   There were pledge donations via twitter, charity auctions, direct donations to Charity:Water, benefit music sales, corporate sponsors, and parties with door fees.

Some of my questions to the class, robustly discussed but not definitively answered, were these:

• What was the true cost of this all-volunteer effort?  Was it really zero?  Could more have been raised by spending?
• What’s the level of commitment that volunteer efforts and small donations generate?  Is that enough?
• Of the $250k raised (at the time of discussion), how much came from “social media” like twitter pledges via Tipjoy, and how much from “old school media” like party cover charges and corporate sponsorship?
• Was the event damaged or strengthened by the lack of full-time professional organization?
• Did Twestival over-reach or under-achieve with the $1M goal?

One of my favorite comments towards the end of the class was one student who astutely pointed out that a charitably cause should optimize fundraising by taking advantage of all channels possible, even those with low ROI, as long as it’s all positive.  Indeed, why not do one more little thing, even if it’s little, if it brings a bit more funding for the cause?

Act II: freely giving

On the way home from class, I stopped by Harvard Bookstore where coach, workshop leader and author Hillary Rettig (and my former colleague and friend) was speaking as part of something called Philosophy Cafe.  I hadn’t paid too much attention to the event because I wasn’t sure I could make it after class, but I was quickly drawn in and stayed longer than I had planned.

The topic of discussion was “The Limits of Altruism: Why Do You Give What You Give–and Should You Be Giving More?” and Hillary was the featured guest presenter, discussing the story of her donation of a kidney to someone who was at the time a stranger.  To quote from the highbrow website description:

There are lots of explanations for altruism, or selfless giving, ranging from the mystical (karma), to the sociological (community standards), to the sociobiological (we “give” in ways that maximize our genes’ propagation). Whatever the mechanism, it’s clear that some people give a lot, while others not so much. Is there a proper level of giving, and how do we, as members of a wealthy society, justify not giving more to those in dire need, for instance in Nepal or Malawi–or even here in the U.S.? And what happens when a monetary reward or other incentive enters the picture?

I can’t do the intense and sophisticated discussion much justice, but I’ll summarize some interesting ideas that I heard during the part of the discussion centered on organ donation.

• The mortality rate for a healthy kidney donor is about 2.5 per 10,000, or .025%, one fortieth of one percent.  The mortality rate for someone in need of a kidney is pretty much 100%.  Does this mean non-donors are implicitly valuing their lives at 4,000 times those of others?
• In European countries where organ donation after death by road accident is presumed unless the person has opted OUT (unlike the US version where you must opt IN for post-mortem donation), there is generally a sufficient supply of organs for those in need of them, and little need for voluntary living donors.
• While there was broad support in the room for regulatory solutions like changing the decision for post-mortem donation to opt-OUT, there was considerably more controversy around market-based solutions such as allowing people to buy and sell organs.  Some said that a market for organs would disadvantage the poor while others saw monetizing an organ as a potentially valuable ladder up from poverty.

After that, the discussion moved away from organs to a more general examination of how much one should give.  I had to head home so I missed that discussion, but both parts of the evening made for real food for thought on giving.

The philosophers at the cafe generally agreed that there was no obligation to impoverish or unduly endanger oneself in the name of altruism, but that there’s plenty of room in the average American life to give more.  I wonder if Twestival and other volunteer efforts are impoverishing themselves needlessly by foreswearing any paid services.  As the wise student said, why not do a little more?

I started off writing another “grumpy philanthropist” bit, but decided to mellow out a little for once.  I’d been getting cheesed off at high-fuss low-impact online (and offline) awareness campaigns that didn’t really do enough for the causes.  Stuff like Facebook causes and those annoying ribbons and bracelets and pink everything that might or might not help with breast cancer research.

But it turns out some of this stuff is having non-trivial impact.  I was disappointed in Social Media for Social Change because I didn’t think it was really using social media and wasn’t particularly open or transparent, but you know what, they raised $20k.  I donated the price of two tickets and skipped the event.  Maybe they could have raised more or included more or operated more efficiently, but $20k is going to make a difference to Jane Doe.  And they’re starting to plan something else maybe even bigger.

On the other side,  there’s something called Pink for October that seeks to raise awareness and funds to fight breast cancer in part by encouraging people to turn their blogs pink for the month of October. Hundreds of blogs have gone pink (it doesn’t really look so good on limeduck)

but last I checked, there were only a handful of donations, and today the donate link isn’t even working.  Well, there are lots of other ways to donate to support breast cancer research and treatment, like these good folks.  What if instead of spending that time fiddling with the CSS to turn their blogs pink, hundreds of bloggers just gave some money and wrote a post that said, “I just gave some money and you should too.” ?

That’s more or less what’s happening over at Blog Action Day, unfortunately acronym’d BAD.  As they describe it, “Today thousands of bloggers will unite to discuss a single issue – poverty. We aim to raise awareness, initiate action and to shake the web!”  There’s lots of awareness building stuff, but reasonable attention is being made to raising money.  They have a Kiva lending team with $1,500 loaned, and have raised $1,700 for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.  Still not a lot per blogger, but it’s a start.

As for the dialog on poverty, I’m a dismal scientist with a liberal bent.  I don’t believe in voodoo economics but I do believe in microenterprise.  More learned folks than I can contribute more to the discussion.  I will contribute to the awarness and also some money.  I’ve added the banner, pinked the blog (every so briefly), and even made a couple of donations.  I hope you can find something woth doing that will help.  There’s no shortage of choices, that much is certain.  Just choose.

No, I don’t mean the trouble all those college kids are getting into, I mean Charity Muggers, or “chuggers” as the limeys call them.  I was at lunch with @tangyslice in Davis square today and observed him live-blogging the local charity panhandlers.  Being who I am, I couldn’t help but geolocate Tangy’s observed data.

Perhaps you can use this to plot a nag-free course through the square.  Good luck, and watch where you step.  If you really want to make a difference, perhaps you’ll make a donation to Jane Doe Inc., the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, which is the featured charity of Social Media for Social Change.