Chapter Eight: We're This Close

(I dedicate this blog entry to Michael, Paul, Janneke, Saskia, Theo and especially to Gonnie, who gave me the permission I always had all along. I thank the WorldReader.org Virtual Flash Mob participants for donating their energy, time, and money to our grand failed experiment).

I've been on some sort of mental hiatus regarding this story. I haven't been able to just sit down and write this blog entry. I feel vulnerable because once you put it out there, there is no going back. My ambition is nothing smaller than to totally change the world. My contribution will be no bigger than anyone else's, which is the core of the vision.

I've also waited to write this final chapter because it felt instinctively correct to do so. Yesterday, I saw a banner ad for the WWF where you can SMS-donate $1 and a list of sponsors would match the donation. It was easy. It was fast. It could be even better. And it gave me the indication it's time to return to this blog.

This is the final chapter that I can write by myself. The rest, I hope and I dream, we will write together.

There are a lot of charitable organizations that are using the web and social media to bring people together based on their common compassions. So why haven't these sites changed the world in a hugely significant way? I believe it is for the following reasons:

• The transactional moment needs to be easy and fast to replicate.
• There needs to be a powerful, impactful, and genuine feedback loop.
• There needs to be a way to bring people together through emotional investment in a permanent and real way through their common interests.
• The model needs to change. People need to donate through an organization, not to an organization so that they know exactly where their money is being spent and see, feel, and experience the benefits of that spend (i.e. donate to build a particular school in a particular community, rather than donating into an opaque and enormous pool of funding for education).

 

I'll recap the last couple of chapters.

I. A year ago, my husband and I took a trip to Thailand. It was my first trip to southeast Asia and the first time I had any real-life exposure to third-world living. I noticed how very little money it would require to make a huge difference in the lives of so many people, their animals, and their environment. I imagined the radiant and cascading benefit of helping one community or cause at a time.

II. Later in the year, I supported a friend of mine who was running a marathon. I became acutely aware of how many other events or activities occurred as a result of the marathon: first aid stations, band performances, food vendors, corporate sponsor booths, etc.

III. An idea came to me: Wouldn't it be great to start a business where you could get the attention of large groups of people who are assembling for one reason (concerts, conventions, sporting events), and ask them to make donations for another particular cause. It would be done in real time. The cause would be specific (again, not donating to an organization but through an organization), the individual investment low, the collective impact high. The result would be immediate, affordable, momentous, unifying, gratifying. A real impact. A real and lasting connection.

IV. I was participating in a training at our office to facilitate creative thinking and brainstorming sessions. I shared my idea as I have just described with the group, and we used it to go through the creative facilitation exercise. Together we came up with the idea of a "Virtual Flash Mob."

What if we could rally a "flash mob" online--so that thousands of people would "gather" at a single "location" at a single instant to raise money for a single cause--like a library for one particular school in Ghana.

At its core, this vision is a social one. There is a flat $1 donation per donor. If you need more money, you cannot ask for more money, you must ask for more people. The donations all happen at a single instant at a designated time, rather than just being protracted indefinitely until a monetary goal is reached. This results in the following:

1. To prove the hypothesis that people who are donating only $1 at a time, over and over, will donate a higher percentage of their income in the long term.
   
   
2. The $1 donation flat cap makes it fun and exciting. This isn’t just about the recipient. This is a tool for people to feel good about themselves, to see the impact of their donation, and to realize on a deeply personal level how little money it requires to make an enormous difference. People will feel empowered in a world where the problems we face can be overwhelming.
   
   
3. It works on large and small scales. High school bands can use this method to raise funds for that trip to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Individuals can raise money if they need help building a playground in the neighborhood park or cleaning up a lake.
   
   
4. It inspires people to start a cause knowing how they can raise money for it. Let’s go save that colony of gorillas right now!
   
   
5. It results at a minimum in the democratization of charitable giving, and at a maximum, the total redistribution of wealth globally. This approach will result in visibility that reveals how much one dollar can buy in certain parts of the world and how little the dollar can buy in others. This is not intended to place judgment or say that one cause is more worthy than another. It’s intended to empower people, give them choices, and give them permission to care only about what they care about without feeling guilty or overwhelmed.
   
   
6. The personal satisfaction resulting from the immediate feedback loop will turn consumerism inside itself. Why do we buy what we don't need? We buy what we don't need because it bring us happiness, albeit fleeting. What if we collectively buy what other people, places, animals, or environments need? I predict that purchase will offer a much more sustained happiness.
   
   
7. If you have donated to an organization that has misappropriated the funds, you’ve only given them a dollar. If 10,000 people donated $1 to a negligent organization, 10,000 will voice their displeasure publically. Conversely, if a recipient with the best intentions just sort of screws up, you've only given them a dollar. It gives the recipients the permission to be transparent, to learn, to share, and to ask for more money so they can try again. And by extension, the most well-organized, most well-thought-out appeals for donations should naturally rise to the top. These organizations can be identified by donor reviews and ratings.
   
   
8. This approach will offer a public barometer to the causes that populations care about the most. This in turn will make these causes newsworthy, generate even more attention to the cause, and create a self-sustaining loop which in turn should increase contributions. The dollar gives voice and vote.
   
   
9. Provides a feedback loop. Some sites such as Causes are doing this to a certain extent with comments postings, donation-and-contributor counters. I believe we can make this feedback loop a much more rich experience and would result in an actual and genuine connection between contributors and recipients. They key is not to make people feel like they are competing or being rewarded for donating the most on an individual level. The key is to enable people to come together through a donation cap to achieve a common goal.

 

THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:

1. Create a mobile application that makes browse, flash alerts, and transactional moment really compelling, instant and easy. While joining a real-time event is fun (either virtually or in real life), not everyone can make the date. So, for example, using their $20 per month allotment, a user could scroll through a mobile app or go online and choose the donation events they want to participate in, in the near future. At the instant of the event, their $1 automatically is donated all at once. The immediacy of this approach also opens itself up for gaming principles such as unlocking badges. We could also create virtual rooms or worlds where people could "gather" and "meet" each other before the moment of donation, or in any event where large numbers of people are gathered for a single purpose—a sporting event, rock concert, or business convention. Imagine: A specific charitable organization would be selected by any variety of methods, and the audience, crowd, etc would rally at a single moment and donate their $1 to the event. The money would be flashed on a screen, maybe a video would be streamed in from the recipients… (honestly, wouldn’t that be so cool?? ).
2. Integrating banks, savings accounts, and interest rates. Through the platform, people could commit to donating, say, $20 per month. This money would be transferred out of a checking or savings account into a special account. Every month, the user clicks through to the charities of their choice, still donating only $1 to each. At any time, the user can withdraw or transfer their money for personal use. The $20 is just a pledge. However, whatever money is in the account draws interest. This interest must be used for donations. It also makes it much easier for people to report charitable giving to the IRS.
3. Internet and international banking. See above. The percentage of Europeans who have credit cards is low vs. the U.S. Most Europeans use debit and internet banking transactions. If we enable the automatic transfer of funds (per point #2), we’d be able to engage millions more people than a site that just accepted American credit cards. We could do this through SMS or 1-Click technology such as what Amazon.com offers.

 

CLOUD, the WEBSITE and MOBILE APPS

The cloud is in the perfect position to handle the “peak and trough” balance loads necessary for the "event" approach to charitble donations.

Mobile apps could be developed where people could donate anytime anywhere.

Maybe there could even be charitable events popping up through XBOX Live and Kinect. People could donate with their XBOX Points.

The website would need to incorporate and utilize the best of similarities technology that exists today. I see several sites such as Jumo that attempt to do this. I haven't seen any sites yet that do it excellently. I want to create discovery and community around common compassionate interests. The investment in what you care about exists over the long term. You discuss with other like-minded people who your recipients could better use the funds.

 

CHALLENGES:

Q. How does this site and mobile app pay for itself?
A. I have no idea.

Q. How are security measures taken into consideration? How do we prevent a terror group from disguising itself as an animal rescue organization?
A. I have no idea.

Q. How do people submit requests for donations and how exactly does that process work?
A. That still needs to be figured out.

Q. Exactly what does this incredible, life-altering feedback loop look like? Do donors need to submit videos? Write a blog?
A. Sure, and probably other things as well. Any ideas?

So how do we pull this off? How can we afford it? What sort of United Nations of the Best in the Business do we need to make sure this site uses the best of what is already out there to change the world? What sort of financial models can we bring to the $1 donation cap (i.e. maybe it makes sense for more specialized, expensive charities where you can have a $5 donation that would require fewer people to achieve the financial goal).

There are a lot of questions to be answered, but we’re this close. A lot of innovation in order pipeline, transactional options, and UX to be applied. It needs to be informed, forewarned, and troubleshooted by experts in the business of charitable giving. It's requires some complex thinking from smart and passionate people to deliver something simple, delightful, and life altering. This idea needs to be championed, adopted, shared, thought about, discussed, challenged, tested, made better, and realized.

Go.

 

Comments

[David Browne]

My Dearest Beth,

I am taking a huge liberty and brainstorming your idea. I'm doing this as a stream of conciseness exercise without self-censorship or knowing any more about your project or that industry than this one blog page has informed me of. I do, however, design systems and products for a living so I know a little about efficiencies - maybe I can be of use.

Usual disclaimer applies: even though I might end up sounding grinchy your idea is fantastic and I do it in the spirit of colaberation without the bullshit nicities of corporate speak. However, this comment might not end up sounding grinchy so that previous statement may not be applicable.

Here we go:

THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT:

Create a mobile application that makes browse, flash alerts, and transactional moment really compelling, instant and easy. While joining a real-time event is fun (either virtually or in real life), not everyone can make the date. So, for example, using their $20 per month allotment, a user could scroll through a mobile app or go online and choose the donation events they want to participate in, in the near future. At the instant of the event, their $1 automatically is donated all at once. The immediacy of this approach also opens itself up for gaming principles such as unlocking badges. We could also create virtual rooms or worlds where people could "gather" and "meet" each other before the moment of donation, or in any event where large numbers of people are gathered for a single purpose—a sporting event, rock concert, or business convention. Imagine: A specific charitable organization would be selected by any variety of methods, and the audience, crowd, etc would rally at a single moment and donate their $1 to the event. The money would be flashed on a screen, maybe a video would be streamed in from the recipients… (honestly, wouldn’t that be so cool?? ).

Dave Says:
Your first couple of sentences are at odds with the rest of the paragraph. Scrap gaming principles, gathering, meet-ups, videos etc. Stick to the basics. Simplicity rocks.

Your site should do exactly what these guys do but for charitable giving:

http://www.kickstarter.com/discover

Charities create a profile. How do you make sure they are not terrorists? Because they need a 503C1 or other international charity number that the system automatically verifies. The IRS provides an API to do this and I'm sure other countries do too. Once their profile is created and verified, they create an "event" on a specific date. They use all the tools your site allows to upload images, state their case etc etc. They then create a "goal amount" and if the goal is not reached then the donations don't happen.
For example:
"It costs $5000 to buy this whole village eye exams and glasses for those who need it. Donate on June 1st 2011 to make this happen!"

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, you want your charity to convey a sense of "Now is the time, there is no other time, this is an EVENT". This model has worked for telethons forever because, well, it works.
At the same time you want "givers" to apply peer pressure to each other to meet the financial goal on a specified date. Personally I don't think you should let donations happen before the date. I think you want social media and social networking create a flash mob of giving. The fun is the deadline and the monetary target. If you let people think they can donate tomorrow then that's exactly what they'll do. Secondly, you need to do one financial transaction else you'll loose all your money to commissions (see below).

Your basic flow for charities is:
Register
Verify
Define events
Social market event before and on the date.

Integrating banks, savings accounts, and interest rates. Through the platform, people could commit to donating, say, $20 per month. This money would be transferred out of a checking or savings account into a special account. Every month, the user clicks through to the charities of their choice, still donating only $1 to each. At any time, the user can withdraw or transfer their money for personal use. The $20 is just a pledge. However, whatever money is in the account draws interest. This interest must be used for donations. It also makes it much easier for people to report charitable giving to the IRS.

Dave Says:
You actually don't want to handle any money at all. In fact you don't even want to handle any personal details yourself. No linking to bank accounts, no credit card info, no paypal credentials, nothing. Unless, of course, you want to go though (and pay for) PCI compliance in every territory you operate in and if you want to get audited every year. One hint of a privacy violation and you're out of business. What you do is work with something like PayFlowPro or Amazon's Flexible Payments engine. You register the "givers" on your site simply as users and when they eventually decide they want to pledge the fixed $1 to a charity you take their credit card details and pass then straight onto Amazon or PayflowPro to store in their system. They will give you a payment ref id back which you store. You don't even hold the billing address. When the event ends and, if the monetary goal was reached, you run one batch job against the payment provider and only pay one set of commission rather than a per transaction charge per user. So, you don't hold the $20 per month, you just charge their card $1. That means you need to be transparent on your site to both givers and receivers just what the overhead is.

For example:
The village who's going to get $5000 is going to loose 3% of that in transaction fees to process the payments.

Which brings me on to your other question: How do you cover your costs:
The village who's going to get $5000 is going to loose 3% of that in transaction fees to process the payments and another 5% to cover the costs of running the website.

You have to charge a "fee". You cannot survive any other way. Your pitch is "The Red Cross use 37% of your donation in administration costs, we only use 8%"

Tax receipts/statements: Let the charity do it because they use those receipts as invoices to the tax man to prove their charitable status. Besides, you don't want to do it. More overhead, no upside.

Your basic flow for "givers" is:
Browse (or be flash mobbed)
Register
Pledge
and if the monetary goal is met, you transact

Internet and international banking. See above. The percentage of Europeans who have credit cards is low vs. the U.S. Most Europeans use debit and internet banking transactions. If we enable the automatic transfer of funds (per point #2), we’d be able to engage millions more people than a site that just accepted American credit cards. We could do this through SMS or 1-Click technology such as what Amazon.com offers.

Dave Says:
PayflowPro in the US allows users to link their paypal accounts which means they can back the account with a real checking account. This support is being rolled out in Europe. Not sure about Amazon's payment engine but I'm certain it will back to your Amazon account and what ever payment methods you have defined in there. Remember, you're just transacting references, never real data. Let the payment gateways dictate payment methods. Debit cards look like credit cards to foreign transaction engines so you should easily be able to take any combo of visa/mc/amex etc. Systems like Aria will actually cycle transactions through a number of different payment gateways looking for the cheapest commission. Remember "One-Click" is patented by Amazon so you can't use that concept on your site. Remember too, one-click is just the interface, it's the payment gateways you're interested in.

[Amsterbeth]

yes! This is what we need. More!