Hey guys, like most of you, I spend a obscene amount of time on the internet. How can our connectivity perhaps better our world?
What is the true purpose of philanthropic action? One may
answer that philanthropy is a push for good, an opportunity to see change and
alleviation of turmoil or struggle. Others see an opportunity to aid the
evolution of a movement. Others may just see philanthropy as an opportunity to
build good karma. However, the individual sees it from their own perspective,
the main goal of all philanthropists is creating lasting change. The main goal of giving is to achieve longevity in
the goal. Many of the issues we tackle as philanthropists are not momentary,
they are institutionalized and broad. Issues we face are often not remedied immediately,
but rather by continued efforts to change the way we function as a society.
Continuation and collaboration are the key to pursuing change
in the modern world.
We are in the age where the big-name families like the
Rockefellers, Carnegies, and Gates are not the only people able to give. We are
pushing towards an era of crowdsourced change. Earlier this spring, The
Smithsonian set out on a quest to tap into that market. One of the nation’s top
science centers engaged in an extensive and wildly successful crowdsourcing
venture to try and build capital to enact lasting change for the education and
preservation work the Smithsonian accomplishes. The campaign involved more than
half a million individual donors. 93% of donors made a donation of $100 or less,
but those donations totaled to about $78 million dollars overall.
Regardless of the size of the sum of money or amount of time
we are able to give, we as philanthropists want to make the biggest possible
impact. In other words, we push to get the biggest bang for our buck. We must
first realize that our relatively small, but impactful donation will not solve
any real long-term problems, but in concert with others we as individuals in a
Binghamton University classroom can contribute to lasting social change.
We have already seen some crowdsourcing ventures presented
in class, like Kiva and other GoFundMe like websites, and these organizations
are making huge contributions from the combined efforts of thousands of
internet donors. My question to all of my peers is do you believe in the power
we yield as small, millennial donors in the internet age to be philanthropic? Do
you feel we as a population can use our clout to make change that for a long
time was only attainable with contributions from the super-rich? And finally,
if you do enjpy crowdsourced philanthropy like I do, what attracts you to it?
What makes giving small amounts and in turn seeing large change so enticing?
Thank you all, looking forward to reading your responses.
Here is the Smithsonian article:
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Smithsonian-s-19-Billion/243149?cid=cpstw
Here is the Smithsonian article:
https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Smithsonian-s-19-Billion/243149?cid=cpstw
Dylan,
ReplyDeleteCrowdsourcing as a resource for nonprofits is something I have thought about a lot. Donations from regular people I feel is one of the purest forms of philanthropy. It's a person of reasonable means contributing to helping others and expecting nothing back. These normal people receive no appreciation and are always overshadowed by philanthropic billionaires or companies who donate because of tax incentives or to their own philanthropies or foundations. This is because the Clinton Foundation building a library gets more press than John Smith donating part of his paycheck. This is obvious because a regular person cannot pay for things that famous philanthropists do. This is where crowdsourcing comes in. Currently if a regular person wants to be philanthropic their options are usually to give some money to a small local organization or give to a large organization where their money disappears in millions of dollars of funding. Most people who donate end up giving to these large organizations like the Red Cross or Salvation Army that they see in the news. And even then these organizations get the credit for the work they do with everyone’s money. Small scale crowdsourcing is an alternative to this. By crowdsourcing donors can make an actual decision on what their money gets spent on. I had an idea of just a GoFundMe page that will donate mosquito nets to India. These small scale donations let people choose things to donate to where they can really see where their money goes. Crowdsourcing is still the wild west of philanthropy and many people and organizations are skeptical of it. Anyone can do it which means people can try to abuse it and steal funds without being held responsible like a big organization would.
Here is an article about crowdfunding nonprofits by the council of nonprofits:
https://www.councilofnonprofits.org/tools-resources/crowdfunding-nonprofits
Hi Dylan,
ReplyDeleteYour blog post goes hand-in-hand with my issue post, when I made the argument that philanthropy isn’t controlled by the few billionaires that are constantly covered by the media and are perceived to make the world’s philanthropic decisions. To answer your question about the power of small donors, I strongly believe that the collective efforts of ordinary donors outweigh the efforts of the extremely rich, despite the appearance that the opposite is true. Crowdsourcing is a technique that firms such as Google and Netflix have used to efficiently generate new ideas and quickly bring about innovation. The reason why crowdsourcing works so well, especially in the online world, is because this method allows literally millions of people to contribute their ideas and build on previous projects, and everyone’s small contributions collectively bring about the large change that a small number of people could never produce. For this reason, crowdsourcing is a great method that can be applied to philanthropy.
I found an article that talks about how crowdsourcing is becoming a very popular option for donors. According to crowdsourcing.org, crowdsourcing generated more than $34 billion in worldwide donations, equity-funding, and person-to-person lending in 2015. In 2017, more than 22% of Americans contributed to some crowdsourced online project, and there are more than 3,500 social giving platforms around the world that utilize crowdsourcing (with GoFundMe being the most popular example). To answer your last question about why crowdsourcing is attractive, my answer is simply because the snowball effect of small contributions can be really cool to witness. For example, if there was a GoFundMe page and all students from Binghamton University donated just $20 each, (assuming 16,000 attend the school), the page would raise a whopping $320,000. Apply this to a national level, and millions of dollars can (and have been) raised by the efforts of countless small donors.
Link: https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/03/15/crowdfunding-will-change-philanthropy/
I completely agree with you. People are more likely to give if they are a part of a group of people that are giving. Crowdsourcing is almost like being part of a giving circle and I think that is a very effective way to raise money for a cause. One recent example of crowdsourcing being a great way to raise money for a cause was what happened after the tragedy that occurred to the Humboldt Broncos junior hockey team. Their team bus crashed and over 15 people died and more were injured. After this, a bunch of ordinary people came together and created a GoFundMe for the team and raised over $15,000,000. I really do think crowdsourcing is the future of philanthropy because people can feel like they are a part of something bigger then themselves with countless other people just like them.
ReplyDeleteDylan,
ReplyDelete“We must first realize that our relatively small, but impactful donation will not solve any real long-term problems, but in concert with others we as individuals in a Binghamton University classroom can contribute to lasting social change.”
You’re right. Sometimes the smallest things can lead to the largest outcomes. I mean if anything, the democracy from which this country is built on follows this belief. The belief that every person’s voice collectively makes one voice of the people; a voice that cannot be ignored. It’s the same with individual donors. Alone our one donation may not go very far, but if that one donation is combined collectively with many others than our voice as donors will be heard. In this way, we have the ability to determine which organizations and programs will be able to make the lasting social change we wish to see.
In 2016 alone, $281.86 billion was given by individual donors, accounting for 72% of all giving that year. In terms of all donations, 15% was given to education and 12% to human services. I would assume that the majority of individual donations would potentially mirror this statistic and thus these individuals have made the decision to put a vast amount of funding in programs that target education and human services. In this way, individuals have proven to have significant pull on the philanthropic sector.
I think if we wish to see long term impact; if we truly wish to use philanthropy to change the world for the better, than we have to take action. As philanthropists it’s more important than ever to pick up an instrument and join the orchestra. To use all of our individual beliefs and backgrounds to make the beautiful music that is philanthropic collective impact. In a way you can join the orchestra… or get drowned out by the music.
Statistics provided by: https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=42
ReplyDeleteDear Dylan,
I feel like modern day philanthropy is heavily influenced by the internet and all the potential and dangers that come along with that.
Whenever we open our social media accounts, we are bombarded with people asking for help, organizations advocating their newest programs or friends sending us an invitation for a future fundraising event. We live in a time of information overload and that definitely applies to the philanthropic world as well. We can sign online petitions, support an individual’s GoFundMe page and sponsor a child living in an SOS Children’s Village and all of that would probably take us no longer than five minutes. Supporting people in need has become easy, fast and anonymous. We are able to donate without having to use a lot of our time,o do research It takes us exactly two minutes
The problem I see is that this constant flow of information and the fast pace nature of the internet creates the situation in which we can easily donate to a cause but no one demands that we are really invested with the topic. Five minutes later and the next ten posts and articles will have popped up on our page and we will most likely have already forgotten about the last ones. The Internet sometimes makes us believe that we can donate to a charity, close the tab and our job is done. However, we have probably not made a long – lasting impact. Creating the illusion that “giving” in our modern day world is more easier than ever oversimplifies the systematic problem that most NGOs try to tackle.
I would like to see our millennial generation as individuals who not only donate but truly invest in a particular cause. Investing in a sense that they do research and think about what change they want to make. Look at different approaches to giving and identifying problematic issues for different countries or areas. Essentially, everything that we have been doing these last few weeks.
Understanding that we do not only have the responsibility to give money but also to make informed choices that have a lasting impact on our society, is something that can easily be overlooked in times of Facebook, Twitter and co.
I would like to further elaborate on the last sentence of Morgan’s comment about the potential negatives of crowdsourcing; especially of the site GoFundMe.
ReplyDeleteMost recently, there was a video going around of a boy, Keaton, crying because he was being bullied. It went viral and gained attention from many celebrities. There was a GoFundMe campaign started for him. A couple of days after the video went viral, rumors were surfacing that his mother was racist. Rumors were also going around that the mother only wanted money from the situation. The GoFundMe was not even created by a member of the family, but by a stranger who was touched by the orginal video. Because of the backlash, now people are unsure of where the $54,000 raised is going to be going.
Because anyone can create a fundraiser for anything, the site lacks accountability. While crowdsourcing can be successful in making change, it is obviously important to always think before giving and check the validity of the fundraiser.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3919872/the-viral-story-of-keaton-jones-cautionary-tale-on-internet-fame-and-crowdfunding/
Hey Dylan,
ReplyDeleteI feel crowd sourcing is an extremely effective way of raising funds. The ease of connectivity in this day an age makes it possible for efforts to be streamlined and spread all over the world instantly. This is a very powerful tool that as much as it may cause controversy, can do more good than harm. I have used crowd sourcing sites before and that's what I was referencing at in my post of incentives, these incentives is the clout that those with great influence can and do lots of good with in philanthropy. "Crowdsourcing has generated $34 billion dollars in donations, equity funding and person-to-person lending" in 2015 alone (Kevin Johnson). There is so much potential that can be used with proper use of crowdsourcing to not only raise funds but spread awareness on an organizations mission. I found the same article as Michael posted above and I think he brings up an excellent point.
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2017/03/15/crowdfunding-will-change-philanthropy/
-Jack