Posted on 1st September 2009
A new e-philanthropy initiative aims to be the ‘YouTube of philanthropy’ by allowing users to find out about charitable projects around the world in detail and donate to them online. Users can also submit video clips of basic needs projects from around the world by creating an account on the website, which aims to create a global philanthropic community online.
Launched in August, World Flix currently features video clips of projects in Uganda, Haiti and Tibet that require micro grants of up to $5,000 (£3,100) to address food, water, shelter, sanitation or healthcare basic needs. More projects are expected soon.
Chief executive officer Laika Grant Mann founded the charity after attending the Georgetown University Nonprofit Executive Management Certificate Programme in Washington D.C.
In a conversation with other students about a "dream non-profit job" she said she wanted to be a UN Goodwill Ambassador, travelling round the world to bring neglected issues to light, or a philanthropist, making a difference in the world through personal donations.
After returning from Georgetown, and seeing her sons uploading video clips to YouTube, Mann realised that, “Through a website featuring video clips anyone could be a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador. By bringing attention to causes around the world through video clips and by pooling small donations anyone can now be a philanthropist too.”
Mann describes e-philanthropy as “the wave of the future.” Through World Flix, donors can give to the project of their choice and, once the entire fund is collected, see their contribution at work through further video clips. Donors to the Bwindi Hospital project in Uganda will see the purchase, delivery and use of the mosquito nets they help purchase. Mann says: “For donors it will be very exciting to actually see their money at work.”
World Flix offers this level of feedback to donors without the means to give huge sums. Additionally it will give 100% of donated money to each project directly, covering its costs through events, grants and World Flix merchandise sales.
Volunteers including interns studying IT at local universities will help World Flix innovate and stay ahead of the pack, and Mann thinks this youth-bias will be reflected in users. “e-philanthropy is engaging to the younger generations who are so technologically advanced,” she says. The organisation is currently focussing on video clips because “Film is the international language we can all understand”.
“A two to three minute video clip can tell an entire story, the what, why, how and who of a non-profit project in a way no other art form can,” Mann says.
