Spanning worlds, building bridges

That drilled into me the philanthropy mindset – and giving away a portion of what I earn has been standard practice ever since.

For me philanthropy has been a very integrated part of working life, and is something that has come naturally. I’ve incorporated that philanthropic mindset into a work context, and it has also been important for me to employ people that benefit significantly from working in my business.

I started my first company, providing online marketing service to businesses, when I was 19-years-old, and as profitability grew into my second year, I was able to start giving more significant sums of money away.

I’ve always seen an importance in recognising the local and the international, and therefore always chose to split my giving between the world’s poorest and the local needs within my community.

When I was 21 I sold my company, and was presented with a new challenge – what to do with the rest of my life. I set myself a goal for the rest of that year: to figure out what needs to be done in the world.

This led me to many different countries and meeting a host of high level, significant people in the development and charity space. I asked many questions and learnt a lot.

That year I began working on NoPC – a sustainable solution for rural education, powered by solar panels and 3G internet connection – which is amongst the most advanced in the world, to begin in South Africa.

I also set up a company in SA, hoping to create employment for local people. I took on six members of staff; one was from a black township, two xenophobia victims, one bi-polar Africana, and one white English recovering alcoholic, and tried to start a business with them.

Unfortunately it was too much too soon and I learnt that true restoration and development needs slow progress, building on a solid foundation.

If you take five crack addicts and put them in an empty house, all you have is a crack den. But if you build a lovely family home and invite one crack addict to live with you, with love and support they may conquer their addictions.

Through my lens, the best conclusion I can draw thus far is that providing innovative educational solutions to poor and rural communities and also providing entrepreneurial opportunities for employment are the most useful things I can contribute to our global community.

This revelation has led me even further and down the road of blending philanthropic and business models.

Today I work on and support projects that have the following DNA: ‘transparency’, ‘trackability’ and ‘accountablity’.
I believe the two words that typify the next generation are ‘mobile’ and ‘social’. We want to be able to contact people anywhere and interact with them. Charities need to be able to react to deal with this culture shift and meet people where they’re at.

One of the reasons I sold my company was that selling online marketing to businesses lost its impact on me – and I wanted to do something more fulfilling, For me, that was making money AND doing good – which is typical, I believe, of my generation. We don’t see philanthropy as an add-on; we want our work as a whole to add value to society in one way or another.

In terms of what I hope to leave behind, I like supporting projects that are sustainable, and therefore hope that whatever legacy I leave will grow in my absence rather than diminish. I would like to be remembered as someone who built bridges between different groups and was often found hanging out with society’s outcasts, as well its powerbrokers; eating caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.

David Erasmus, digital entrepreneur and co-founder of online social enterprises based in South Africa including clickego.com and NoPc.org.uk. Erasmus also runs a business start-up incubator called Cubate.com and is about to launch a smartphone application called GetGiving, offering a low-friction way for donors to make micro donations to selected charities in seconds.

www.daviderasmus.com