Traditional philanthropy in a virtual world

From engagement to evangelism

Social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, allows donors to add their own voice to their giving, transforming them from engaged givers to ambassadors.

In fact, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes has just announced the launch of a new social network for good, called Jumo, which means ‘together in concert’ in Yoruba, a West African language. It is set to start in autumn and aims to help people find causes and non-profit organisations that they care about as well as offering robust tools for sharing content. Hughes said in a recent interview, “People have a genuine desire to engage with the world around them in a meaningful way, but the internet just hasn’t yet caught up with that desire yet.”

Digital entrepreneur and philanthropist David Erasmus (see philanthropic journey">My philanthropic journey) says, “Sites such as JustGiving.com empowers fundraisers with the resources to share with friends, families and colleagues their reasons for supporting specific causes turning them into ambassadors for the charities they support through their personal stories.”

These personal stories are at the heart of the recently launched website Ambassador(s) for Philanthropy, created by the government’s own Ambassador for Philanthropy Dame Stephanie Shirley. On it major donors talk about their personal motivations through short online videos, which gives this largely unheard group ‘a voice’, says Dame Stephanie’s chief of staff Roberta d’Eustachio. She believes it will create a ‘cultural shift’ in philanthropy bringing it into ‘the open’.

“Speaking about philanthropy has, in the past, been difficult, but by encouraging people to share their experiences online we have inspired more people to do so across the globe. So much so that philanthropists are contacting us. Organisations are expressing an interest in setting up similar sites in other countries,” says d’Eustachio.

Connecting with crowds

Connections are not only made on a one-to-one basis. ‘Crowd-sourcing’ techniques, popularised through sites such as Wikipedia, are also helping philanthropists.

Philanthropedia, a non-profit mutual fund, which launched its website last November, is using the ‘wisdom of crowds’, all experts, to inform decision-making. The site enables donors to support an entire social cause with one transaction and gives them access to information typically reserved for high-net-worth individuals and foundation staff. Foundation professionals, academics, and non-profit executives are asked to identify top charitable organisations and distribute a percentage of each donated dollar between them.

Similarly, the Rockefeller Foundation is using digital means to harness the power of open communities. Its GlobalGiveback Innovation Challenge gives five non-profit organisations access to a huge network of ‘solvers’; an open community of 200,000 of the brightest minds that work to help organisations build better products, bought together by Innocentive. It is the second time Rockefeller is partnering with Innocentive; the first time was in 2006, when it supported 10 challenges on the Innocentive platform and achieved an 80% success rate in solving them.

Haiti.ushahidi.com (meaning ‘testimony’ in Swahili) is another example of crowd-source information. This crisis map of Haiti allowed people on the ground to report emergencies and missing persons after the January 12th disaster, through a variety of digital channels, with all the collected information mapped in close to real time on the site.

Informing philanthropy

Think tanks and research bodies, foundations and trusts publish hundreds of reports every year, much of it freely available online. New databases, such as The Environmental Funders Network's latest analysis, showing the pattern of practice of the 97 grant-makers analysed in Where The Green Grants Went 4, uses available data to provide philanthropists and charities with greater insight.

The US Foundation Center, whose mission is ‘to strengthen the non-profit sector by advancing knowledge about US, and increasingly, global philanthropy’, has created a huge research database. PubHub offers a searchable catalogue of more than 5000 reports, case studies, issue briefs, literature reviews, and annual reports published or funded by US foundations and updated daily.

Last year, it enhanced this digital service with a downloadable PubHub widget. It allows anyone to display on their own website the cover images of the three reports most recently added to PubHub, along with a search interface, effectively releasing hundreds of years and millions of dollars worth of research across the web.

“PubHub helps maximise the impact of invaluable insights and findings. We believe that knowledge is infinitely more valuable when it is shared — especially knowledge upon which the philanthropic sector can help build a better society,” says the Foundation Center’s president Bradford K. Smith.

This deluge of data would suggest donors are more informed, but are they actually more confused?

“There is almost too much information available to donors,” says Smith and it can lead to a ‘choice paradox’, when donors are made anxious by the overwhelming amount of information and so feel almost unable to make a choice, explains GlobalGiving UK’s Jeevan.

Searching for meaning

With so much data available, screening out information is as important as finding it. Search engines give donors a way to navigate directly to the information they want and bypass the stuff they are not interested in. Search rankings are an increasingly important area of focus for charities and search engine optimised (SEO) websites are pretty standard now.

Real life philanthropy advisors and friends and colleagues are still the most effective and compelling way for philanthropists to gain understanding and advice, but the web is starting to create services that can also help.

Online data aggregator and comparison sites like GuideStar (which has just joined forces with the Directory of Social Change), Give Well, Intelligent Giving, Canada">Charity Intelligence Canada and Charity Navigator filter information by rating and identifying those charities they feel are ‘best’, ‘top’ or ‘most effective’.

While these sites can help donors, they throw up issues of trust and legitimacy about those organisations offering such judgments.

Mapping tools can help give donors a clearer view of who is doing what online. For example, the Foundation Center’s ‘Philanthropy In/Sight’ tool uses Google maps to show donors the causes foundations are primarily funding across the US, and its recently launched portal Glasspockets, aims to show which of the foundations it lists are the most transparent.

Smith says: “Foundations that receive tax deducted dollars have a responsibility to be transparent, open and accountable. They are in a privileged position in that they own a lot of information on the issues they fund and have a responsibility to share this.”

NPC’s Tris Lumley describes the Foundation Center’s ‘Philanthropy In/Sight’ mapping tool as a “wonderful piece of work” and one he would like to see replicated in Europe. “Which funder wouldn’t want to know what other foundations were funding in their area of interest before investing their own money? It should transform giving,” he says. “Though we must beware thinking that if we build it, they will come – we’ve learned the hard way that the availability of data does not necessarily equate to demand for that data.”

Triodos, ‘the world’s most sustainable bank’, has a similar tool called ‘Know Where Your Money Goes’, which enables savers to see the loans that are being made with their deposits and where through an interactive map.

Such tools and sites are opening up philanthropy, creating more transparent prisms through which donors can view and do their giving.

But there is some evidence that donors may not like the unexpurgated truth. Kiva.org, the online person-to-person micro-lending platform, was accused of misleading the public in the way it said funding flowed between donor and beneficiary; Kiva admitted that donors would rather connect with a face than an organisation making the loan, which throws up issues of transparency and how far to go in making donors feel good about their giving. The vigorous debate veered from ethics to practicalities and even whether it mattered. It raises two points: how challenging transparency can be for organisations and whether donors want the real truth.

Open to business

The founding principle of the internet is collaboration and philanthropic collaboration is alive and well. The US Lodestar Foundation, for example, has set up a searchable database of collaborations to give other non-profits templates to work from and awards an annual $250,000 (£175,000) prize marking the best collaborations.

The internet can provide the perfect platform for collaboration but it also calls for an open and sharing attitude between bodies, and that often relates to both parties seeing the value in collaboration.

Lumley of NPC, which freely shares its research online, says, “Providing information is the only reason NPC exists. Our aim is to make sure it gets to the right people in usable formats. Better information is the key to people giving more effectively. Though our research costs us money, we believe we gain in the end by piggybacking the ways other organisations use it.”

But collaboration can prove difficult even if the will is there – it often calls for standardisation of data; certainly the US Foundation’s Smith reported this as a major hurdle in creating the ‘Philanthropy In/Sight’ tool.

And “common metrics may focus attention on low cost, less effective standards,” warns Bernholz in her Disrupting Philanthropy paper, while greater transparency may also limit creativity or risk-taking.

Trusts and mistrust

Trust is an integral part of philanthropy and it is one area where digital technology still has to prove itself (see EuroView). It’s no coincidence online users tend to stick to well-known online brands – Amazon, Google and Facebook have little competition.

When organisations do mislead or misdeed, though uncommon, the stories end up in the press, like the recent Third Sector story, Two charities spent less than 1 percent of income on charitable activity, (Third Sector Online, 26th February 2010). such stories highlight the need for due diligence.

The Charity Commission register or OSCR in Scotland is often a first stop – more than 50% of the Charity Commission’s site traffic goes to their register of charities. Its 2008 report Public Trust and Confidence in Charities, conducted by Ipsos MORI, in fact shows a slight but significant increase in public confidence in charities.

It also shows a clear consensus from the public on the importance of charities publishing information relating to how they spend their money, and what they have actually achieved.

Nine out of 10 people agree, or tend to agree, that it is important charities explain, in a published annual report, what they have actually achieved, the survey shows.

Aside from commissions, other approaches that can help build trust include creating charter marks such as the Social Enterprise Mark recently introduced by the Coalition">Social Enterprise Coalition (SEC).

Peter Holbrook, chief executive of SEC, says, “The time is right for the introduction of a visually powerful mark that indicates, at a glance, the integrity of an organisation and around which we can drive awareness and understanding.”

Others feel user-generated recommendations will help organisations grow trustworthy reputations. Just as e-Bay sellers gain reputations based on the experience of those who have bought from them, www.betterplace.org has created a ‘web of trust’. It consists of different users giving an account of their experiences with the person responsible for the project and the project itself. “Thus, over time, there develops a differentiated evaluation system for projects, which prevents fraud, increases project efficiency and enables supporters to choose projects according to their own criteria,” says the site.

Trust and security remain issues for donors as does control – the web is being ignored because it is felt to be too public, particularly for trusts and foundations, in the UK a traditionally ‘publicity-shy’ sector of philanthropy.

Jacqueline Rae, director of Colyer-Fergusson Charitable Trust and advisor to several charitable trusts, says, “Trusts and foundations have a unique standpoint when it comes to employing IT. Although many large grant-making foundations have taken advantage of today’s technology, many of the smaller trusts are reluctant to invest in IT solutions. Without the competitive commercial drive to make a profit, many are not as hungry as businesses and fundraising charities to use IT to its full potential. Certainly many of the smaller, family run trusts and foundations are still operating with completely paper-based systems, reluctant to introduce computerised systems.”

She says some are very clear that they do not want to be led by IT or lose the personal communication from grant applicants which they fear would be the result of standardised online applications.

“I do not seek to judge trusts that continue to work this way. For many, if it isn’t broken, why fix it, and many quite reasonably do not want to be led by IT,” adds Rae.

“However, there is no doubt that software, or even the use of advanced Excel spread sheets, can streamline grant-making activity and allow grant-makers to look back through years of data to analyse and understand better their grant-making. Ten years ago grant-makers feared that introducing a website would lead to a flood of ineligible applications. In practice, providing that grant-makers clearly explain the criteria for their grants, the number of ineligible applications is reduced dramatically. Today, many have recognised the benefits of a well-constructed website, where they can publish detailed information about their grant programmes,”  explains Rae.

While Rae says IT brings many benefits, including saving time and money, this can be offset by the time it takes to train to use it and the cost of implementing it.

“A large part of running a grant-making operation is about ‘good organisation’ and technology offers a wide range of ways to help with this. But at the end of the day, computers don’t make people organised, they simply turn disorganised grant-makers into computerised disorganised grant-makers!” says Rae.

It is unlikely that grant-makers will ever be at the cutting edge of technology, she says, “but it is possible for each grant-maker to cherry pick the most useful technological solutions for them: email, websites, a database and perhaps online applications without having to embrace the whole range of technology – and I would argue, without losing the personal approach to grant-making.”

The City Bridge Trust">City Bridge Trust is one such trust that is preparing to take advantage of technology and began by commissioning Luminous, a creative agency, to critique its website and to suggest ways of improving its digital communications, including blogs, social media and search engine optimisation.

“I don’t understand everything about digital technology but I do know it offers brilliant ways to connect and it’s something we can’t afford to ignore,” says Clare Thomas, chief grants officer of City Bridge Trust, who may say she is not digitally savvy, but has dabbled in the virtual 3D world of Second Life and visited its philanthropy events.

Conclusions

Digital technology is informing, illuminating and innovating philanthropy, opening it up to new audiences and possibly growing the giving cake – though it’s too early to tell for sure. It allows donors to give when they are most inspired which is a powerful development, while social media is helping build awareness of giving and engaging donors more deeply in the process.

“But it is not a ‘magic bullet'”, says nfpSynergy’s Joe Saxton. “What it might do is make 10% more people give and 10% of them give better,” he says.

Bernholz sees data as a platform for change. She says, “Technologies are changing how philanthropists find and share information, how they communicate with each other, their grantees, the public and their enterprise partners and how they measure their work and deploy their resources.”

But she says, “It is important to remember that digital forces do not predetermine a future of philanthropy – the future will be written by the myriad ways we deploy, innovate, reorganise and reregulate our choices for funding public good with private dollars.”

There is some discussion over whether digital donors can be thought of as philanthropists. Are they the donors of the future or just sometime givers who use the web like an ‘online charity bucket’? This may depend on how those who have shown an interest can continue to be engaged – and again digital technology and social media will help here.

Is traditional philanthropy, perhaps defined as those who give large donations or grants in an engaged way over the long term, benefitting from digital technology?

It should be, says Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, who addressed the recent Sea Change 2010 family philanthropy conference in San Diego, via Skype from New York, and challenged philanthropists to use social media as a means of being fully transparent and engaging in ‘citizen-centred philanthropy’.

From the few digital innovations listed in this article one would have to conclude that digital technology can help philanthropists, while remembering philanthropy still largely takes place in the real world – with advisors and by mixing with other philanthropists and meeting beneficiaries.

So like shopping and socialising, philanthropy today is an ‘integrated’ experience – it happens online and off. The US Foundation Center’s Bradford K. Smith describes it as a ‘high tech and high touch’ experience, requiring digital and human interaction.

Part of the challenge for fundraisers, philanthropy advisors and service providers going forward, will be to understand the ‘integrated’ nature of the donor journey and to identify ‘donor touchpoints’, the offline and online moments when they can engage best with donors, just as businesses are grappling with understanding the integrated ‘customer journey’.

Does it matter how long a donor journey lasts? – a couple of seconds or a number of years? And does it matter that millions of pounds are given by one person or organisation or a few pounds are given by millions of people?

Perhaps we are fixating on process at the expense of motive? New ways of giving and communicating are constantly being developed; is this just one more development like any other, or does digital technology represent a fundamental shift in the way that philanthropy takes place?

The jury is out on whether a system based on noughts and ones can add the same to the philanthropic pot and whether it will improve the way that pot is spent. But it is clearly mobilising a new generation of donors and philanthropists.

Oxford Internet Institute gathers leading digital exponents to explore e-philanthropy

Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII) will be exploring the impact of digital technology on philanthropy at an event on 14th April, organised in collaboration with the government’s Ambassador for Philanthropy Dame Stephanie Shirley.

The event, ‘Giving in the digital world’, will begin with a public lecture by keynote speaker Dr Lucy Bernholz, co-author of Disrupting Philanthropy, a study of digital behaviours in philanthropy. It will be followed by an invitation-only forum which aims to bring together practitioners and academics in philanthropy and charitable giving with experts from the OII and the broader Internet and research community to discuss the implications of the Internet for the practices and cultures of philanthropy in the UK.

Leading practitioners in philanthropic giving who are attending include Ben Brabyn of Bmycharity, Jon Brooks of The Big Give, Sharath Jeevan of UK">Global Giving UK, Marcelle Speller of Localgiving.com, and Jonathan Welfare of the Nominet Trust.

A webcast of the lecture will be available to the public within several weeks of the event.

For more information visit www.oii.ox.ac.uk
 

Case Study

One Thousand Pound Club

GlobalGiving.co.uk

GlobalGiving.co.uk is the ‘Heineken’ of fundraising sites says its chief executive Sharath Jeevan; “It aims to reach causes other organisations can’t.”

It does this by connecting grassroots projects with donors across the world and vets all its projects to ensure they are charitable in nature and have a social impact.

Each project partner is also encouraged to submit quarterly progress updates on GlobalGiving.co.uk, including the activities, accomplishments and results of the project so far. “This creates a dynamic and meaningful relationship between projects and donors,” says Jeevan.

An example of one such partner is Free and Educate Bonded Nepali Girls. This project rescues young Nepali girls from bonded servitude and provides them with six years of education, which will enable them to graduate from high school.

GlobalGiving.co.uk has now launched a One Thousand Pound club inviting donors to become ‘mini Bill Gates’ by creating a ‘giving portfolio’ of international grassroots projects with a donation of £1,000.

“We were finding that many of our donors were giving a thousand pounds or more at one go,” said Mr Jeevan, “and we thought, why not offer them the chance to diversify their donation across a tailor-made portfolio, much like a portfolio of shares. So they can, for example, allocate 50% to water projects, 30% to education projects,  and 20% to projects in India. Now literally anyone can become a mini Bill Gates with only a thousand pounds.”

The Global Giving team chooses the portfolio to match the donor’s interests, passions and charitable preferences, with agreement from the donor, who can view reports from their project via a GlobalGiving online account.

Email sjeevan@globalgiving.co.uk if you are interested in learning more, or call the office on 0044 (0) 207 8418981.