I’m often looking at innovations in giving and charitable behaviour. One of the big trends that seems to be emerging is direct person-to-person social giving and lending. Connected to the ideas in my “big green bookshop” post, it brings together ideas about community, technology, charity and even business.
Kiva is one of the most well known of the new breed. It’s not really a fundraising operation – in the traditional, charitable sense of the word – because people don’t donate, they loan money (interest free) directly to entrepreneurs in developing countries. It’s more like an extension of the microfinance.
Other sites, like fundable.org, allow direct person-to-person fundraising.
Whilst not without their critics, sites like Kiva and Fundable are clearly very motivating to givers. You can make a direct connection between your money and the impact it is having. In fact, Kiva is currently suffering a bottleneck caused by too much money chasing too few approved opportunities.
My favourite, much smaller scale, idea in this area is Keta Sandlanders. I found them when I was looking at myfootballclub, the project that allowed people to become part owners of UK football club. Myfootballclub recently bought Ebbsfleet United after raising over a million pounds.
Keta Sandlanders allows you to become a member in the same way, but of a football club in Ghana. It’s a very neat fundraising idea and all it took was a website, a paypal button and some smart thinking.
