Peter Deitz raises the right questions about micro-philanthropy:
As legions of digital natives start to self-identify as citizen
philanthropists, they should be given online tools that permit them to
do more than donate to an existing organization or recruit friends to a
cause.
Instead, micro-philanthropists should be as respected as large-scale
philanthropists. They should be treated in a way that implies that they
can address the root causes of a problem and spread the knowledge
required to resolve similar problems.
The following exemplify deeper level corrective actions that social action platforms could facilitate:
- Creating feedback mechanisms where individuals and beneficiaries of nonprofit programs can immediately inform the program staff whether a service is having the desired effect;
- Pioneering innovative models for philanthropy where individuals can coalesce into collective grant-making bodies that fund community-level social change projects;
- Building a tax-deductable open marketplace for funding outstanding individuals and informal projects;
- Using constituent and donor pressure to bring about new forms of collaboration among nonprofit groups and foundations.
Will platforms like Facebook Causes, DonorsChoose, Kiva, Change.org, and SixDegrees render top-down organizations obsolete? Do they bypass old-school methods of fundraising and grant-making? Have they planted the seeds for a society composed of highly motivated micro-philanthropists? When the millions of active users on these platforms are busy addressing root causes instead of symptoms, then my answer to these questions will most certainly be, “yes, yes, and yes.”
I think, Peter, we are now at the "how, how, how" stage. You have any idea how small gifts can be aggregated to address root causes without the intervention of a centralized entity directing the flows of information and grants? How would the open networked system isolate the root causes and rally support? What is missing that we don't have now? Is it the technology that is missing or the wisdom?
