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November 13, 2006

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Gerry

As always the devil is in the details. I'm more cynical than ever about Onet. The latest round of community funding has even less community input than the last two. It's pretty depressing.

Gerry

On the plus side, I just booked my travel to the EFN gathering/workshop coming up in a couple of weeks. I think it will be very productive.

klauswit

"we look for three things in our investements"

1. Level playing field, open access.

2. Communication around shared interests, people connecting to to other people

3. Sense of ownership, are they engaged.

Three cheers for formalism.

Have you designed a business model that maintains those three "values" [sic].

Phil

An example is loaning money to extremely poor people at rates low enough to undercut the local loan sharks who charge say 35% or more. That, I believe, is the biggest grant Pierre has made, to Tufts, to pioneer commercially viable micro-lending so that Tufts, after all expenses, nets 9% on the backs of the worlds poorest people. Probably will do more good than harm, but it is hard to see this as advancing philanthropy. Business is good; philanthropy is good. But no good comes of starting a loan sharking business and calling it "giving."

Margaret

http://www.mediaforchange.org/index.php?title=Pierre_Omidyar

Feel free to add to the article.

Phil

Thanks, Margaret, blogged it.

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