Who's Got The Power?

I read a most interesting article this week from the Stanford Social Innovation Review (I know, I know, it sounds pretentious, but I happily admit I don't understand most of it).

However, this particular article opined that if charities don't start giving their donors more control, influence, and ultimately power, they are just going to take it anyway.

In the USA there is a website called Network for Good, which acts as a portal for giving to a range of non-profit organisations. And it is big business. So far more than $137m has been donated to more than 25,000 organisations in the USA.

Currently one in five donors choose to be anonymous, with the obvious implications that brings - no thanking, no reporting back, no chance to ask again, no relationship.

Possibly, the author suggests, it is partly because donors like what the charity does, but not the charity itself. That they do not buy into a contract that basically says, 'Once you have given us a gift we have the right to contact you however we want, whenever we want, about whatever we like.'

Network for Good allows them to simply and easily opt out of this contract.

Interesting stuff.

Another site coming soon in the US is Hopeful Network (planned for early 2008). Like others before it, it is a social networking site except this one looks to link people by their interest in a particular cause (a non-profit called Giving Children Hope), which they may then support, or volunteer for. You can set up interest groups, give money, raise awareness, campaign, or simply network with other supporters on or offline.

You can see both at http://www.networkforgood.org/ and http://www.hopefulnetwork.org/