By Lee Fox for Cause Capitalism.
Philanthropy is characterized by specific behaviors in the context of compassion (the love of humanity), action (volunteerism), donation (the gift of money) and collaboration (partnerships). Successful social enterprises require each of these elements to healthfully co-exist.
Of course, all it takes is the pinch of a bad economy to throw the harmony off-key. Many nonprofits are experiencing the downwards spiral of donation dollars, for example, and need new ways to successfully move beyond their reliance of traditional donation in-takes.
Sharing their perspectives on this were John Brennan (OpenAction), Jacob Colker (The Extraordinaries), Christine Egger (Social Actions), Pamela Hawley (Universal Giving), Kari Hayden (Donors Choose), Dan Morrison (Citizen Effect) and Ben Rattray (Change.org) with Bill Scheurer (Karma Korn) moderating the workshop, “disruptive philanthropy.”
Taken from a term first coined by Clayton Christensen as “disruptive innovation,” the ideology of disruptive philanthropy identifies how a new population can participate in a way that was historically only accessible to an elite group.
In our traditional approach to cultivating philanthropists, the nonprofit sectors typically focused on wealthy people (or foundations) because substantial monies are required over sustained time to affect change for a recognized cause. In today’s world, however, we have to consider how the widespread adoption of digital technology is changing who can qualify as a philanthropist.
Bold crowd-sourcing innovations, such as conceived and built by the panelist organizations, have proven the emergence of “philanthropy 2.0” can cultivate a brand-new donor-base. Simplistically defined, crowd-sourcing is the online version of giving circles–whereby individual donors collectively pool their charitable monies.
In the case of Donors Choose, Kari shared that her organization treats the $1-dollar donor with the same gusto as a higher-net donor. Each donation receives a “thank you” from kids in the classroom whose project was funded online. Radical personalization like this is possible as a result of digital and social platforms.
But as Dan of Social Citizen was quick to point out, online mechanisms (mobile, social media, etc.) are not actually the differentiators in these new models of philanthropy. Instead, they need to be treated as “new plumbing” capable of enabling a low-cost way to celebrate and cultivate new philanthropists.
