Social media for social change

Yesterday, I hit the 1000th post mark on this blog. Whew. (Anyone wondering why I haven't delivered those manuscripts to my publisher now knows the answer).

In honor of that, I'm simply going to use this post # 1001 to draw your attention to what the experts over at ReadWriteWeb are saying about How to use Social Media for Social Change. I'm tickled that many of the things they point to I've written about here. Some examples:

Previously covered on 2173:

• Mgive and mobileactive
  
• posornot
• blogging for good
• Facebook causes
• Netsquared etc.

Not covered on 2173:

• Twit for help
  
• Nerdfighters Power Project for Awesome
• charity:water
  

Amazing to me that RWW doesn't look at social media, social change and games.

Tags: philanthropy, socialchange, technology, innovation, rww, games, dml

Virtual worlds meet prizes meet public good

Three of the topics I write about frequently - philanthropy and prizes, philanthropy and technology, and philanthropy as a single part of the revenue stream for public good - have all come together in Second Life. Procrastinating from writing, I was perusing my blog reader when I noticed Cory Ondrejka's post about the launch of Second Life and the Public Good: A Community Challenge. Here are some of the details:

"The USC Network Culture Project invites the residents of Second Life to imagine new ways that virtual worlds such as Second Life can be used to make a contribution to the public good.

We are currently accepting proposals from groups, organizations, or individuals for projects that show how Second Life can enhance, develop, or sustain the public good. The best submissions will be selected based on how well they demonstrate the significance of virtual worlds for making an impact on society or culture.

---

Up to three finalists will be selected by community vote. The finalists will be provided with a $100,000L per month building stipend (and land, if required) for three months to execute their proposal. The projects will be showcased in Second Life at the State of Play conference to be held in Chicago, October 2008.

Projects may address any social need and could include conservation, human rights and international justice, global peace and security, reproductive health, digital media and learning, or juvenile justice. Proposals should provide a clear description of how the project uses the abilities of Second Life to advance the project goals and should provide clear metrics for assessing the success of the project.

Proposals should include:

• a completed application form that can be downloaded here
  Second Life and the Public Good: A Community Challenge Application
  
• a budget of in-world resources required to complete the project within a three-month timeframe
• a time line for completion including milestones and metrics for success
• a listing of team members

Proposals may be submitted to networkculture@gmail.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by June 1, 2008 for consideration."

As I was writing about the things that make games successful, I realized that it comes down to "incentives" - prizes are one kind of motivator; feedback, fun and a challenge are others. These attributes - more than the actual mechanisms of prizes or games - strike me as key elements to consider as we try to understand how markets and philanthropy are blending. On a related note, I learned yesterday of another "paid incentive for social ideas" marketplace - check it out at bigcarrot. This fits in the realm of InnoCentive and social idea marketplaces.


Full Disclosure: Please see here for my relationships to MacArthur Digital Media Initiative, a funder of the USC Network. As part of this work, as well as through connections at CompuMentor/Tech Soup/NetSquared (on whose board I served until end 2007), I have met Cory Ondrejka and am a regular reader of his blog.

Tags: philanthropy, prizes, technology, dml, usc, secondlife, 2L, macarthur, bigcarrot, innocentive, socialideasmarkets

Share the wealth...

Share the wealth of information, that is. Here are Tactical Philanthropy's comments on my company's (Blueprint Research & Design, Inc.) standard business practice of generating public reports from all the work we do for foundation clients.

Answers to FAQs:

• Why does Blueprint include this public report clause in its contracts? So that research on a social issue can be used by others who care about that issue.
  
• How do the foundations react? Once we explain what we're trying to do, most of the foundations that we work with are very positive. In fact, most of them have welcomed the opportunity as a chance to discuss Intellectual Property issues. Some foundations won't use our contract - this is fine because it is a chance to change their standard contracting language. Sometimes there isn't anything in the work that either we or the foundation thinks will be of interest to the public. The clause gives us a chance to discuss this upfront with the foundation.
  
• How can an advisory firm require something of a client? How can they not? Good working relationships are built on mutual trust and benefit. Our values are as important to us as are our clients' values - the contract negotiation stage of business development is one, of many, opportunities to express and stand by what we care about and are trying to make happen in the world. This is also why Blueprint is proud to be one of the nation's first B Corporations.
  
• Have you ever lost business doing it this way? Sure. We've also built long term relationships with key foundations, influenced their contracting procedures, opened up the door a little bit on IP issues in philanthropy, influenced our consulting firm colleagues, and leveraged dollars to certain issues by sharing the research.
  

This kind of sharing is all good. It is also not enough. Most foundation research is site and topic specific, written for a professional audience, and requires patience and context to be useful in making grant decisions. We are actively addressing these problems with several ventures we have underway, all of which are designed to help make the best information on what works and what is known available to donors and philanthropic organizations so that they can improve their giving and achieve their missions. This is why I spend so much time monitoring developments in communications technology, social media, and intellectual property. This is why I care about the intersection of business practices and philanthropy. This is why I care about innovation, prizes, or buzzwords. This is why I write about philanthropic capital markets and social idea markets. This is why I write this blog and why I founded Blueprint - to help build better systems for using research to improve giving.

OK - I am stepping down off the informercial soapbox now. Thanks, Sean, for the post.

Tags: philanthropy, knowledge, blueprintresearch, BRD

San Francisco Event - "Technology Empowers the Poorest"

"Technology Empowers the Poorest"
WEDNESDAY, May 21, 7:00 p.m.
Cowell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco
Sponsored by the Long Now Foundation

Iqbal Quadir is the legendary founder of GrameenPhone, which transformed his home country of Bangladesh in the 1990s and led the way for the cellphone revolution throughout the developing world. Currently Quadir heads the Legatum Center for Development and
Entrepreneurship at MIT and is building Emergence BioEnergy Inc., a project to develop electricity for the rural poor, using such devices as a fuel cell that runs on anaerobic bacteria. Linking new technology with the boundless resourcefulness of the poor drives innovation in surprising directions at surprising speed to surprising effect.

"Technology Empowers the Poorest," Iqbal Quadir, , 7pm, WEDNESDAY, May 21. The talk starts promptly at 7:30pm. Admission is free (a $10 donation is certainly welcome, not required).

Measuring failure

Two topics of frequent discussion in philanthropy - metrics and innovation - just came together in an interview I heard while listening to the radio. Kai Ryssdal of Marketplace spoke with A.G. Lafley, CEO of Proctor & Gamble and author of a book on innovation, The Game-Changer. You can read the transcript of the interview here or listen to it here. I perked up at this part of the interview:

Ryssdal: "You write in your book that about half of your product innovations fail."

Lafley: "There is a museum in up-state New York that is full of failed consumer products, and we have our fair share there. So, I think we know we're in a game where you fail a lot. Innovation is that kind of a game, and what we are trying to do is improve our success rate. And what we are also trying to do is fail earlier, fail faster and reallocate the resources from the failures . . . the humans, the human capital and the financial capital, so we can put the money against innovations that have a chance [at] success."

So there it is, a metric for innovation. At least half your attempts should fail. As usual, I have some questions:

• With all the philanthropic attention on innovation do you think this metric should translate over to philanthropic strategies?
  
• Is this an acceptable rate of failure? Too high? Too low?
• Do foundations and philanthropists and activists and social entrepreneurs know how "fail earlier, fail faster and reallocate the resources from the failures?"

By the way, when I search for "museum product failure new york" I get a link to the site of a product development consulting group. Seems that the company bought a 60,000 piece consumer product collection from Robert McMath, who had organized it as The New Products Showcase and Learning Center. Anyone know if this is the museum in question?

Tags: philanthropy, metrics, innovation

Game Changers

Reposted from The Huffington Post

The Wii Fit is not the only game changer in town. As everyone knows, the Wii - the motion sensor-enabled video game console that gets players up and moving - is the hottest thing around. The core set of Wii games including tennis, bowling, and boxing are a big hit with women, girls, elders and others - a wide (and profitable) demographic that never really found their thrill in Grand Theft Auto and its ilk.

But commercial platforms such as the Wii are not the only place you can find game changing action. Activists have slowly been moving their social change agendas onto various game platforms. Issues from hunger to genocide, HIV awareness, obesity, and the making of the federal budget have all been 'modded' into game formats - with the brains (and funders) behind them hoping to ride on the interactivity, fun, and step-by-step feedback loops that make games so absorbing as a way of engaging people in the issues.

A new game making game, called GameStar Mechanic is "innovative educational software that will teach junior high through university students about game design by letting them create and modify games." This effort, which partners researchers, game makers, and youth organizations is funded by The MacArthur Foundation as part of its Digital Media and Learning program.*

Other funders are also in the game - The Kaiser Family Foundation and others just launched PosorNot (a play on Hot or not) which is aimed at debunking myths about HIV. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a large supporter of GamesforHealth. Hopelab created RE:Mission and the Ruckus Nation game contest. I'm on the board* of GamesForChange which receives funding from MicroSoft, MacArthur, and others (especially for its annual festival, coming up in NYC June 2-5). In April (just in time for tax season), American Public Media, The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting launched BudgetHero, a game in which players get to allocate the federal budget. You can get the game widget here.

Data on the effectiveness of these games is still being collected - HopeLab has done several very cool studies of information retention, brain scans, and patient behavior regarding their drug protocols. Bringing games together with social agendas is not simple. There is still a lot to learn about how and why and when games work to help people learn. And, as every parent knows, stuffing education and information into a game isn't going to fool the kids for long - it is sort of the equivalent of trying to hide the peas in the french fries. But we are beginning to understand how interactive, engaging platforms can be structured as learning environments, as well as public message systems. As more and more gamers grow into decision-makers and more and more of us spend more and more time on the web, on our mobiles, and on games, it makes sense to get the info where the attention is.

*Full Disclosure: I am on the board of GamesForChange and my company, Blueprint Research & Design, advises the MacArthur Foundation on its Digital Media and Learning program and has consulted with The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. I served as a (volunteer) judge for HopeLab's Ruckus Nation. I do not own a Wii but I do play games on my cell phone. I am a regular NPR/APM listener (and a supporter of my local public radio stations).

Tags: philanthropy, socialchange, g4c, gamesforchange, rwjf, kff, macarthur, dml, digitalmedia, games, budgethero, gamestarmechanic

More improvements for social idea markets

This post on improving markets for social ideas mentioned InnoCentive - an online marketplace connecting people with ideas to institutions that can make them real (in both social and commercial spheres). The CEO of InnoCentive just added a comment, which you can read here, but he notes two things they are working on:

"First, in the next few months, we will be introducing flexible discussion boards to some of public areas of our marketplace, including the ares that serve Foundation challenges. We would actually encourage you and the community to utilize the discussion boards to discuss and make known needs and resources. While not exactly a "Craigslist" taliored to your need, feel free to use the boards to the extent it is helpful.

Second, we have been thinking through models that have the potential to match funding sources with ideas with "solver" community. No promises here, but within a few months we should have a stronger position on this."

This is exciting and I'll try to keep an eye out for more as this develops. I just read of another such marketplace coming online, called Planet Eureka. This looks purely commercial for now. And don't forget other related resource, including socialedge, Kluster,* and Social Innovation Camp. Still not quite the fiscal agency matchmaking service I was thinking about, but now there are plenty of platforms to use to match your great social idea with an existing organization that can make it real.


*Kluster just launched a KlusterNews site. You can see the Kluster founder explain the lessons learned, "Seven weeks in and a million dollars down the drain, we know what works," founder Ben Kaufman said in a video he posted to YouTube." Quoted on CNET.

Tags: philanthropy, socialentrepreneurs, socialcapitalmarkets, marketplaces.