Hispanics in Philanthropy is an association of foundation executives committed to expanding Hispanic leadership and giving and an international funders' collaborative. After many years of grantmaking and technical assistance to small organizations it has turned to the crowdfunding space to push this work even further. It has partnered with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Western Union, and California Wellness Foundation to launch HIPGive, a crowdfunding platform that will encourage giving to educational efforts. If it taps into a tiny percentage of the remittance flows in and among Hispanic communities those funds would add up quickly.
Why does the world need another crowdfunding platform? For some communities it may seem there are too many crowdfunding options (white-middle class-iphone-case designers, for example). For others, such as individual donors in Latin America, crowdfunding tools may not be familiar or trusted. HIPGive is about the networks, relationships and skills that it takes for a small organization or group of individuals to run a successful crowdfunding campaign. HIP is providing technical assistance on everything from marketing to matching grants. This is a great example of weaving together informal and formal giving, institutions like foundations with individuals and families of givers. It may also help claim all the many definitions and personas of philanthropists. The current site is being optimized for mobile use - as with any technology project it's constantly in process.
NewMusic USA is a grant making organization that supports the creation of new music. The organization resulted from the merger of two older organizations. When the new entity was formed it had the opportunity to design its grantmaking process from scratch. Kevin Clark and other members of the staff turned to Kickstarter for inspiration, looking for ways that the application and reporting process could be useful to grantees rather than laborious and uncertain. The result? A participatory grants process that involves community advisors. A reporting process that uses the marketing of that grantees do of their concerts as the reporting for the grant. Yes, you read that right - the outreach activities of the grant and the grant reporting are one and the same. NewMusic provides an online system that lets grantees host web pages, concert announcements, do outreach via social media and count all that attention that gets generated via these systems as their grantee reporting! Imagine that, a grants reporting system that is actually helpful to the grantee. Who woulda thunk?
NewMusicUSA recognized that it could reinvent grantmaking processes using current technologies and behaviors. Because the organization is itself part of the community it serves (musicians helping musicians) the staff knows how real the time demands are on these artists. It designed the funding process to help with marketing and time demands, as well as money. It
Both of these are examples of Values Aligned Technology. HIPGive has designed into it's crowdfunding efforts the trust, linguistic, cultural, and design features needed to encourage its community to try the platform. Crowdfunding - it's not just for hipsters anymore! Similarly, NewMusic USA could knew enough to design reporting defaults that served the applicants in a positive way. In doing so, the defaults it set for it technology mirror (and have nudged along) the default values in the relationships between funders and grantees.
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