PHILANTHROPY 2173

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Buzzword #6 - Embedded Giving

"What if every major event or financial transaction had philanthropy built-in?" That question was raised back in June by Matt over on xigi.net. It gave rise to the creation of our sixth buzzword of 2007 - embedded giving.

Embedded giving is the (apparently) increasingly common practice of building a philanthropic gift into another, unrelated, financial transaction. For example, rounding up your phone bill to make a gift to charity. Or using your own grocery bag and donating the nickel that the store gives you to a local homeless shelter. Or using a specific search engine because it donates a small portion of its advertising revenue to charity. Or mistaking that line on your credit card receipt for the place to calculate the tip, only to discover you've just made a gift to fight childhood hunger. Or adding $1 to your drug store, grocery store, gas station purchase to fight juvenile diabetes, MS, or any other number of diseases.

But here's the thing about embedded giving. No one is counting it. Some of the corporations that sponsor these opportunities count the gifts in their total charitable giving. Others count it as part of their marketing budgets. There's no consistency and no breakout of numbers, so we really don't know how much money is raised this way, for what, and by whom.

Embedded giving is all about making the giving easy for individuals. This ease also makes it painless - another dollar here, a few cents here. Few individuals can even remember what they donate to in this way; and no one reports it.

So what happens if we make giving so easy we forget about it? And if we actually "embedded giving" into every transaction, isn't that another way of making something a tax? After all, the folks who sell E-Z passes and other toll passes to motorists know full well that making it easier and faster to get through the toll booth, also makes it easier and faster to increase the toll rates.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Donors Choose Bloggers Challenge

The DonorsChoose Bloggers Challenge will end in a few hours. With the help of my seven year old, I calculate the running totals so far as:

>$365,000 raised
From more than 3000 donors
Benefiting more than 71,000 school kids

Average gift per donor: $100+

I'm sure DonorsChoose will announce final numbers tomorrow. In the meantime, consider this:

The organization is now on the radar screen of at least 3000 more people than it was just one month ago
The cost of each of those 3000 gifts was minimal - the bloggers did all the work
One blogger raised more than $100,000 for DonorsChoose.

My bet: we'll see plenty more of this kind of fundraising in the next few months. And then we won't.

Goblins and giving

This is cross-posted from The Huffington Post

What's the link between Halloween and philanthropy? Well, there is the obvious fact that unlike any other day of the year tonight is the one night that you can knock on your neighbor's door, ask for something for nothing, and expect to get it. There also is (used to be?) the connection between Halloween trick-or-treating and UNICEF - a tradition I grew up on and one I was thrilled to see reborn when my son brought home from school one of those familiar orange penny boxes to carry around with him this evening.

Philanthropy has grown far away from this basic human need - to give when asked. Let me say that again - the basic human need is to give when asked; its not the need to ask. When we think about philanthropy, charity, foundations, the $300bb a year Americans give and the billions more that move from person to person, community to community around the globe, we quickly forget that all that money is the result of innumerable acts of basic humanity.

This year, as we take our kids (or ourselves) from door to door, maybe we can remember the power that comes with giving. Even if it is just a candy bar given to a goblin. Or a penny to UNICEF.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Foundations and poverty

Philanthropy has taken a bit of heat lately for not doing enough about poverty. First came the Google report that only a small percentage of philanthropic giving goes to poverty alleviation, either domestically or internationally.

Then comes a rejuvenated public discussion (I'd call it a debate but I don't think its happening broadly enough yet) about tax breaks for charitable giving and whether or not they should be aligned in some way with broad public priorities or more generous for poverty and human welfare than for, say, education or the arts.

And I am just ending 3 days in Santa Monica spent at the Professional Leaders Project ThinkTank3, where a select slice of American Jewry is discussing and modeling and creating leadership opportunities for young adults (20 somethings). In this context the discussion of philanthropy and community priorities came up over and over again.

Coincidentally, a few large American foundations (Annie E Casey, EOS) also chose today to launch a new Spotlight on poverty that will attempt to bring the issue to the forefront of the 2008 Presidential campaign. This is a somewhat similar goal to the Strong American Schools campaign funded by the Gates and Broad Foundations to bring education to greater prominence in the discussion.

Check out the Spotlight on Poverty website for a one-stop resource with links to community data, local and national poverty fighting efforts, political viewpoints and platforms as expressed by candidates of both major political parties. Perhaps this effort will join forces with 10Questions, CurrentTV, ThinkMTV, MySpace, and the YouTube debates and actually demand political action.

You can submit information on local efforts, access databases and resources, and follow the discussion as it progresses through the campaign. I hope to get some video footage to post over at the Giving Channel - and look forward to seeing the conversation and discussion provoke engaged, effective action.