Techno-Philanthropy Initiative

How do we use technology to help humanity?

This blog is about technology-enabled, inclusive philanthropy and this topic is more than just a blog. If after reading this, you feel inspired to be a part of it, there is a direct way to get engaged in supporting the cause of your interest.

Before I get deeper into it, I want to give a bit of background by what I mean by the term Techno-Philanthropy. According to Webster’s Dictionary, philanthropy is defined as “goodwill to fellow members of a human race, especially active effort to promote human welfare.” Humans’ desire to help others less fortunate is innate as can be seen by the outpouring of donations around any disaster or supporting any cause. Any meaningful humanitarian effort requires three key elements:

1. Money – the supply of funds toward a ‘cause.’

2. Organizational skills that manage the funds for effective service to those in need

3. Care providers who directly serve the people in need

When an initiative combines all three of the above effectively toward any cause, great results follow. For example, in what I call Philanthropy 1.0, the philanthropist financier was a single individual, e.g., Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Howard Hughes or John D. Rockefeller. They worked for their entire lives to create an immense amount of wealth and when they passed away, a portion of their wealth was put into a charitable use: to be donated to charitable foundations. These entities found expert professionals and managers and staff to manage the causes they supported, and employed workers or funded specific organizations that provided exceptional service with the same focus. The important aspect of Philanthropy 1.0 is that the charity organizations took shape with little or no direct involvement from the donors, often posthumously.

Philanthropy 2.0 is what we have come to expect from today’s ultra-wealthy, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Ted Turner. They spent their working years to create and accumulate large amounts of wealth, and are now actively involved in directing, managing and raising awareness of the causes they support. The important part is that the wealth creators are directing their own talent and managerial skills which they applied previously toward commercial success, now toward addressing big humanitarian challenges.

Philanthropy 3.0 is how organizations such as the American Red Cross and The United Way and many religious charities operate. The money comes from donations and grants from a number of sources including everyday people. They have professionals as managers of the funding and manage it most effectively to send volunteers to the regions affected by natural calamities or to the people in need. [In a sense, the same method is practiced by the state and the federal government to fund welfare initiatives. The only difference here is that the ‘fundraising’ part is mandatory, i.e., through tax collection and the benefits are managed by large bureaucracies!]

What all of these models have in common is that their ‘causes’ are determined by either bureaucrats, wealthy individuals or organizational leaders, rather than the individuals who provide the money - yes, the individual always has the freedom to support causes championed by the organizations but that is where it ends. Secondly, they run on a large scale, with each organization raising tens to hundreds of millions to several billion dollars.

What I will be featuring on this blog is a novel way for anyone to be a philanthropist, determining the cause they want to support, in the region they want to focus on and to learn everything about the local organizations that have been successful over a long time serving the local population in a given area, and then either directing their funding or volunteer effort (or both) to support these organizations directly. I will be highlighting organizations periodically that are providing exemplary humanitarian services and direct you to a companion crowdfunding site I have created to raise funds toward supporting their cause. I will also be bringing interviews and discussion with the founders and creating a dialog between the humanitarians interested in supporting them, hopefully blurring the line between the donors and providers to broaden the reach of both.

As you can see, my goal is to apply the technological tools that are widely available almost for free to create a global community of humanitarians that is inclusive, as diverse as the participants want it to be, and as geographically broad as the interest, with the richness of causes supported as well as funds raised only limited by the participants.

There are crowdfunding platforms available today that provide some of these features but their beneficiary organizations are mostly limited to developed countries. This is because of a dearth of verifiable information identifying the ‘Non-Government Organizations’ or NGOs doing exceptional work, and there is no direct way to connect with them to provide support. This is the goal of my effort.

In the nearby sections, you will find the four organizations I am featuring now with some basic details. My hope is that I can create a searchable database of organizations and volunteers wanting to connect and support.

I believe is that giving in any form – effort, energy, resources – is receiving of joy out of finding a purpose and hopefully this blog and associated fundraising and connecting volunteers with regional organizations will spread this joy. Thank you for visiting my blog. This is just a humble beginning with high hopes.