Cause and Effects

Sometime back I’d written about the potential of the net, and especially the latest community version to do good to humanity. One of the startups that was presented at TC50 (had written about TC 50 in the last post) was CauseCast. Its aim is to bring ten non profit companies into the spotlight every month. How does it do this? By getting celebrities involved, and communicating about the companies through videos, events, and showcasing the activities it does. Every activity has its own celebrity who champions the cause. The causes are broadly divided into animals, arts, community, environment, health, human rights and youth. They also have contextual news for each category. For example, I saw a  news item on Army killings in Manipur under Human Rights. The best part is how it involves the user community. The user can make a portfolio of the causes he has donated for. Over a period of time the list would start reflecting the performance of the companies. The portfolio can also be publicised using a widget on the user’s blog, for example. 

There are ways for brands to get involved in philanthropy too, in ways which make business sense. Philips has a wonderful program, referred to as ‘philanthropy by design’ which is aiming at social innovation, designing things that help bridge the gap between technology and people. In what’s a very long term vision, it tries to “provide people the means of generating the income necessary to pay for your products.” There’s an interesting Indian piece of this here, which explains how this designing is tied up with employment opportunites and micro financing. The ICICI effort is more than a month old, but is in context. ICICI tied up with an NGO named Dignity Foundation, and created a portal DignitySecondCareers.org, whose aim is to “provide the retirees a platform to explore opportunities that will enable them to continue to utilize their expertise and to encourage them to lead an active post-retirement life.” (via WATBlog).

As the examples show, these initiatives may not be the cash cow projects in terms of revenue, but the effect it has on the social and human side of life, and the equity it can thereby create for the brand is immense. With some tweaking in the organisation’s mindset/perspective, it can gain tremendous long term benefits.

Mashable has a good read on starting local support systems, and again, bridging the gap between the real world and social media.  Speaking of local causes, I happened to come across Rang De (via HeadStart), a non profit organisation that has set up a Peer to Peer (P2P) lending platform to connect the socially conscious with those who are financially disadvantaged. “Rang De’s mission is to make microcredit accessible to all by lowering interest rates by doing things differently.” I went through the site, and their model is win-win for both parties – the lender and the borrower. Yes, you would get better returns if you rode the sensex waves, but hey, if that’s the criterion, this endeavor is not for you. I think the concept, like Kiva, is amazing and begins to address India’s substantial need for micro credit very well.  The geographical spread is right now limited to Maharashtra and TN, but its quite scalable, I think (i already saw 3 towns about to be added).  I am going to try Rang De out very very soon, and shall update on my experience. Meanwhile, on an immediate basis, I’m playing the quiz, in this very cool effort – HelpBihar.in, by Quasar Media and Cadence to help those affected in Bihar. Go on, do your bit.

A few days back, we (my wife and I) made what some might call a strange decision. We chose to go through Give India, rather than Helpage, both are non profit organisations operating in roughly the same space, though Helpage is more focused. The strangeness comes from the fact that Give india takes a percentage of the sum we give for covering its expenses, Helpage doesn’t mention that. The value it adds, and the reason we shifted loyalty was because it sends us a mail every month (or whenever you make a donation) giving us the details of exactly how and on whom the money was spent. While Helpage’s site is far better designed than Give India, the latter has a web 2.0 characteristic I value – transparency. I guess even when we save humanity, we have changed such that we need some accountability. 😐

until next time, be human