Welcome to the new StartSomeGood.com: It’s time to start more good!

I posted a more personal, reflective announcement about the new version of StartSomeGood.com here last week but for those of you know don’t subscribe to the StartSomeGood weekly email (and you really should if that’s the case, see bottom-right of the homepage) I wanted to also share with you the email we sent to the 10,000 members of the site on Friday:

The new StartSomeGood

Hi everyone,

In place of our usual newsletter we wanted to send you a personal email this week to let you know about some exciting changes happening at StartSomeGood and reflect on where we are.

Most importantly and obviously we have just unveiled the new version of our site!

The new site is a big step forward for us and we hope you like it as much as we do. The major changes include a lighter, brighter and friendlier design, with a simplified navigation which gives greater prominence to success stories and information to help you succeed at crowdfunding. On the back-end there’s an upgraded project dashboard to help you launch and manage your campaigns and we’re adding alternatives to Paypal for donors (already available to US ventures, coming soon for everyone else).

But it’s not all about technology. We remain committed to a hands-on and partnership-driven approach which provides you with the advice and support you need to succeed.

So if you have an idea for a project which can improve the future of your community, why not start today? Register on our site and a member of our team will be in touch to help you design a campaign which will succeed.

Over the past two years, with your support, we have built a vibrant community of changemakers at StartSomeGood. Together, we have successfully funded 125 world-changing projects in 23 countries. We have supported social entrepreneurs as young as 16 and as established as Ashoka Fellows. We have helped launched projects as diverse as open-source mapping in Nepal to Sock Monkeys who fight cancer in the US, from social enterprise cafés in Cambodia to supporting young families in Australia and inspiring youth volunteering in 22 cities across America.

While we are proud of these successes there’s so much further we want to go. Our goal is to launch 1,000 new social initiatives over the next two years, transforming millions of lives around the world.

We would love your project, your idea, your community, to be part of that. Without you, we’re just a boring old website. With you, we can be an epic force for good in the world.

So don’t wait any longer. If you have the drive and the passion to make a difference we want to help.

Together, let’s start some good!

Sincerely,

Tom and Alex

Co-founders, StartSomeGood

PS. Read about the details of the new site and all the great activities we’re doing to celebrate, including a riddle hidden in the website and daily twitter chats this week on our blog.

PPS. Speaking about getting started you may be inspired by the first episode of our new podcast series Starting Good, featuring Charles Best, founder of DonorsChoose. Check it out.

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How should we frame crowdfunding?

So what is this thing we call crowdfunding? What’s going on here? What words should we use to describe the phenomenon and the behavior that propels it?

Some of the coverage of Kickstarter can border on the nonsensical, so unable are people to understand what strange force it is that propels its success.  For some it is investing, but they get flustered when the behavior doesn’t accord with their notion of how investors act. Others see Kickstarter as a form of charity and get snarky at its perceived shortcomings. But in fact it’s neither of these things.

What it is, mostly, is shopping.

This understanding allows us to gain perspective on what’s happening and the likely market size of different crowdfunding platforms and approaches.

Two recent posts show the difficulties people have in characterizing what’s happening on Kickstarter.

Mashable looks at the phenomenon through an investment frame and declares to their evident disgust that “investors” on Kickstarter are not entirely rational. (Because “real” investors are paragons of rationality of course) with the nice even-handed headline “Are Kickstarter Investors Idiots or Geniuses?”

The more cynical side of me wonders if we aren’t all being played. I mean, who wouldn’t watch these videos and want to make these projects a reality? I wonder if venture capitalists watch the pitches and laugh. Before they back something, they get a good look — a really good look — at the people, the product/prototype/project and the market. They know so much before they decide to invest at any level. For them, it’s all about measuring risk.

They go on to “wonder  if all of the buzz surrounding Kickstarter is now driving funds into projects that would otherwise never make it in the real world”, somehow excluding Kickstarter from their understanding of the “real world.” When you look at this behavior through the “investment” frame it can look strange, but when looked at through the shopping frame it makes perfect sense.

Meanwhile Crowdfund UK bemoans the lack of social impact of many of these projects who are, to their disappointment, acting like, well, most other technology or design startups:

OK Pebble were only expecting funding to cover 1000 watches and now 85,000 are pre-sold. There’s capacity and scale – and China is can knock out huge orders by their huge workforce in their huge factories. What’s the hurry? The campaign promised the watches by September. Would donors care if they were told that there a was a delay as they  were manufacturing in country – building the capacity of a recession hit area maybe? [This would be] good P.R. justifying the recent Jobs Act.

On Twitter the disappointment often takes on a more snarky or condescending tone as commentators confuse the fundamental reason why people are supporting Kickstarter projects:

Putting aside that StartSomeGood is a charity-oriented Kickstarter here too they are missing what’s really happening. Those who backed the Ouya video game console campaign on Kickstarter weren’t, in all likelihood, diverting money they would otherwise have given in charity. This came out of their consumption budget. That may bother you but then the issue you have is with capitalism, not with Kickstarter as such. But if instead of seeing it as just another market you think of Kickstarter campaigns as a form of very poorly-targeted charity, then your frustrations make sense, because you are operating in the wrong frame.

After raising a new record amount for a music project on Kickstarter Amanda Palmer (former lead  singer of The Dresden Dolls) got sick of dealing with this attitude as well and responded to some of the common questions on her blog:

Q: @JariPeltola
Are the donations tax-free income?

A: this is a good question mostly because of the way it’s worded.
to answer: no..all the money i’m making on CD and LP (and book, and everything) sales via kickstarter is taxable.
AND
these aren’t DONATIONS. that drives me crazy. they way we generally define “donating” is that you are giving something without any return: it’s a selfless, one-way gift to a cause. this is not that. every single person who’s backed the kickstarter is getting a product or a service (like a show) that they’ve paid for.
it’s more of a pre-order than a “fundraiser.” the language here gets important. it makes me cringe to read in the press that people have “donated $600k to amanda palmer’s kickstarter.” that makes it seem like i’m getting away like a bandit. as you can see above,i have to PAY for and manufacture (and pay the staff to help me create) all the products that are for sale. it’s almost as ridiculous as newsweek proclaiming that “people donated over $56 million dollars to apple in order to own the new iPhone 4G”. that would sound DUMB. this is a marketplace. an art marketplace, but still. it’s a real exchange. i have A Thing (it’s A Weird Thing, but still) and people are buying it….via the vehicle of kickstarter.

and…

Q: @cynicalinternet
deep question: didnt you feel guilty asking for handouts? like you should be able to get the money on your own somehow?

A:
@cynicalinternet, your name is just perfect.
ask me that question again….slowly. and this time listen to yourself.
“like you should be able to get the money on your own somehow”?
are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?
THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I FUCKING JUST DID.

There’s lots more of that sort of wisdom on her blog if you’re interested.

So let’s step back for a moment. Why do people give money to anything?

There are four basic motivations:
1.    A good or service we would like to consume (shopping)
2.    An expectation of future financial return (investment)
3.    A cause we care about and a change we want to support (philanthropy)
4.    A relationship we value (helping a friend or family member out).

While all of these factors are in play on Kickstarter with the exception of the still-illegal number 2, which is the driver of the mega-fundraisers you hear most about?

For mega campaigns like the Pebble Watch or Ouya it’s clearly number 1, shopping. People supported the Pebble Watch, the reigning Kickstarter fundraising champion, because they wanted a Pebble watch. It’s no more complex than that. The best name for what’s happening on Kickstarter (and Pozible in Australia) is pre-sale crowdfunding, as Amanda Palmer suggested. There’s a product you want and you can pre-order it, and in so doing provide the financial capital for that product to be produced. Charity this ain’t.

What is more charity-like is supporting projects because you want to see a social impact they are creating, an extrinsic reward, not because you want the intrinsic or material reward they are offering. This dynamic is strongly at place for campaigns on StartSomeGood and many on Kickstarter, Pozible and IndieGoGo as well, but it does not describe the success of the huge commercial fundraisers the commentators are usually trying to understand. Just as different markets focus on different types of goods (brand-name goods at Best Buy, hand-made at Etsy, second-hand at Craigslist) so too will different crowdfunding platforms likely success by focusing on these different forms of motivation.

Thinking about crowdfunding in this way also gives us a sense of how large the various markets will be. The question “can equity-based crowdfunding be as big as pre-sale [Kickstarter] crowdfunding?” is essentially asking if investing is going to be as big as shopping. Which is unlikely. When most people have a spare $125 to spend they usually put it towards something cool they want to consume, like a Pebble watch, and not into something which may, perhaps, provide a long-term financial return.

This isn’t to say that equity-based crowdfunding won’t be significant, it will be. It will create a new opportunity for entrepreneurs which will be enthusiastically and effectively embraced, leading to the launch of thousands of new companies. But it won’t surpass the amount spent on pre-purchasing books, CDs, concert tickets, technology, iPhone accessories and the like through platforms like Kickstarter.

We’re realistic about what this means for StartSomeGood, given our focus on the 3rd category of spending, philanthropy (with 1. and 4. playing very important roles as well). Few people put more into charity than they spend on their own consumption but many of us do put some portion of our income into good causes in order to support those less fortunate or to promote a change we wish to see in our community or the world. For some of us that portion is very significant and in aggregate the total contributed is huge.

Opening up this opportunity to new social innovators is critical to allowing new solutions to emerge and to empowering communities to create the future they need. We don’t need to be “bigger than Kickstarter” to realise this opportunity, we just need to be sustainable and effective in helping social entrepreneurs and non-profits to launch and grow socially impactful initiatives. (And we reject the comparison anyway, because we’re not competing with Kickstarter).

So thinking back to the crowdfunding (*ahem* peerfunding!) campaigns you have supported – what motivated your giving? And be honest, it’s okay to want cool stuff and get excited about new technology, but let’s understand that for what it is. And let’s complement that consumption by putting aside some funds to back social impact projects as well, because our world needs more changemakers and they need your support.

Image by THEfunkyman on flickr, made available on a creative commons license.

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The Development of a Social Entrepreneurship Ecosystem

Academy for Young Entrepreneurs poster (get a hard copy here)

Bill Drayton, founder of Ashoka and social entrepreneurship visionary, is fond of asking parents, firstly, “what would you do if your child was failing maths?” Parents instinctively have an answer for this. They would spend more time with them doing their home, get them a tutor, buy a math training program. Then he asked, “what would you do if your child was failing to develop as a changemaker?” and the answers come much less readily.

How do we create a culture of changemaking in young people? By giving them opportunities to share their ideas and participate in creating change of course!

You get better at maths by doing more maths. You get better at sport by joining a team,  practicing and playing. We have clear pathways for gaining expertise in academics and sports but it’s only more recently that we’ve begun to see a focus on providing changemaking experiences for people at a younger age and preparing them for active citizenship.

This is something Ashoka has understood for some time, having launched Ashoka Youth Venture over ten years ago to support 16-20 year-olds to develop their own initiatives, and more recently establishing AshokaU to foster a culture of entrepreneurship on college campuses.  In Australia we’ve seen the establishment of the School for Social Entrepreneurs, who run year-long courses supporting emerging social entrepreneurs of all ages to launch and scale social impact ventures and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, of Social Startup 48, a startup weekend-style event for aspiring changemakers. I’m proud to say all the above organisations are partners of StartSomeGood.

I’m also thrilled to see more and more organisations using StartSomeGood to fill gaps in this ecosystem of opportunity, inspiring, mentoring and training young people to create the future they wish to see.

One Can Grow finished a successful fundraiser on our site just a couple of weeks ago and is piloting a social entrepreneurship training program for students at three high school in Sydney. Hope Empowered is currently raising funds to engage an even younger cohort in entrepreneurial activity with their Academy for Young Entrepreneurs Initiative which will focus at the primary school level. (If you like the sound of this please chip in here). And the organisation I founded 12 years ago, Vibewire, has just, as of this writing, hit the tipping point of their StartSomeGood fundraising campaign to support three younger social entrepreneurs (under 35) to work on issues of critical importance including mental health and sustainable design.

At StartSomeGood we believe that social entrepreneurs need three types of capital to succeed: financial, intellectual and relational. Our mission is to reduce the barriers to raising early-stage financial capital for nonprofits and changemakers through peerfunding (also called crowdfunding). As these barriers come down more social entrepreneurs are stepping up to launch programs which general these other forms of capital, teaching skills and providing community for aspiring social entrepreneurs.

So these initiatives and those like them expand the answer to how to encourage your child to learn changemaking skills will become more apparent and a new generation of changemakers and entrepreneurs will, from an early age, know they can create the future we all need.

How do you think we could better support young changemakers?

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StartSomeGood is not competing with Kickstarter

I got a knock-back letter from an incubator the other day. Their reason: “concerns about your ability to out-execute the incumbent.” They are talking, of course, about Kickstarter, the massively-successful website who introduced most people to the idea of crowdfunding. This is a common confusion but completely misplaced in our opinion. I decided to tackle the issue head-on with a post on the StartSomeGood blog, which I’ve re-posted below. I’d love your thoughts on whether this explanation resonates with you and how we can best express our unique value and purpose.

The importance of diversity

We all talk about abundance vs scarcity, knowing logically that there is an abundance of resources to accomplish whatever anyone might want to do in this world, and yet many (most?) people have traditionally struggled to unlock the support they need to pursue their dreams.

So what would it take for all worthy endeavors to get the support they need?

In the real world you would need a range of venues available for different art forms and events just as you find in most cities – some generalist, hosting everything from basketball to ice dancing to concerts, others art form-specific but presenting a variety of acts and genres while other venues specialize in particular genres or performance forms. There are venues for speeches and workshops, parties and performances, for making things together or sitting back and watching. The vitality of a cities culture relies on this diversity of opportunities.

And this is precisely how the crowdfunding landscape is also playing out. For individuals with a passion for anything at all, there is IndieGoGo. For US-based artists and creative entrepreneurs with a product, there is Kickstarter while in Australia there is Pozible and in France Ulule. For journalists there is Spot.us and for app developers there is AppBackr.

And for social entrepreneurs and changemakers focused on making the world a better place, there is StartSomeGood.

Why we are not competing with Kickstarter

It is specifically in relation to Kickstarter that most confusion on this point arises.

Here at StartSomeGood we have heard these questions numerous times:

• How are you different to Kickstarter?
• Aren’t you just a niche Kickstarter?
• Why would people choose you instead of Kickstarter?
• How do you intend to compete with Kickstarter?

The confusion here is related to Kickstarter’s huge mindshare, being the way many people found out about crowdfunding, but also largely on us. It is our job to explain how what we’re doing fits into the current fundraising landscape and the ways in which we are distinctive even as we work towards a similar vision. This post is an attempt to do that.

This belief that we are not competing with Kickstarter is both a philosophical position but also a practical observation of the different markets we serve. The confusion arises here I believe because with all the media attention to Kickstarter people only casually connected to the space often think of them as an all-purpose crowdfunding platform. This leads some to wonder how we will thrive with our (seemingly) more-niche platform focused on social change projects.

But Kickstarter is not an all-purpose platform, their focus is very clear: creative projects only. They are strict in maintaining their criteria (and explicitly prohibit “charity projects”) and have a particular style of project they prefer – one with a clear, productized outcome which can be shared or consumed. So Kickstarter are a niche platform, just as we are, but in both cases our respective niche’s are enormous. To be sure, there are some situations where there is overlap, such as in the instance of a film about a social issue, a political app or a food justice project. But the vast majority of the ventures we exist to serve simply cannot participate on Kickstarter’s platform due to either not being a creative product or being based outside the United States.

Rather than write another 1,000 words on this, here’s a little Venn diagram we hope will succinctly illustrate the point:

So the concept that people need to “choose us over Kickstarter” is accurate only in a few specific instances; for most social impact ventures Kickstarter is not actually an available choice.

Kickstarter has given rise to countless new films, gadgets and art projects; StartSomeGood to brand new social change organizations.  Kickstarter has empowered video game makers, iPhone gadgeteers and t-shirt designers; StartSomeGood has empowered changemakers of all ages and from many countries to pursue their dreams.  Rather than choosing one platform over the other, in most cases it’s clear from the start which site is the best fit for which project, with our shared purpose of providing an opportunity to rally supporters around your vision being the common denominator.

Given how much there is that needs doing in the world and the people looking for tools to help them make it happen we believe there is a significant business opportunity to do for the social sector what Kickstarter have done for the creative sector. But by far more importantly, there is a huge opportunity, indeed, a need, to empower and inspire thousands of changemakers to create the future they want for their communities.

Allies, not competitors

This opportunity speaks to a bigger and more important philosophical point. We believe that the world is abundant with possibilities: world-changing ideas and changemakers ready to make them happen. We exist to help those changemakers go from idea to action and impact. We have always been enormously inspired by the impact Kickstarter have had in the creative industries. We aim to democratize the social sector, creating opportunities for new types of projects, diverse organizational forms and a new generation of changemakers, just as Kickstarter is democratizing cultural consumption and the creative industries.

We are in fact huge fans of Kickstarter. I myself have supported 36 projects on Kickstarter, which puts me in the top 1% of project backers, given that 84% of Kickstarter members have given to just a single project.

The sectors we focus on are the two most in need of disruption, as funding decisions in both the creative and social change sectors have traditionally been made by small groups far removed from those who most benefit from the work produced. Now social and creative entrepreneurs can go around these traditional decision-makers and turn directly to their communities for the support they need.

We are proud to be part of this movement to break down barriers and provide the tools to help people do epic things. Rather than competing StartSomeGood and Kickstarter are creating the same future: one that is more democratic, open, participatory and exciting.

In Summary, How StartSomeGood is Different from Kickstarter:

• They are for creative projects while we are for social impact projects;
• They require a US bank account to launch a campaign while we accept projects from 110 countries (anywhere you can set up a paypal account);
• They use an all-or-nothing model and we use a Tipping Point model;
• Kickstarter was founded by creatives for creative entrepreneurs, StartSomeGood was founded by changemakers for social entrepreneurs.

If you are still unsure please get in touch and let’s talk about which platform might be right for you.

So, did that clear things up?

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Why I am not at SXSW

I was meant to be at SXSW this weekend, co-facilitating a “core conversation” on Monday with Stacey Monk from Epic Change about “positively inspired change campaigns” and hosting Pitch Some Good at Center61 that night. And seeing old friends and making lots of new ones, being overwhelmed by the options for free events and parties, listening to some amazing innovators and storytellers and seeing the latest in technology and marketing. You know, SXSW!

But instead I’m here in Vancouver writing you this note to say I’m not making it.

My plans were thrown completely off-course last week when I was rejected for a visa to re-enter the US. Not only did this make SXSW almost impossible, it looked for a time like I wouldn’t get back in at all to help K pack up our house and say goodbye to all my friends in person before our move home to Australia April 1 (so soon!).

The good news is on my second attempt on Wednesday in Calgary I was approved. Not only did they give me the single-entry visa I was asking for, they gave me a 5-year version. Which is awesome, but kinda weird to go from not allowed in at all to free to come-and-go for the next five years. Not that I’m complaining, but it does prove my point about the validity of my case and how I probably should have been approved in the first place, in which case I would have been in Austin by now.

But at this stage, having only got my passport back yesterday, is too late for me and SXSW this year. StartSomeGood is a bootstrapped startup and as such my co-founder Alex and I mostly pay our own way to events such as this. After two return Vancouver-Calgary trips in the past week and a second $140 visa appointment fee, combined with the brutal cost of the last-minute flights available from here to Austin, I came to the sad, but accurate, conclusion yesterday that I just can’t afford it anymore, especially with the impending costs of moving home and re-establishing ourselves in Australian in anticipation of the arrival of our first child in August.

So here I am, 2,574 miles from Austin and the event I had such a blast at last year and was so looking forward to this year. But this isn’t meant to be a mope, just an explanation I can link to as I keep getting tweets and messages asking me where I am.

I’m a got lemons/make lemonade kinda guy, so my fall-back plans are pretty excellent. I’m about to head over to Vancouver Island for the weekend to get some nature (and some good music) into me, both of which I crave after the intense stresses of the past week. The forest is where I go to unwind and this, more than the frenetic exhilarating intensity of SXSW, is probably what I need most emotionally right now.

On Monday I’m catching the train to Portland where that night the Social Media Users Group at Collective Agency, run by my good friend Todd Pitt from Zero Strategist, are kindly hosting a social entrepreneurs salon for the occasion. If you in Portland please come along and if you know someone else who would find this interesting please send them the details. I’ve never been to Portland and am really thrilled I get to check it out, even if only briefly (24 hours before back on the train to San Francisco) in the final weeks of our time in the US. And I love a good train trip, probably my favourite way to travel.

So that’s what’s going on – thanks for asking!

If you are in SXSW please check out Pitch Some Good on Monday night at Center61 – RSVP and details here - where 8 social innovators will share their story and ask for your support. The event features a live crowdfunding exercise which will determine which of the ventures gets the $1000 main prize contributed by RackSpace, in addition to the funds donated by the crowed on the night.

Whatever you are doing this weekend, have an amazing time.

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Apologies that may or may not be in order

From StreesideSF.

Life has been so busy lately that it would make many a good blog update but rarely do I seem to have the time, or maybe the patience, with bashing out a proper post at the moment. Part of this is just the raw hours I’m working across three major projects. Part of it is that so much of all these projects takes place on m computer my eyes get tired and I crave time away from this particular screen.

I’m not sure I should feel very guilty about this – I never have been a terribly serious blogger – but I do. At least some of the time. It feels like a goal I’m failing at, even if in many ways it’s been sacrificed so I can achieve the more important goals of the moment. But it’s easy to pick apart our own behavior I think, to be more critical and less forgiving than we would be with a friend.

The truth is I am actually blogging quite a lot at the moment – more than ever before – but just not here very often.

Over the past 9 months I’ve set up a couple of visual and short-form blogs on posterous. One, Bits & Bytes, features my favourite bits of media, information and ephemera I find online. The other, StreetsideSF, is a shared blog with K featuring the street art we see all around us in San Francisco. IF you haven’t checked them out yet please do and consider subscribing.

In addition I currently run two blogs for HopeLab – our main Sticky Notes blog on HopeLab.org and the blog at the JOYcampaign website I manage, both of which I regularly contribute to myself – and I try to write for the StartSomeGood blog whenever I can manage.

We are also eight days away from leaving for Burning Man, and it’s been another epic organizational challenge to pull together a theme camp primarily of first-timers from all around the world. I can’t wait to move beyond the organizing phase, hit the desert and get dusty with my family (literally, my sister is coming) and friends.

Despite all this busyness I’m having a lot of fun, challenging myself to get a lot done and feeling extremely fortunate to be able to work on such exciting and meaningful projects with people I admire. There’s nothing I would rather not be doing. I would like to post here more often however

I hope everything is great in your world and that life is full of joy.

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Peers vs Crowds

Language matters. It frames our expectations and can limit or expand our thinking.

I’ve written before about my preference for the term “peerfunding” over “crowdfunding”. More recently I’ve begun to see a spectrum of activities which can be more crowd or peer-focused, making both terms relevant but the distinction important.

To me, crowdsourcing is a competitive process – the crowd is either helping select amongst alternatives or competing to win an award. As an example, GeniusRocket is a design crowdsourcing site – their community competes via the submission of ideas and proposals, to have their work selected and be paid by GeniusRocket’s clients.

The Pepsi Refresh Project is another example of the crowd in action. The crowd is helping Pepsi select where to invest its philanthropic dollars. It’s crowdsourcing because it’s a large mass of people who have little-to-no contact with each other making submissions, in the form of votes here and designs with GeniusRocket, to the organizer of the contest.

What Creating the Future is doing, on the other hand, is peersourcing. They have invited their community to co-create the criteria and process of the scholarship fund they recently raised funds for on StartSomeGood.

In this instance the participants are not an anonymous “crowd” and they are not competing with each other. Instead they are co-creating something together. They are peers, colleagues, collaborators. Whilst the number of responses isn’t large the quality of thinking behind the responses makes them enormously valuable.

If we simply refer to Pepsi Refresh, GeniusRocket and what Creating The Future are doing as “crowdsourcing” I think we are missing a key differentiator between them. I am loath to create more jargon but I fear that calling collaborative efforts like Creating The Future, or the way Beth Kanter aggregates contributions and best practices through wiki’s, Facebook and her blog crowdsourcing is to miss the most important aspect of these approaches: that they build a community of peers and invite co-creation, rather than setting up the “crowd” to compete for the organizers favor.

I believe what we and our ventures do at StartSomeGood is peerfunding rather than crowdfunding. On StartSomeGood, as with other fundraising platforms for entrepreneurs and creatives, the majority of the funding comes from the fundraisers existing community. Supporters feel an affiliation for the project and affection for the organizer, or connect to the cause via a shared identity or experience. These funders are not a crowd, they are peers, and they will be your most important asset in creating change.

I’m thrilled to see a project which was successfully peerfunded on StartSomeGood now move on to peersourcing the details of how the scholarship will work. Check out their thinking so far and feel free to contribute!

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The Whirlwind That is my Life

My co-founder Alex and I at the StartSomeGood launch

Oh blog, I do neglect you so. Sorry friends and readers! The last month has been an exhilarating, exhausting and slightly manic time. I started my new job at HopeLab then launched StartSomeGood.com one week after that. A week after that I left for 10 days to South by Southwest Interactive in Austin followed by the Nonprofit Technology Conference in DC, both amazing near 24-hour-a-day festivals of ideas, technology and connections. So of course as soon as I was back in San Francisco my body got its revenge for all I had put it through by promptly getting sick, something I’m just recovering from now. And next week I leave for a week in Australia! As I was telling a friend yesterday: when my life isn’t overwhelming I tend to make it so but sometimes in the midst of it I wonder if this is really the best way to live.

But truly I do love having things to keep me busy, new ideas to explore and causes I care about to promote. HopeLab are being a wonderfully supportive home for me (this is what greeted me when I arrived this morning) and I’m really excited for the unique and inspiring work we’ll be doing this year. Keep an eye out for our Joy Campaign (or, better sign up for an alert when it goes live), which is launching soon and will be a lot of fun.

There is a depth and intention to HopeLab’s work which I have rarely felt. A disciplined focus on where we believe we can make the greatest impact but also an enormous generosity in supporting the personal development of our staff and in sharing what we’ve learned with anyone interested. My job is to innovate around this sharing, seeking new ways of telling our stories, disseminating our research findings and foregrounding our culture. My colleagues are, everyone of them, kind, patient and enthusiastic.

Meanwhile StartSomeGood has gotten off to the kind of start I could only have dreamed of. Our launch party in Washington DC during NTC was incredible: an amazing collection of friends, past colleagues from both Ashoka and Small Act, NTC attendees and StartSomeGood partners and ventures. The energy was, truly, magical, filled with a shared vision for change and a sense of infinite possibility. Huge thanks to our sponsors Gotham Wines, Tevolution, nuubiachocolat and our very gracious hosts the Case Foundation. You can see more photos and read a recap on the StartSomeGood blog.

The activity on the site is equally inspiring. Our first two campaigns have ‘tipped’, that is reached their minimum goal to guarantee they get paid-out: HairFlare for Hope and Pick Up America’s The Bagabonds. Several other great campaigns are charging towards their tipping points including Creating the Future, TakeAShine and Partnered for Success. Please check out these great campaigns and the others on the site – I hope you find something you are inspired to support!

I am back in Australia in a week (for a couple of weddings) and will be doing speaking engagements in three states to promote StartSomeGood, as part of our launch of non-US ventures. In Sydney I’ll be attending Vibewire’s 10th birthday celebration, which honestly blows my mind. I’ll be posting the details of all the events shortly, I hope to see many of you at some point during my too-brief visit.

Much as I loved my recent conference-hopping (I have wanted to attend both events ever since getting to the US) and I’m excited for my visit home and the events I’m doing, and I cherish the wonderful people all this movement brings me into contact with, I’m looking forward to getting back to San Francisco and being still for a little while (apart from a long weekend at Yellowstone in May). I’m looking forward to digging in and creating an impact at HopeLab, really taking the reins of our digital communications and strategy. Most of all I’m looking forward to constructing a sustainable life for myself that balances and honours my commitments and relationships in a way that is impossible when you’re constantly coming and going.

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Announcing StartSomeGood

A few months ago a friend from DC, Alex Budak, called me about a social enterprise he was starting called StartSomeGood. The idea, simply put, was to create a crowdfunding (or peerfunding) platform for social change initiatives. He wanted to know if I wanted to be involved in an advisory capacity, helping him design the communications and outreach strategy for the company. I was happy to agree, both because I’m always up for helping a friend and because the idea itself was compelling. While the crowdfunding model has been proved by sites such as Kickstarter and FundBreak these sites are exclusively for creative projects. There is a clear opportunity and a need to provide this service to the social sector.

Over the past few months I’ve been working with Alex to refine the vision and product. Over this time I have felt myself get more and more drawn in, and more and more excited about the potential of the project. We have refined our model to make it more distinct and, we think, better adapted for the sector we seek to serve. We realized that success would require more than just advice; Alex needed a collaborator equally-committed to the success of the enterprise. And so I’m really excited to announce that I’m joining as a full co-founder with Alex, and that we should be launching our site next month.

Why launch StartSomeGood.com?

There are so many people with ideas for how they want to make a difference in the world, yet they lack the resources that they need to get started.  StartSomeGood connects budding social entrepreneurs with the financial and intellectual capital that they need — all in a fun, engaging and community-driven way.  Our site taps into the power of the crowd, allowing social entrepreneurs to ask for small amounts of money from lots of different people – rather than hope for one lump sum.  This crowdfunding model is becoming increasingly well-established, especially in the arts, and we believe it is perfect for supporting the launch and development of social change organizations.

Over the past 10 years an incredible online fundraising infrastructure has been created for social change organizations. Organizations can fundraise through Facebook and Twitter, supporters can establish their own fundraisers on platforms like Razoo, Global Giving can help you support projects in the developing world from the comfort of home. But almost all the infrastructure that exists has been created exclusively for use by only one type of organization: tax-deductible nonprofits. And we all know that there are many ways to make a difference other than simply establishing a new charity.

In all the commentary about the Kickstarter the most overlooked aspect of their success is the fact that they allowed fundraising by unincorporated groups. The two sectors where a huge amount of value is created by unincorporated groups are the creative industries and the social change movement. StartSomeGood will allow any type of group, unincorporated, nonprofit and for profit to find supporters and raise funds for social good projects. Having been part of many grassroots initiatives I know how much good gets created by small teams, formed for discrete projects. We hope to help more people make a difference in their community.

Ultimately our goal is to contribute to creating a world where every person has access to the financial, intellectual and relational capital they need to become changemakers, where every person can create the future they wish to inhabit.

How is StartSomeGood different from other crowdfunding sites?

StartSomeGood has several critical differentiators from existing crowdfunding platforms:

• We focus on social change organizations. The biggest existing crowdfunding platforms, Kickstarter in the US and FundBreak in Australia, are exclusive to creative projects. We want to provide this same functionality to social entrepreneurs working to address poverty, crime, climate change and more.
• Blended-risk fundraising model. Kickstarter and FundBreak both use the all-or-nothing fundraising model. This makes perfect sense of creative projects, many of which have specific fundraising tipping points (enough money to print the book, finish the film, go on tour, etc). IndieGoGo allows you to keep whatever you raise, regardless of how you did against your stated goal. StartSomeGood will have a blended model, whereby an initial amount is all-or-nothing, depending on the specific tipping point of that project/organization, but there is also a best-case goal beyond that, which they can keep any funds raised towards. This allows the individual entrepreneur to set their own level of risk/reward, as it should be.
• StartSomeGood is based around both organizations and projects. Social change organizations can maintain permanent profiles fueled by dynamic feeds, aggregating and building their community of supporters across multiple fundraising campaigns.
• The StartSomeGood platform will allow for not only financial contributions but other forms of probono support needed by social entrepreneurs.

Get Involved:

Do you think this sounds exciting? Do you want to help? Great!

Support our fundraiser on IndieGoGo – we are currently fundraising on another crowdfunding platform, IndieGoGo, and would love your support. You get half of your contribution back in the form of a voucher to pay forward to a social good organization on our site when it goes live. So you’ll not only be supporting the launch of our new social enterprise but another beyond that! The remaining funds will support our outreach and promotion around the launch (including competitions to give away more vouchers, most of it will ultimately flow directly to the enterprises launching on our site), hosting costs, etc. This modest amount of start-up funding is important to allowing us to launch effectively, and having pre-committed funds ready to support new enterprises is critical to building early momentum when we launch.  Please contribute.

Help us find great ventures – task 1 for us is to find inspiring initiatives to help launch. We have several really exciting groups lined up for the launch but are looking for more. If you know of a great social change initiative looking to launch in the next six months please put them in touch.

Become a StartSomeGood Mobilizer – we are recruiting a team of Mobilizers to help get the word out, people who are passionate about social change and innovation, enjoy meeting new people and talking up new things. I am so thrilled with the caliber of people who have agreed to get involved, thank you friends! But there are gaps in our network so if this sounds like you or someone you know I’d love to hear from you, especially if you are in Perth, Adelaide, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Denver, Boston, Philadelphia, or Pittsburgh.

Stay in the loop – if you would like to be the first to know when the site goes live please sign up for our newsletter at www.StartSomeGood.com.

I’m very excited to be commencing on this journey. I think there’s a real opportunity to create something sustainable of real value, and to learn a lot along the way. I look forward to your support and collaboration and to starting some good in 2011!

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The new world of peer-funded projects

I have a confession to make. I’m a crowdfunding addict. Or as I think of these emerging platforms: peer-funding. For the first time projects can be funded by those who share the passion and vision of the creator. In other words, not the anonymous crowd, but your global peers getting together and saying “let’s make this happen”. That’s new, powerful and very cool.

Peerfunding (or crowdfunding, if we must) is the facilitation of numerous small contributions to fund specific, time-limited, projects. Crowdfunding is an offshoot of crowdsourcing, the buzz term from a couple of years ago that gave us talent-mobilizing sites such as GeniusRocket for creative and InnoCentive for scientific problem-solving, outsourcing these functions to the crowd. But this new breed of sites are different, and not just because they are asking for money instead of logo designs or film concepts. Crowdsourcing is focused on producing a unique high-quality contribution (be it logo or film or chemical breakthrough), harvested from the crowd, these new funding platforms work cumulatively. Just as Barack Obama proved the power of small dollar fundraising in the political world we are now seeing the power of small dollar philanthropy in new sectors, especially the arts.

This model first caught my attention in the lead-up to this year’s Burning Man, as numerous arts collective raised funds for their projects on Kickstarter. It was really exciting to see some of the amazing things in development and to be able to support in my own modest way a couple of projects I thought were most exciting. And I’ll admit it, I did it for the perks too, including the promise of a ride on a very cool artcar (which I never took them up on sadly).

The focus on perks is another unique feature of this model of these new platforms. Across all the leading sites it is required that projects articulate “perks” for their funders. And I don’t mean the usual “feel good about yourself” perks, I mean “give me something cool” perks. This works perfectly for many creative projects that are object-oriented – if it’s a zine or book you can receive it (signed!), if a film you get a dvd or a credit, if an exhibition or catelogue a print. Digital projects tend towards the thank-you pages and downloads of code (woot). At the higher amounts everyone has to get more creative: dinner with the artist; consulting; an event at your house; an award in your honour.

It’s all fun stuff, and it beautifully fuses the line between philanthropy and straight-up shopping. I have always enjoyed purchasing hand-made zines, now I simply pre-buy them and in so doing give the creator the confidence and funds to make it. I enjoy film, and spend money on a Netflix subscription, so why not actually chip in to see documentaries on issues I think are interesting or important made? Some of the projects on Kickstarter in particular have blown out their fundraising targets by seemingly-absurd amounts, raising 1000%+ of their goal, but this is usually really just an unexpected run on a groovy new product. Being quasi-philanthropy and quasi-shopping simultaneously attracts more supporters than either approach alone would engender.

Over the past few months I have supported the publication of zines both micro-micro and merely niche via Kickstarter, production of a documentary on avant-guarde culture in Jerusalem via IndieGoGo, a series of social change posters via LoudSauce and the relaunch of a much-loved independent media website via the Australian FundBreak. There is also Spot.us, which supporters journalistic projects.

These sites are not all the same. Kickstarter and Fundbreak are exclusive to creative projects while IndieGoGo is broader and LoudSauce and Spot.us even narrower, specifically funding public interest advertising campaigns and journalism respectively. All of these sites except for IndieGoGo operate on an “all-or-nothing” model whereby if the project doesn’t raise its target by the deadline they receive none of it, with all contributions returned. This is a perfect fit for creative projects (and advertising campaigns) that have very specific amounts required to produce the project (whether it’s printing costs or tv time) or else it can’t happen at all. There’s a necessary tipping point. If it project doesn’t raise the necessary funds then the commitments are returned and its no-hard-feelings. It gives a security to contributors that the project will really happen or their money back and for creatives it reassures them that if necessary funds aren’t raised they’re not on the hook to those who have contributed thus far.

Not all types of projects have this tipping point and currently only IndieGoGo caters to them with a keep-what-you-raise system. This can create another, also important, sort of confidence, that those supporters people have been able to mobilize will see their support realized and delivered.

The biggest gap I see in the peerfunding space currently, in addition to having several valuable niches currently unserved, is that they are all based around one-off projects. There’s nowhere where you can create a stable profile for an organization or enterprise and then fundraise for specific projects over time – building a community across these projects and deepening your engagement with these supporters. I’ll have more to say about this soon.

Have you contributed to any projects on a peerfunding platform? What do you think is working and how could it be better?

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