Nancy Roof, the longtime editor of Kosmos Journal, sent out an email for stories of inspiring nonprofits. Our own Mark Jacobs (and yes, we even have a profile on him, from back in the days!) seized the chance to write about CharityFocus, and as a result we'll be on the news stands this month.
Even for the ever-so-articulate Mark, this was a daunting task: "It was damned hard to tell the CharityFocus story in less than 450 words." I'm guessing, however, that he made up for that frustration by making up intelligent quotes on my and Trishna's behalf in One Night Over Pizza:
"We are seeing a very inspiring shift in social-mindedness and public compassion,” says CharityFocus founder Nipun Mehta. “Suddenly, ideas like service, selflessness, and philanthropy are cool. Our objective has always to help create the tools that allow people to play joyfully in this space—to express their fundamental generosity, gratitude, hopefulness, and desire to be a more integrated part of the collective human experience.”
“In the early days, we concentrated on the process of collective volunteerism,” explains Trishna Shah, an early volunteer coordinator, “the idea that when you and I come together, our activity does more than simply create good in the community as an end-result, it also creates a powerfully synergistic dynamic, creating new and exciting opportunities to serve.” In short order, CharityFocus grew to include nearly 10,000 volunteers, who built thousands of websites—all at no cost to the nonprofits.
MBJ: it's great to have ringers like you in the posse. :) Let's keep rockin'.
Incidentally, Nancy is really inspired by the gift-economy model of works & conversations and while her magazine -- with 3x more subscription than ours -- isn't intending on doing CF's radical generosity experiment, :) they are seriously contemplating ways to include more of it!
Isaac Mao was one of the earliest bloggers from China, then a software architect, and venture-capitalist and now a researcher at Berkman Center. His latest research is on this concept of "Sharism":
With the People of the World Wide Web communicating more fully and freely in Social Media while rallying a Web 2.0 content boom, the inner dynamics of such a creative explosion must be studied more closely. What motivates those who join this movement and what future will they create? A key fact is that a superabundance of community respect and social capital are being accumulated by those who share. The key motivator of Social Media and the core spirit of Web 2.0 is a mind switch called Sharism.
In an article in Joi Ito's FreeSouls book, Isaac says: "Once you become a blogger, once you have accumulated so much social capital in such a small site, it's hard to stop. We can't explain this fact with a theory of addiction. It's an impulse to share. It's the energy of the memes that want to be passed from mouth to mouth and mind to mind. It's more than just E-mail. It's Sharism."
Certainly no arguments here. :)
His thesis follows like this -- we're neurologically wired to share, Internet gives expression that innate impulse, and subsequently, we will see the rise of a social brain that will not only help us better solve problems but create a more effective form of governance. To realize this potential, Isaac points to two basic things: we need to design better software with this impulse in mind, and we need to keep the sharism fires stoked within each one of us.
Web 2.0 Summit brings together an impressive line-up of speakers, from Lance Armstrong to Jerry Yang to Larry Brilliant to Al Gore ... and many CEOs of hottest Internet companies ranging from Facebook to Digg to Twitter. And all the videos are posted online, in the true Web 2.0 style! :)
The purpose of the conference is to look at the latest Internet trends:
The commercial web is now a teenager—it's been fifteen short years since Marc Andreessen released the Mosaic browser. To put this in perspective, television as a commercial medium reached its fifteenth birthday in 1956—the year Elvis Presley made his first appearance on national TV. National news broadcasts were still in their infancy, "As The World Turns" debuted as America's first half-hour soap opera, and "The Price Is Right" began its dominance of the game show genre. Commercial grade videotape recorders emerged, portable black and white television sets were introduced, and the first local color broadcast aired in Chicago.
Fifteen years after television's birth, the contours of the new medium were just emerging. The idea that this revolutionary new phenomenon—one busily reshaping the very fabric of society—might one day become just another application on a vast web of computers, well that idea wasn't exactly in vogue.
In the first four years of the Web 2.0 Summit, we've focused on our industry's challenges and opportunities, highlighting in particular the business models and leaders driving the Internet economy. But as we pondered the theme for this year, one clear signal has emerged: our conversation is no longer just about the Web. Now is the time to ask how the Web—its technologies, its values, and its culture—might be tapped to address the world's most pressing limits. Or put another way—and in the true spirit of the Internet entrepreneur—its most pressing opportunities.
Hottest trends of the moment: mobile applications that utilize location as part of the context and cloud computing infrastructure that pushes thin and light-weight platforms for the consumers.
Closet numbers guy that I am, :) I found Mary Meeker's (Morgan Stanley) presentation particularly helpful in capturing the technology status-quo. The essence is this: economy is going down due to too much credit; ad spending is dropping like 2001 bubble and CPM is also declining; 4 companies are under-monetized (YouTube, Facebook, Skype and PayPal); key mobile plays include Wii, Xbox, Kindle, iPhone, and Garmin; US is well behind Asia in the mobile revolution. However, Mary's detailed slides are covered in presentation:
Last month, we found a story in a Montana newspaper that spoke about a smile card experiment. Yesterday, we stumbled into a Times of India story talking about the same! And the best part is that we knew absolutely nothing either of them.
The TOI story, though, has a twist. :) They use their cards more like "gratitude" cards ... and maybe that's the way it is to work in India!
"It's all about indulging in a little bit of kindness and not expecting anything out of it. In fact, the cause of many social ills and cynicism is expectations. The card here has a condition. It should be passed on to those whom you notice helping a stranger, who is in dire straits and is not able to do a task by himself. Being part of the 'smile clan' makes you feel that the world has good people too. Kindness is not a utopian idea. I met 30 others of the "smile card" clan and formed a network. The movement is on for the last two years in the city,” claims Jayant, who is now part of the network.
Another, 'smile clan' member Shalvi Narottam, 27, tagged a stranger in a cafe when she saw the stranger helping an attendant pick up some garbage from the floor few months back. “You just need to pack a little bit of smile with the card and it does the trick. It’s all about inspiring people to do good. It nice to see that there are like-minded people around you,” says Shalvi.
The card leads you to a website called ''helpothers', a one-stop place where one can network with members of the 'smile clan' across the globe.
In related news, I opened my door the other day and lo and behold, it's the good ol' ding-dong-ditch manuever with this gorgeous fruit salad that had Guri and I smiling ear to ear -- thank you, to whomever you are!
Obama's meditative demeanor throughout his campaigning was exemplary. Repeatedly, he has talked about Gandhi as one of his chief inspirations: "In my life, I have always looked to Mahatma Gandhi as an inspiration, because he embodies the kind of transformational change that can be made when ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things. That is why his portrait hangs in my Senate office; to remind me that real results will not just come from Washington, they will come from the people." Time magazine even captured his "lucky charm" of Hanuman, an Indian diety, that moved many South Asians. :) Chronicle even published an article in June wondering if he was enlightened!
Amidst all the hype, I just ran into a candid conversation on faith that Obama had with Cathleen Falsani during his 2004 Senate campaign, that illuminates the clarity of his values and spiritual practice. Some excerpts that I found to be insightful:
People are fascinated by many aspects of CharityFocus, but one thing that thoroughly confuses people -- in a fascinating sort of way -- is our approach of no-fundraising. Of course, everyone knows that if you solicit a gift, it can no longer be called a gift and if we are talking about the gift-economy, it's natural to embody it too. So people understand why we do it, but continue to scratch their heads. :)
With fundraising, you face a couple of hurdles.
Almost every organizer will tell you how they hate fundraising. For most of them, though, this is rooted in fear. When you ask people for something, you have to face rejection and this hurts the ego. So many folks are in this muffled space between wanting money for their needs and yet not wanting to face constant rejection. These people tend to look at the gift-economy with admiration and confusion, because they think that gift-economy is all about free money. :) "How exactly do you pay your bills?" is the first question that comes to their mind.
Once you do the inner-work to overcome that fear, and learn how to raise money for good things, you face the sincerity hurdle. When donors have acquired a scarce resource, they are inevitably proud of holding onto their prize and they will not let it go unless you are able to mold its use into their paradigm. It means you have to manipulate your message in a reductionist sort of way, it means you have to kiss up to people you may not share your values, it means that you have exaggerate your vision and boast about your history. The whole process seems very selfish. These are the folks who look to the gift-economy with skeptical eyes, because they have lost faith in the power of gratitude. Their typical response is, "There must be some catch." And then they have a meal at Karma Kitchen. :)
Very few are able to transcend that fear and still work with sincerity. I've only known two people, who have both raised hundreds of millions of dollars for good causes and yet haven't sold their sincerity one bit.
Still, in my books, there is one more hurdle to cross: control. Money buys you predictability. You have staff who listen to the boss's command, you implement projects, you work towards a vision, and you have annual reports to show your progress. These people look to the gift-economy as a good thing, but fundamentally naive. Usually, they'll respond with, "That's beautiful. But it can't possibly scale."
At some point, when you replace fear, selfishness, and randomness with love, sincerity and trust, you enter into the heart of the gift-economy. Then, the currency shifts all together. Love brings you social capital, sincerity brings you engagement, and trust brings you offerings of gratitude.
Like each of us, CharityFocus has also had its own collective journey into love, sincerity and trust.
Last weekend at Karma Kitchen was pretty extraordinary. A whopping 110 people served in roughly three and a half hours -- a figure that breaks all earlier records in our new location. An impressive number for sure but at the end of the day you can't tally up the power of this experiment with a headcount.
Because how do you measure the gratitude of a woman who has come almost every week since reopening to dine here and always with the gift of a beautiful orchid plant to pay-forward? The smile of a guest who has traveled the world as a volunteer taking care of stray dogs or the serendipity of a couple named Lucky & Karma who stumbled in? How do you add up the commitment of people who have joined us from as far away as Sonoma, LA, the East Coast or assign a value to the fact that the man washing dishes in the back is a Berkeley professor, the woman placing naan orders with meticulous care is an MBA grad, the Maitre D is a PhD will be flying to India soon for his engagement and the guy busing tables runs a social entrepreneurship incubator? How do you quantify the riveting conversation between that takes place between half a dozen volunteers about meditation and the practice of examining the mind?
And while we're asking these questions, how do you measure the infectious enthusiasm of a college athlete who "discovers" the thrill of hosing down a huge stack of dirty dishes, or the resonance of a woman who after her first week here gave her car away, walked three miles for her second meal with us and is now filling up glasses of sparkling blueberry pomegranate lemonade in the kitchen? How do you add up the dedication of two roommates serving up seemingly endless trays of artistically arranged food with a smile? Or the contribution of the guys who spent their morning lugging a fall bounty of grapes, persimmons, strawberries, tomatoes and other produce over from the Farmer's Market to be bagged and gifted to wonder-struck guests? How do you gauge the power of serving from a space of abundance, or of as one volunteer quoted, "An idea whose time has come"?
The simple answer: You just can't.
Thank you to the "once-in-a-lifetime" crew :-) for making last week so far beyond computation.
Larry B, at Google, sent out an email about something that is close to his heart: FluTrends. Here's a more of an explanation from the front-page article in the NY Times:
There is a new common symptom of the flu, in addition to the usual aches, coughs, fevers and sore throats. Turns out a lot of ailing Americans enter phrases like “flu symptoms” into Google and other search engines before they call their doctors.
That simple act, multiplied across millions of keyboards in homes around the country, has given rise to a new early warning system for fast-spreading flu outbreaks, called Google Flu Trends.
Tests of the new Web tool from Google.org, the company’s philanthropic unit, suggest that it may be able to detect regional outbreaks of the flu a week to 10 days before they are reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For those who are interested, here's the original manuscript (a later revision will be published in Nature magazine) with more details, and you can also download the CVS spreadsheets dating all the way back to 2003.
What might be interesting is if all search engines shared their data to make even better predictions but perhaps that's too much to ask of the commercial sector. :) Many experts have also aised some privacy issues around this project.
Armed with a new website, and some new tools, Silas has currently planted the SmoothFeather anchors in South Dakota for a rather incredible project: Dakota 38.
Watch the trailer to get a flavor of the historical significance of our latest gift-economy film:
As mentioned earlier, Birju did an anonymous interview with the second largest magazine in the US. Being anonymous, we won't directly "get" anything for the time and energy we contributed to this article, but Kathleen (the journalist) surely was transformed to know of an organization like ours! :) She writes in the article, "Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer neatly summed up my [kindness] experience by saying, 'When you give without any strings, you stand taller and are more willing to engage the world.'" Thanks, Birju, for being the change.
