helpmatch.net

ChangingThePresent Vision Scope?

April 1st, 2007

Udi Dahan brought ChangingThePresent.org to my attention. Udi rightly asked if this means we need to refocus the HelpMatch vision. Changing The Present? completely, and superbly, addresses the Room To Read scenario scenario I have described! See this scenario from Changing the Present. (In their terminology, a “help project” is a “drive.”)

[Historical note: Rishi Khullar brought ChangingThePresent.org to my attention a few months back, but what I saw then was that it was much like NetworkForGood.org. What stands out now, in part because of the shift from “sponsored networks” to “social networking help projects as sponsored networks,” is the “drive” aspect of ChangingThePresent.org.]

Changing The Present? takes as its motivating problem, the waste created by unwanted gifts, when there are needs going unmet. This motivating problem pervades ChangingThePresent.org, and is a strength and a weakness. It has a compelling message, and it allows for a unified theme across the web site. You can place donation gifts into your shopping cart, add gift cards, and so forth. You can create a wish list for donation gifts you would like others to buy instead of giving you a gift. You can give your friends and family access to your wish list.

On the weakness side, it sends a message that the gift giving we indulge in is gratuitous and often off-target. Gift giving is a personal process for many people; even if they don’t hit the mark, they put a lot of care into the decisions they make, the sacrifices they make, for the gifts they give. They like the opportunity to spoil the people they care about, and to be spoiled, and having an occassion to think about what someone else would really like to receive is a useful process, in of itself.

That said, one can just ignore the “bad gift” message and use the site as a help-matchy site for raising funds and awareness for a charity one cares about. I suspect most people are willing to take the well-intended message for what it is, and supplement, rather than replace, their personal gift giving with it; and some people will go the whole distance, and good for them.

In the light of ChangingThePresent.org, we could decide not to address the awareness building/fund raising for non-profits aspect of the needs-help matching problem, and only go after the problem of supporting ad hoc help projects and distribution of used goods to disaster victims or those in chronic states of poverty/need.

We have tussled with two big problems/goals that have influenced the vision and strategy, and it is worth stating them explicitly:

If we want to make a large-scale difference in the event of a Katrina, we need to have a large and diffuse base of people who already know that HelpMatch is the place to go to find out how to help, on the one side, and to state needs, on the other. HelpMatch needs to have a pervasive, well-established identity.
We need to have a mechanism by which trust is established, so that donated goods, services, and even funds, go to authentic people/groups in need. This gave rise to the notion of using trust networks–leveraging the trust that is already in place, for example in personal relationships and in organizational relationships.

ChangingThePresent.org is in beta. We could go to them and ask them to “open up the box.” If ImportantGifts (who run ChangingThePresent.org) could be persuaded to take on the broader HelpMatch challenge that would give HelpMatch a nice looking social networking/help project framework to plug into.
If not, do we need to embrace the broader HelpMatch vision to establish HelpMatch as the de facto help project community space? Is that necessary in order to achieve goal 1? If it is true, we achieve goal 1. But can we achieve goal 1 if it is not true?

We have to be disciplined about scope. And we can achieve a lot by simplifying the problem to just focusing on the used goods problem that so far is addressed inadequately. Locally, it is addressed well by Goodwill, Salvation Army, or any of the charities listed in your area code in DonationsCentral.org, as well the yard sales held to benefit non-profits. Or you can sell your used goods and give some or all of the proceeds to a non-profit on Ebay’s MissionFish. But in helping people rebuild their lives after a disaster the problem is not well solved. And the problem of helping desperately poor and afflicted communities elsewhere in the world is also not solved, though there are organizations like UNICEF and Red Cross/Red Crescent who are doing a good job, of course.

But if we solve the “Boys in Kisii” help project problem (which addresses help/needs match and trust problems), then does it make sense to extend the scope to fund raising for non-profits? Given that ChangingThePresent.org does this, we could beg out of this piece of the help-puzzle. Or we could decide to go after becoming the de facto place to go to give and receive help, even though this will diffuse some of the impact that Changing The Present? would otherwise have. I like what they have done with ChangingThePresent.org! I would rather they were a close partner, but they could be a beneficiary. That is, HelpMatch helpers could direct people to ChangingThePresent.org to add a new exciting option to their gift giving opportunities.

Bother… I’m justifying and defending the big vision… I’m going to need some good folk to knock some sense into me, because I’m pretty sold on the networking effects power that being the “Google+mySpace” of help generates.

So, Udi, got a baseball bat? (I think it’s called “Keep it Simple.” )

Basically, every non-profit does their own fund-raising. Then there are 2nd-tier organizations like NetworkForGood.org and now ChangingThePresent.org who play a role in raising awareness to rally funds for non-profits. Changing The Present? does this with a call to all of us who have become uncomfortable with excessive materialism especially as exhibited in gift-giving-over-indulgence. The other 2nd tier fund-raising organizations already compete with each other to help the non-profits, and I guess the idea is whatever angle can be brought to bear in shifting attention and cash into the coffers of non-profits is worthwhile?and if we play too, we’d just be adding another angle.

What I’m trying to say is, the downside of keeping the vision scope broad enough to include non-profits, is the complexity it adds, rather than the competition. If it creates a bigger help base, involves more people, motivates more people to help, that is, big picture, a good thing. But if it gets so big it can’t be done (this decade…), then we haven’t served anyone well.

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