In this case, paying for votes is not against the law -- simply click on your favorite charity from a long list of organizations, and the campaign sponsor donates $2 to your choice.
This type of campaign has been experimented with for many years, and it is interesting to see the model still alive and in this case being promoted by Seth Godin, the popular blogger, author and thought leader in the realm of opt-in or "permission marketing." Here's some interesting elements this time around:
The campaign is conducted on the community platform Squidoo, which was created by Godin and colleagues. When looking at the campaign's page, you quickly feel that this is an online-community effort. It is colloquial and even a bit clunky in places, and very popular.
The Squidoo Charity Fund is actually the sponsor, putting up the prize money, which is capped at $80,000 total to be spread across whichever charities get the votes.
At least some of the charities seized the opportunity to viral-market for votes -- for example the Acumen Fund sent out an email to colleagues and supporters highlighting this easy way to help raise money for their work quickly, simply by going to the campaign page and voting for them.
The campaign page also includes space for user commentary about the future of online fundraising targeted at both "the small and the many" and "the big and the few" donations.
The goal was to generate 40,000 votes by October 15. That target was accomplished by October 4.
Successes and tribulations of the new African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) blog, including new leopard camera photos from South Africa, remind me of our experience planning, installing, and operating the innovative QuetzalCam in the cloud forests of Costa Rica way back in 1999.
That early remote-wildlife-cam project, which Forum One implemented with the World Bank and the Tropical Science Center in Costa Rica in effort to help publicize the MesoAmerican Biological Corridor, yielded wonderful photographs and scientific data that seem to resonate with the AWF experience today:
Technology is not the hard part; politics, permissions, and unpredictable animals are! AWF camera abusers include elephants and rhinos. Our vandals were monkeys and a very mean weasel .
To keep web users engaged, it is important to construct a story-line around the image feeds. AWF does this powerfully with their blog. Back in the pre-blog days, we did something similar by having field researchers post updates and educational information. These were some of the most visited pages on the site, as people would come to look at the most recent photos, then flip into the educational and interpretive information to learn more.
Viewers want to participate in the story, not just see the photos, and are willing to reward their involvement with support. (Thanks to a kindly AWF donor for replacing one camera taken out by an elephant.)
The images are powerful for science and fun. Scientists manage AWF's leopard work, and our Quetzal cameras captured thousands of images used by researchers.
Read the AWF blog to track the daily action in Africa, including trials, tribulations, and images from the wildlife research cameras.
Update: October 6, 2008
Jack Sim, one of the lead social entrepreneurs implementing the plan described below, has just been selected as a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment for 2008. Congratulations Jack!
I'm in a meeting right now in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where a small group of social entrepreneurs is conspiring to revolutionize the world: they plan to combine new software design and new toilet designs to bring clean sanitation to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
As targeted by the Millenium Development Goals, over two billion people suffer disease, water pollution, and economic woes because of inadequate sanitation. And promising solutions in some cultures and economies are inhibited from scaling larger because producing appropriate toilets takes time. Especially if we're talking millions and millions of locally appropriate toilets!
But this group of entrepreneurs gathered in Thailand this week, sponsored by Ashoka, has a new idea: Start producing the toilet components centrally at a huge scale rather than in scattered places around the world. Then use the web to give local groups in any country access to this single global source, through a single portal or marketplace. The massive global demand channeled through a single web marketplace will justify entrepreneurial investment in the huge volume, high quality, low cost supply side to begin with.
Mr. Jack Sim of Singapore, founder of the World Toilet Organization, and Mr. Hamzah Harun Al'Rasyid of Indonesia, will carry on these discussions during World Water Week August 17-23 in Stockholm, and Ashoka will help develop the idea further. It is an exciting prospect for the health of hundreds of millions of people around the planet, and an exciting example the powerful role the web can play in changing approaches to global problem solving.
In 1999, while reflecting on work we'd done for the US Environmental Protection Agency, some colleagues and I had an idea for a “project coordination web page” where project documents, a schedule, and staff contacts could easily be listed. Having worked with teams involving government workers plus private sector contractors, I thought this idea offered huge opportunity for efficiency increases, simply by creating a shared space which different members of the same team could all access easily.
We developed the new tool quickly, and it worked well for those we introduced it to. In fact, refinements and enhancements led in part to Forum One's development of the popular ProjectSpaces online project coordination tool, which anyone can start using today with the click of a button.
But in this summer of 2008, nine years later, I am reminded that much of the huge potential for efficiency gains in public sector work remains untapped. I've participated recently in three unrelated meetings that hit me over the head with this point – one in New York with program planners from agencies like UNICEF and the World Health Organization; one in Peru with a group of water management entrepreneurs; and one in California's Sierra Nevada mountains where small town residents make local land-use planning decisions. About half-way through each meeting, someone suggested that the group use internet tools to coordinate the information flow and planning. And, after a quick round of affirmations and nodding of heads, each group then went back to the business at hand, and the idea was never mentioned again.
At least there is general awareness of the potential for these efficiencies now. But there are also many perceptions (and even some realities!) which often defeat the idea. Every new tool requires time to learn. People are busy, and overwhelmed with glitzy web ideas. And frankly, in the eyes of many novice users, these web systems appear too complicated. Which is a conundrum, because as new people do start using such systems, they tend to want more complex additional features and functions added quickly, yet those same complexities scared them away initially.
Some tools are now truly easy enough to adopt to make this crowd happy, I believe, but a challenge remains in how to bring this idea to life at the moment it arises, pretty consistently these days, in these kinds of multi-agency program and policy meetings.
We're excited to see fascinating commentary and photos rolling in on the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF)'s new blog. These real-world, real-time testimonials connect global audiences to very on-the-ground experiences in rural Africa.
We worked with AWF to plan this effort, so it is particularly useful to learn lessons along the way. After launching this WordPress blog in April, AWF dispatched staffer Paul Thomson, with laptop and Blackberry in hand, to tackle the technology, staffing, and storytelling challenges of reporting live from the field rather than from the home office.
Eight weeks later, Paul has sent us the following insights:
“I had no idea people would be so interested in my stories! It is been really encouraging. ExOfficio clothing company has even taken notice, and we're exploring ways to possibly work together.”
“Technology challenges inhibit the ability to post stories while they're still fresh in mind. For example, right now I'm in a really cool Lion research camp in Samburu District, Kenya. Would love to post but, in fact, I'm going to hike up a rocky hill just to see if I can get Blackberry connection to send this email.”
“We didn't think AWF field staff would like it, but many of them now want to start blogging more!”
“Uploading photos to WordPress is difficult when the remote internet connection is slow and cuts off frequently.”
And, this work also highlights an important challenge many of us face, how to make sure authentic staff blogging (genuine voices from the front lines!) stay in balance with the more formal communications and reporting responsibilities our organizations face. AWF seems to be doing a great job so far.
Influence covers innovations in communication, Internet technology and strategy to generate influence on important public policy issues. Chris Wolz manages this blog with the help of his colleagues at Forum One Communications, a web strategy/technology firm in the Washington DC area.
