Microphilanthropy is to traditional charity what dual core processors are to single-core processors
An interesting comment popped up after my “manifesto for microphilanthropy” post. In it, it was suggested that micropayment was important for microphilanthropy. I disagree, and here’s why (this is a reblog of my reply:)
Pure commoditisation - which ultimately, is what needs micropayment - is almost the exact opposite of microphilanthropy! It leads to donation requests getting so micro as to make the donation they ask for so small that potential donors can’t be bothered to do it - it’s too much effort to get your wallet out, type in the card details, etc (hence the need for micropayment systems to get over this transaction barrier).
Microphilanthropy is not (in my eyes) the act of commoditising charity into tiny, massmarketed, micropayment experiences (i.e. micro-donations by millions of people) - it’s about fostering a Long Tail in our new hyperconnected world. The micro relates more to the size of the niche - specific families, specific stories - than to the size of the donation. Micro-donation is an alternative model for charity more suited to the existing, highly institutionalised model of philanthropy (but could be very important/useful to it, so also requires discussion)
There’s no reason why average donations can’t stay relatively upscale in microphilanthropy - it’s based around the creation/display of hyper-personal, very niche charitable actions, thus it finds unusually devoted people (and because it’s highly personal, it should be of high value to people, hence the large donations), and it finds enough of them to put together a group just large enough to make the world move in that tiny niche. Before the internet, it was too hard to find those people, so charities had to stick to mass-appeal issues, staying very general. Since everyone is different, millions of niches get worked on, all in parallel. Microphilanthropy is a hyper-parallelised model of charity - its a similar boost that you get from a dual-core processor (parallel computing) versus single-core.
Related:
- Manifesto for Microphilanthropy
- Microphilanthropy is the Next Big Thing. It'll be a child of the Age of Choice - the same way humans no longer tune into a channel an Watch What Is On, but instead flick through the hundreds of channels the AoC has made available to them (or, pushing it to an AoC extreme, go to Youtube and search for their entertainment - i.e. micro-personalises his/her experience). No longer will mass campaigns, focused at the head of the curve, be the dominant force in philanthropy - the Long Tail phenomenon that has revolutionised industries like bookselling, electronics retailing, publishing, music, the arts, TV, etc, will also hit charity. We will see a move from charities and foundations as monolithic armies of street teams and envelope lickers on the donor side, and reasonably large and static deployments of Western expat "missionary" forces on the ground, receiver side - to an entirely new model for charitable institutions, much more like a telephone exchange of old - operators, there to connect you to the ground level, to the cause you care passionately about - even though nobody else in your social circle, neighbourhood or even city cares about it. The Internet will bring enough...
- Future trends in philanthropy: targeted donation, wikicharity
- I was browsing around WikiLeaks (a site's that's been in the news a lot recently - it collects whistleblower evidence and exposes it to the world; like WikiPedia, it's collectively and openly administered and edited) for JPMorgan/Bear Sterns content. Not much there so far, except this clever investment vehicle JP Morgan has invented to allow insider trading. Sucks to be you, external stakeholder. Anyhow. What interested me was their 'business model' (it's not-for-profit, to be clear). When whistleblowers submit evidence of evil, that goes up for all to see. Wikileaks takes charge of taking that, doing additional background research on the story, and writing it up as a press release (the JPMorgan insider trading write-up can be seen here). It's an important step in a day when newsrooms are increasingly under pressure to survive (and thus to get to stories as quickly and efficiently as possible). But it costs money. The business model is this: 'targeted donation' requests on the leaked documents page. Rather than generally be a supporter of wikileaks, I enable/provide direction to its work by restricting my donation to particular issues I care about (the 'Sudan Appeal' type of charity function, writ large, writ standard). I see...
- Conversation platforms will make blogs increasingly redundant
- There are many reasons why people blog. Some, like mine, are experiments in self-expression and a historical log of experiences, opinions and discoveries of personal interest. They’re (primarily text-based) pedestals for the development of a digital ‘sculpture’ of your identity. Visitors are attracted both to explore your unique identity and points of view, and to read and participate in the conversations your posts have sparked. Communities are environments that foster identities. This happens when you abandon anonymity and let people associate your comments (conversational inputs) with a name that they can become familiar with. The easier it is for people to associate your previous comments with your current one, the easier it is for them to understand where you’re coming from, who you are. Identity is all about adding context to your actions. There are lots of other ways of adding context: an avatar (or even a real photo of you); even broader identity context like your facebook profile, a link to your homepage, to other places you’re active – Twitter, other sites, etc. What Disqus, IntenseDebate, MyBlogLog, SezWho etc do is provide a really compelling, web-wide context to your actions on a site: e.g. when I comment here, you...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
Add New Comment
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks