Global Giving
Contents
“The world is full of problems. GlobalGiving is full of solutions.”
Description:
GlobalGiving is a non-profit organisation based in the USA that realises innovative grassroots projects all over the world by providing a donation based crowd funding platform. [1] The concept enables social entrepreneurs and non-profits from all over the world to raise money to start their projects for improving their communities, aside the usual way of Bank funds. It is also called a kind of “eBay of philanthropy” in an era that predated the rise of online social networks. [2]
Who is behind the platforms?
The GlobalGiving Foundation (GGF) is a tax-exempt non-profit organisation that is imbedded in a network of implementing, corporate an institutional partners. The charity platform was launched by Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle, both former executives at the World Bank, in 2002. In 1997 there was an internal competition with the task for developing innovative ways to combat poverty. The Development Marketplace was the winner of the theoretical contest and as further development the charity platform GlobalGiving was launched in 2002. Since the beginning, the organisation has raised 155,300,568 dollars from 409,066 donors who have supported 10,940 projects. There are a lot of global player partners from economy that contribute in different ways and make it easy for GlobalGiving to occur on several media levels.[3][4]
Appearance of the platforms
On the main homepage Global giving features campaigns, category pages where can be chosen between region or topic and social media pages like Facebook and Twitter. Selected current projects are featured on a banner with suggested donation amounts. The site is written in English and the currency for contribution is Dollar.
Who is addressed?
The platform addresses to individuals and companies who can donate through the website for themselves or in Honour or Memory of somebody, whereat the minimum of the donation is 10 Dollar. If the donor is not satisfied with the giving experience a gift certificate equal to the value of the original donation is refunded. There are thousands of small organizations that will never be able to afford or manage typical monitoring an evaluation functions and an organisation like GlobalGiving can help to be recognised. [5][6][7]
Registry and privacy policy
If creating a fundraiser or registry on GlobalGiving, an application has to be sent to join the organisation, there are no monetary costs for the applier. To become a member of the donor management system the projects go through due diligence; they have to prove to be an officially charitable organisation registered by government and release financial information of the last two fiscal years. If successfully competed in the application process, they will be invited to participate in an open challenge for raising 5000 Dollars from at least 40 donors in 4 weeks to become a long-term members of GlobalGiving or if failing, to resign.
To make a donation an account has to be installed with basis information like name, email and billing address. It is possible to donate “one time” or “monthly recurring” and a 15 % fulfilment fee is charged to the amount of donated money. There are no rewards given but you get regular information about the progress of the project. There is the possibility to disclosure the share of name, date and amount of for the chosen project. Information of the personal use of the platform is collected by cookies from GlobalGiving, by Google Analytics and Google and so their Terms of Use and Privacy Policy are also accepted.
Risks and criticism
For donation this platform is easy to use. Due to the strict allowance policy for fundraisers there is no risk for the donation and the reward policy enables to change the project it not satisfied with the results. For the fundraisers it is more difficult to take part in the system because of the verifications they have to bring. It is not possible to take part if there is just a good idea; you have to proof to be a serious organisation with financial background, what excludes certain projects. The organisation has a lot of important partners what could be seen as using the platform to improve their social commitment, due to the fact that GlobalGiving is so well known and widespread.
Links
- ↑ http://www.globalgiving.org, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2012/03/27/a-year-later-in-japan-globalgiving-and-the-long-road/, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/how-to-change-the-world/?_r=0, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://www.exponentpartners.com/globalgiving-1, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://www.marketsforgood.org/bridge-to-somewhere-a-conversation-with-global-giving-guidestar-the-foundation-center-and-techsoup-global/, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/amplifying_local_voices1, downloaded 2014/12/11
- ↑ http://www.guidestar.org/organizations/30-0108263/globalgiving-foundation.aspx, downloaded 2014/12/11
