Seeds of a New Approach to Philanthropy?

A Workshop at the Santa Fe Institute

Santa Fe, New Mexico

From Simple Seeds…

In 1991, a 21 year-old student in Finland posted to an Internet newsgroup:

I'm doing a (free) operating system … for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready… I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi) [1]

This was the seed of an idea which became Linux, which has grown through “grass roots” open source software to become the most potent competitor to Microsoft’s dominance in the operating system marketplace.

About the same time, a researcher in Switzerland came up with another idea which would have global consequences, the World Wide Web:

“What was often difficult for people to understand about the design [of the World Wide Web] was that there was nothing else beyond URIs [his name for URLs], HTTP, and HTML. There was no central computer “controlling” the web, no single network on which these protocols worked, not even an organization anywhere that “ran” the Web. The web was not a physical “thing” that existed in a certain “place.” It was a “space” in which information could exist.”[2]

Both of these seeds of ideas grew to become global phenomena as millions of people participated in their growth. They began with the simplest of initial conditions, with few resources or organization. They were not driven by discussions of governance, control, or return on investment. The growth of these ideas fueled further growth, attracting an ever larger community. Each new member of the respective community made it more valuable for others in the community.

This concept of self-starting, self-propagating, self-organizing activities is profound. As Freeman Dyson states:

To help the poor from "the top down" is least likely to succeed. But science and technology are concentrated at the top, making top down the method of choice for those in power. The challenge, he said, is to find ways to help people by providing science and technology from "the bottom up." …Three successful "bottom up" approaches described by Dyson share an important trait: As they succeeded, they spread quickly. Dyson calls this "autocatalysis" -- a chemistry term meaning that as a chemical reaction proceeds, it automatically accelerates. Autocatalysis is a "key virtue to look for in any technology that claims to improve human welfare on a large scale," he added. [3]

Jonas Salk suggested a similar approach to dealing with health care, saying that we needed to create an “epidemic of health”:

Only a few are needed to visualize and to initiate an epidemic of health that would become self-organizing, self-propelling, and self-propagating, as is characteristic of evolutionary processes.[4]

It is instructive to note what Tim Berners-Lee did not do when he created the web. He did not go to the United Nations and ask permission to create a World Wide Web. He did not go to experts and ask their advice on how to organize the web. He did not try to structure the web, pre-assigning sites 1-100 for physics, 101-200 for chemistry, etc. He did not create a global web master role whose job it was to “normalize” information. He did not go to the big network players of the era to establish an “interface” between AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve and others. He created a new space independent of them.

He simply planted seeds in very fertile soil.

Fertile Soil for Philanthropy?

There is a fertile soil for innovation in the field of philanthropy. It is the convergence of information and communications technologies, coupled with an accelerating awareness of the need to address humanitarian and developmental concerns around the world. This soil can be used to grow entirely new forms of interaction based on trust, community, generosity, compassion, accountability, and communication.

GivingSpace seeks to discover and plant the seeds of ideas which will grow autocatalytically, creating an ever-enlarging community where successes will replicate, in turn creating more successes. In the same way that the Web was a “space” for information to exist, GivingSpace will be a “space” within which human generosity and compassion can exist. This space will be driven by scalable, “bottom-up” activity, rather than centralized, top-down approaches.

Seeds, once planted, need nurturing. Not all charitable, philanthropic, and developmental activities have been successful, despite the best intentions of the donor. In fact, some donor activities have accomplished the opposite. Development aid can create dependence, charity can corrupt, and aid to victims can increase the number of victims. Good intentions alone are not sufficient to insure success. Rather than solving problems, GivingSpace focuses on generating solutions. It is critical that the autocatalytic process be based on positive transformation.

There are a number of approaches which seek to amplify the positive. Appreciative Inquiry[5], Positive Deviance[6], Hirshman’s “finding where virtue is afoot”[7] and Salk’s “epidemic of health” are but a sampling. As the autocatalytic process triggers new forms of positive interaction, we can expect to be surprised with the emergence of new forms of diversity, innovation, and adaptation.

Determination of “success” is not based on “one correct way” thinking, but rather is a product of relationship and connectivity in the myriad of contexts known to the human condition. Transformation – a bidirectional process based on relationship – is the driving force behind GivingSpace. The energy of transformation is the fuel which drives its growth to an ever-larger community.

There are an estimated 750,000 non-profit organizations in the United States. GivingSpace seeks to create a scalable space within which each will find it to their advantage to participate. Trust, community, generosity, compassion, and communication are viewed not as scarce commodities, but as virtues whose growth in turn trigger more growth.

What Seeds Can We Plant?

The workshop will address the following questions:

· What are the simplest initial conditions which could trigger an autocatalytic “space” within which grass roots philanthropic activities would thrive?

· What is the “fitness function” controlling the evolution of the space which would insure that its growth would be positive?

· What constraints on the space are required?

· What can we do to create these conditions?

Further details of the meeting can be found on the web at http://givingspace.org/May2002/default.htm

This meeting is a follow on to the meeting held at the Benton Foundation January 11-12, 2002, in Washington, DC.[8] It will be limited to about 30 invited participants. More information can be obtained from info@givingspace.org, or Tom Munnecke at (858) 756 4218. We are particularly interested in diversifying the attendance beyond northern white males. Please enter your request to be invited at http://givingspace.org/May2002/register.htm or by contacting the above.

Murray Gell-Mann, one of the founders of the Santa Fe Institute, suggested this meeting and will participate. He has been a board member of the MacArthur foundation for 23 years, and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1969 for the discovery of the Quark. His book, The Quark and the Jaguar (W.H. Freeman, 1994) contains his reflections on “the simple and the complex.”