Trip Report

Washington, DC

Interaction Forum

GivingSpace Advisory Meeting

Tom Munnecke

June 3-7, 2001

Advisory Board Meeting

June 3, 2001 7:00 Blackie’s Restaurant

Washington DC.

Attendees:

Paul Thompson, Millie Leet, Harold Koenig, Tom Munnecke, Thomas Tighe, Lisa Castagnozzi (Interaction), Michael Litz (OneWorld.net)

This meeting was the first get together of the advisory board, discussion centered on the general concepts behind GivingSpace.

Millie Leet said that she was attracted to the focus on “opportunity,” saying that this was a key discriminator for her success with TrickleUp. Calling something an opportunity triggers a positive response from the recipient, forcing them to think of positive activities that may be associated with a donation. Tom Munnecke said that this was an intention choice, based on notions of Appreciative Inquiry as taught by David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University. He said that this also relates to the notion of an appreciative ontology, which relates to the issue of semantic webs. An introduction to semantic webs is available in the May 2001 issue of Scientific American, by Tim Berners-Lee et al.

Tom sketched out a model of the philanthropy industry as it stands today. The top is a cloud of donors, against which hundreds of thousands philanthropic organizations do fundraising. Each organization is its own stovepipe, motivated to work independently in order to protect and grow its share of the donor pool. At the bottom of the stovepipes is the program activities. Each organization takes money in from the top, deducts its costs, and delivers program benefits to a cloud of recipients at the bottom.

He pointed out that this model has several problems:

1. The flow of information and resources is one way, from the top down. There is little or no feedback from the recipients to the donors – transformational energy.

2. The model envisions the donor pool as a fixed quantity, each organization struggling for its share in a win/lose competition with all the other organizations.

3. Organizations faced with a budget crunch are faced with a decision whether to cut back on fundraising (decreasing income) or cutting back on services delivered (decreasing costs). Financial realities will drive an organization to ever more intense fund raising at the expense of program services.

He pointed out that GivingSpace was focusing on the bottom of the chart, the actual delivery of services and activities. Giving Opportunities could be generated which focused on a specific area or task, or could be a general contribution to a larger organization that used the donation as a traditional contribution.

Paul Thompson expressed enthusiasm for GivingSpace, saying the Project Concern would be one of the early adopters of the technology. Thomas Tighe said that Sierra Leone interview with John Ganda was a very compelling need, and reiterated his interest in seeing assistance directed John’s way. Tom Munnecke said that he was interested in having an immediate “on the ground” project, and that John’s case was compelling.

Michael Litz said that he was struck by the notion of the chain of trust as discussed in the document. He said that there were other industry initiatives to apply XML, but that integrating trust and giving opportunity was unique. Michael expressed much interest in GivingSpace, and offered to become a member of its technical advisory board. Mark Watson, an author and consultant (http://www.markwatson.com) has also volunteered to join the technical advisory board. Lisa said that the Interaction ITC workgroup was looking for projects, and may be interested in PML as a standards effort. Tom stressed that this was an good starting point, but that it was important that PML reflect a global perspective, as well as the GivingSpace perspective of giving opportunities as independent entities. Most of the internet activities, he said, were related to the organization and fundraising level. It would take a new vision to create an infrastructure for trust raising.

Tom and Michael had lunch the following day to discuss further activities. Michael said that he had friends who were interested in Internet and humanitarian activities, and would introduce him to the group. They discussed some ideas about how to promote the GivingSpace icon, for example, making it something that could be embedded in a document as a clickable icon. For example, a press release announcing a new program could include a GivingSpace icon that would allow readers to make a contribution directly to the entity mentioned in the press release. The icon could be embedded in email messages, documents, business cards, and the like.

Michael spoke of a concern about the “spotlight” effect in which a single recipient gets an inordinate amount of attention (imagine the picture of a child on the cover of Time magazine with a GivingSpace icon). This lead to further discussion of giving pools, which would allow donors to “defocus” a pool to be more than just a single point.

Michael and Tom sketched out some ideas about a GivingSpace icon which could be embedded in press releases, articles, web pages, and the like which would link the reader directly to the opportunity mentioned. We also discussed the need for four major entities, including:

Donor Opportunity – defining an opportunity for a donor to give to a recipient

Giving Opportunity – allowing a recipient (or sponsor) to define something that they were willing to give

Giving Pool – a pool or affinity group of people or entities (including other pools). Receiving Pool – a pool of recipients which are eligible for a giving opportunity.

I met with David Sevier, who expressed great interest in using GivingSpace technology to evaluate operations funded by multiple independent donors.

We spoke of the idea of having a Technical Advisory board meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico sometime later in the summer.

Meeting in Less Developed Country

David Sevier suggested that it would be good to hold an advisory board meeting in Nicaragua; that there was a good range of activities in the area. He has lived there, and has many contacts. The purpose of the meeting would be:

To see humanitarian activities “on the ground”

Meet with local NGO leaders, community/church/business leaders to get their ideas and reactions to the GivingSpace concept.

Evaluate the practicality of internet access in less developed countries

Investigate ways of handling financial transactions and trust relationships.

Potential attendees of the meeting are:

Advisory Board Members

Others from the US who may be interested

Local NGOs and business leaders

Reprentatives from other countries.