GivingSpace is a scalable, grass roots “space” on the Internet which uses the global connectivity of the Internet for philanthropic interactions between people and organizations. It is driven by transformational energy – the joy of giving reflected by a gift – across geography, time, culture, politics, economics, and social barriers.

Like cyberspace, GivingSpace is generative. The more people use it, the larger it becomes. It builds new forms of trust and community, providing a means for people to create new forms of interaction. Those forms of interaction which created the most transformational energy would be the ones which would thrive. It allows organizations of good will to thrive by trust raising – more closely aligning their humanitarian activities with their ability to attract donor resources.

GivingSpace, like cyberspace, is open. Each participant becomes the center of their own web of interactions. There are centralized functions to support the trust relationships necessary to maintain the integrity of the interaction, but the decisions and opportunities are decentralized.

GivingSpace is a foundation infrastructure to new forms of philanthropic interaction on the Internet. In the same way that they web infrastructure enabled the emergence of Amazon.com, Excite, and Yahoo!, GivingSpace will enable non-profit organizations to find innovative ways of accomplishing their vision.

An analogy might be to think of a skyscraper. A prospective tenant may become so enthused about moving into the penthouse that they don’t see the need to build the foundation and the intervening floors. GivingSpace provides the foundation, for the higher-level floors. It is a space in which all participants see it in their best interest to participate.

Preface

I walked into the village schoolyard in Rajastan, India shortly after the Ahmedabad earthquake. They were two years into a drought. This place, 13 timezones away, was about as far away from my home and lifestyle in California as was humanly possible.

I had been pestered by many other children on the streets of India, and was expecting to fend them off. However, when I felt a young girl’s hand close around my finger, my heart melted. I looked down at her, and she responded with the most loving, happy eyes I could imagine. Tugging me across the schoolyard, she overflowed with the authority of innocence. Despite the poverty and adversity, I saw the same vitality and jubilation I see in my granddaughters’ eyes.

She led me to the lunch area, where the children sat, patiently waiting in lines with their bowls. I had the honor of serving them each a ladle of milk. As I did, each of them looked up to thank me with their eyes in the Indian custom of drishti. After about three of these encounters, I was having difficulty keeping my tears out of the milk. They were tears of the joy I saw reflected in their uplifted faces. But they were also tears of realization that humanity has such a power of giving.

Some things we can receive only by giving.

They were also tears of recognition of how much more wonderful the world would be if everyone could feel this way. What if, as the Dali Lama suggests, we would measure our wealth by our ability to give? What if the world could see that even in the most dire circumstances, happiness, love, and peace can happen?

I possessed unimaginable economic wealth compared to these people. The teacher would have to work three months to buy the sandals I was wearing. Yet they were giving something to me.

Was there some way to communicate this personal transformation to the rest of the world? If everyone felt this way, the world would surely change, too.

Tears of joy soon turned to tears of sorrow at the next stop of my tour-turned-pilgrimage. A young mother was holding a two-pound, two week old premature baby. A doctor stood on one side, trying to get the baby to the hospital for free medical treatment. Her husband stood on the other side, glowering at us. He was opposed to trying to save her life, because she was a girl. Girl-children are liabilities. Having two daughters and two granddaughters, I was speechless at the implications of his behavior.

She held her baby as if it were a statue. I had thought that maternal love was a hallmark of humanity, yet somehow it had been drained out of her. She was merely doing a duty. What she was doing to her baby, she was also doing to herself. I imagine a little bit of her died later that afternoon when her baby died.

What happened to me? Could I witness these scenes in the grand drama of life, then file them away as hit-and-run touristic souvenirs?

No, they were they calling me to Do Something.

Were those young girls in the schoolyard doomed to have their vitality and jubilation drained out of them, or was there some hope that things could get better? Was there some way that I could provide that hope? In my professional and personal development over the past 30 years, was there something that I learned or obtained which could be applied to this situation? If so, was there something that I could share with the world that could help humanity?

I met Tim Berners-Lee in 1993 shortly after he had invented the World Wide Web. We had several long discussions about how change happens from the bottom up, and how the web would provide a new medium of connectivity. Few people appreciate how simple the web was; just three standards driven by a vision of global connectivity. It wasn’t long before, as Tim said, the web was “gently, gently, exploding.”

It struck me that the best way to achieve global transformation was to figure out the simplest initial conditions that could trigger off an explosion of good will around the world. The Internet was introducing an entirely opportunity for global connectivity. Was there some way to use this connectivity to uplift humanity as a whole?

Several things gradually became clear to me:

1. Greed and ignorance are major contributors to poverty are, not just “lack of money.” I was appalled at the corruption at all levels of humanity. I met poor people who were subject to corrupt governments; they admired the rich government officials who were keeping them in their state of poverty. A system of transformation had to work from the bottom up, dealing as directly with the poorest of the poor. Understanding the value of honesty had to be inculcated at this level; it could not trickle down via some miraculous transformation of the government.

2. The power of giving is deeply rooted in humanity, but it is being thwarted by loss of trust in our organizations. The transformational energy – the joy of giving reflected back to a donor – is rarely reflected back to the donor. An approach that could free up this transformational energy could use it to fuel an enormous surge in philanthropic activity.

3. There are tremendous tensions between the fund raising and program activities in even the most altruistic organizations. This tension leads to loss of trust of donors, dampening the philanthropic process.

4. Trust is a major missing link in the philanthropic process. A way of building trust between donors, beneficiaries, and organizations is necessary to fuel global transformation.

5. Meaningful giving is an amazingly complex process. It involves the education of the donor, and triggers a transformation in them. There is no one correct way to give, nor is it possible to come up with a single set of priorities.

I began to focus on Tim Berners-Lee’s experience with the World Wide Web. In the same way that he created a space within which information could exist, is it possible to create a space within which philanthropic activities could exist? In the same way that the web was generative, becoming larger as more people and web sites joined, could we create a generative philanthropic space, becoming larger as more people joined in?

Few people understand or even care about the inner workings of the web. They click on their favorite web site, not worrying about the underlying infrastructure. This infrastructure is critical, however. Imagine that Jeff Bezos wanted to create an online bookstore before there was a Web. “We are the largest on-line bookstore! Just use your computer to dial into our store to order a book.” It is impossible to imagine Amazon.com surviving where each customer had to make a separate phone call to order books. However, once the infrastructure of the Internet and the Web was in place, and Amazon was only one click away, then it became feasible.

We are in a similar situation today. There are many ideas and web sites for philanthropy floating around, but there is no underlying infrastructure to tie them together. You can find a site, and through a series of web pages, go to a page where you can contribute. However, there is no common trust mechanism which will feedback other people’s experiences, nor is there a general facility to locate giving opportunities across sponsoring organizations.

GivingSpace a concept for this creating this infrastructure. Like the web, it seeks to create the simplest initial conditions to trigger off an ever-expanding space of interaction, building trust and opportunities.

The seeds that created the World Wide Web are invisible to most users, who see the web from the perspective of creative organizations that seized the opportunity for global connectivity. Similarly, GivingSpace is an opportunity for new and innovative activities. It in itself is not the systems that emerge, in the same way that the web is not Amazon.com or e-Bay. Rather, it is infrastructure which allows these innovations to emerge.

Sophia’s Story

“Mommy, daddy! Look at this!” 12-year-old Sophia shouts from in front of the computer in California. She has just gotten an electronic mail message from Uganda, with a video attachment.

The message was a computer-generated note, explaining that her $5 gift of April 12, 2008 had been received and used to purchase 10 bottles of Oral Rehydration Solution. One of those bottles had been used on April 17, 2008, in Kampala, Uganda, to save the life of a baby. The baby had been taken into the clinic close to death, suffering from diarrhea. The rehydration solution that had just arrived was enough to allow the baby to recover.

The video clip showed a scene of great joy. The mother and father, flanked by the baby’s brother and sister, held the baby for the camera and spoke excitedly in a language she couldn’t understand, except that she could hear “Thank You Sophia” come across.

Sophia did not know where Kampala was, so she clicked on the “Where is this?” icon embedded in the video clip. A map of the world popped up, with an arrow pointing to Uganda. Zooming in with her mouse, she could see with ever-greater detail, until she could see the exact location on the road where the baby had been saved. From here, she could browse to find more information about Uganda, and locate others who wanted to share their experiences about giving.

The image had an electronic trust seal, which assured them that this image was indeed taken at this location at this time. The seal also verified that the image had not been modified or tampered with, and that the clinic worker really was John Smith working for the Uganda Rehydration Society. The certification of the NGO for which he worked was viewable at the click of a mouse. Another click would bring up discussion groups of other donors relating their experience with donations in Uganda, feedback from recipients about what is needed, and general communication from people around the world.

The clinic worker had a small digital camera-like gadget that had an integrated global positioning system (GPS) device that used satellites to determine time, latitude, longitude and altitude anywhere in the world. It could record short video clips as well as sound. It could read labels off the bottle that contained donation identifier which linked to Sophia’s email address. It also contained a picture of Sophia, which the clinic worker could display on the LCD screen of the camera. The camera could be charged with solar power, and could store hundreds of photos on a memory card. When the worker returned from the field to the office, the contents were downloaded to the Internet for global distribution.

This scenario is futuristic, but not outside the realm of today’s technology. The basic technology all exists in one form or another today. Internet access is often difficult in the less developed countries, but it available to some degree throughout the word, and getting more so at an increasing rate.

The technology was conductor for a form of energy between these two families. We can call the feelings communicated between these two families transformational energy. Despite the tremendous geographical, political, cultural, racial, economic, and social differences between them, they both went through a transformation that far exceeded the transaction of a monetary gift in California saving a life in Uganda.

As Sophia grows up, she will have an indelible memory of how powerful a simple act of generosity can be. She has added generosity to her world of experience; it is likely that it will shape her character for the rest of her life. What she thought was a $5 gift from a rich person to a poor family was, in reality, a gift to herself and her family.

The world’s accounting system recorded a transaction $5 worth of goods and services, a trivial blip in the world of trade. However, it transformed (at least) two families. What if everyone could feel transformational energy like this? What if Sophia forwarded this message to her friends, who could click to make their own connections and contributions?

Even the most cynical, world-weary scrooges would be touched by an image of a family thanking them for saving their baby’s life. There is no shortage of opportunities to do so. A total of xxxx infants die per year from infant diarrhea alone. YYY million people have no access to potable water. Each day, they (women, typically) must ask themselves, “shall I start a fire with sticks (collected from increasingly distant locations as they deforest their local area), to boil the water, or shall I risk more of the disease I know it carries? Shall I use burn the cow dung for cooking, heating, or purifying water? Simple ideas, such as a solar cooker that can be made for $2, can help them immensely. (for example, see Solar Cooking Archives at http://www.solarcooking.org) Is it possible to share the plans for a simple cooker, and make a difference in their lives? Are there other innovations and lessons learned that can be shared? How much of the world’s poverty is based on ignorance which can be alleviated directly through better communication?

Ideas, emotional support, educational materials, and connections to the rest of the world can all flow as a result of the global connectivity created by the Internet. These things are measured by their transformational value, not the monetary exchange of transactional accounting systems. Rather than connecting people through an industry of command and control organizations, can we instead connect them directly with each other?

How to Connect?

One of the most dramatic innovations of the 20^th century was the emergence of cyberspace. The World Wide Web began as an idea on a single computer in Switzerland, and exploded in popularity around the world. The web was not a high profile, well-funded, strongly managed activity. In fact, had it been any of these, it is likely it would not have succeeded. Rather, the Web was a grass-roots, bottom-up, chaotic process from which popularity, business activity, and management emerged. The inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, made a profound observation of the web’s founding philosophy and how it began:

“What was often difficult for people to understand about the design [of the 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. [italics added]”[1]

If the web and cyberspace could emerge from such a simple set of initial conditions, is there some way that we could create initial conditions to allow the emergence of new activities of good will? Learning from Berners-Lee’s experience, can we create a space within which transformation can exist?

Can we create a GivingSpace?

What is GivingSpace?

Features of GivingSpace

1. It focuses on opportunities, not problems. As noted by Mac Odell, “if you focus on problems, you are going to find more problems. If you focus on strengths, you are going to find strengths.”

2. It is generative – the more people and organizations participate in GivingSpace, the more attractive it is to even more people and organizations. When a book store moves into a shopping center, it uses up space. When Amazon.com came online, they made the web bigger, they did not “use up” web space. The web is generative, become large the more active it becomes. GivingSpace is also generative, growing rapidly as people and organizations of good will participate.

3. It is trust based. GivingSpace assumes that people of good will are participating. It is a self-organizing, self-propagating space within which an ever-growing number of possible interactions can emerge. It helps people and organizations make their own decisions as to what level of trust they are willing to associate with any particular situation.

4. GivingSpace is an open system. The space is open to all participants, as long as they subscribe to the acceptable use policies and maintain the trust of participants. Open systems, like all powerful tools, are subject to abuse. There are people who will abuse the trust offered by GivingSpace. These abuses will be dealt with on a continuous basis. However, it is critical that the space be designed from the positive perspective, rather than fighting the negative.

5. GivingSpace is global. It can be used for domestic activities, but the space itself is based on the global connectivity provided by the Internet.

The Seeds of GivingSpace

In the same way that the World Wide Web evolved out of very simple initial conditions, GivingSpace needs to start simply. What are the simplest initial conditions by which the space can pull itself up by its own bootstraps? What are the constraints on behavior within the space? How will successful innovations and activities be recognized and rewarded?

Learning From the Web Experience

Although difficult to appreciate from today’s complexity, the web today can be traced back to a simple primordial soup of elements:

The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the unique name given to an arbitrary web object. This name is assured to be unique in all of cyberspace, and uniformly accessible from anywhere in the world. The URL establishes identity in cyberspace.

HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol) is a means of connecting computers and browsers in cyberspace. Web servers provide information to the web in this protocol; web browsers are able to ask for and receive information. There are many other ways of communicating between computers (Such as mail, file transfer protocol, secure transfers, etc.) but HTTP provides a universal baseline by which all web services can be assured to communicate. HTTP provides connectivity.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a way of a formatting web objects for viewing, as well as associating objects with each other in a context specific manner. It provides the clickable hotspots, for example, allowing one document to point to another. Because of the universally accepted URL mechanism, the document needs only to name the pointed-to document, and let the web infrastructure find it. HTML thus provides relationship.

The web is a generative space. The more information placed on the web, the more it would attract users. The more users looking for information, the more information would be attracted to the web. This “virtuous circle” created an ever larger, ever more popular web of information and interaction. This is different from our usual notion of physical space, which is “used up” as we put things in it. In order for the space to be generative, the act of using it has to trigger something that opens up more of the same.

The web was scalable. Although it started on a single computer, newcomers to the web would add their own computing power. The first computer was just a seed, used to create an arbitrary number of additional computers. There is no fixed limit to the size of the web. (In fact, no one really knows how large the web is.)

The web was evolutionary. The simple initial conditions created a chaotic mess of web addresses, with no immediate notion of how to organize them. Quickly, enterprising programmers hatched schemes to organize the web and attract users to their sites. One such group thrived and became Yahoo! Others tried, and failing to attract sufficient viewers to their site, simply disappeared from the web. A defacto “fitness function” for the web emerged, which determined the survival of the fittest. Those sites that attracted attention succeeded. Consumer attention was the fitness function for the evolution of the web.

The web had constraints. All web servers and browsers had to use the Internet Protocol (IP). This was a brash move in 1989, when the online world was dominated by powerful proprietary networks. Each network derive revenues from their sign-on hours logged. Users might have had to dial into Prodigy for electronic mail, and Compuserve for stock quotations, for example. Creating an open information space which was not supported by any of the proprietary networks was a bold move. However, the generative space created by the initial seed eventually became large enough to force the proprietary networks to capitulate and open themselves up to the web model.

We can summarize and generalize key properties of the web as follows:

URL	Identity
HTTP	Connectivity
HTML	Relationship
IP	Constraint
Consumer attention	Fitness function

From Cyberspace to GivingSpace

The initial conditions of the web were standards and assumptions that had a profound effect on its evolution. The initial conditions chosen for GivingSpace must be chosen with great care. These can be summarized as follows:

General Aspect	GivingSpace	Cyberspace
Identity	Identification	URL
Connectivity	Internet infrastructure	HTTP
Relationship	PML	HTML
Constraint	Trust	IP
Fitness function	Transformational Energy	Consumer attention

Identity

It is critical for the operation of the space that participants know the identity of who they are dealing with, and that the web of trust that develops over time relates to people and organizations who are known to a trusted third party. Similarly, there will be times when anonymity is critical, yet the identity of the anonymous person or organization can be accounted for, without showing their name.

Connectivity

The Internet and its associated infrastructure of the World Wide Web, electronic mail, list servers, wireless access, security, and domain naming is constantly growing and extending its reach into corners of the world. Satellite based Internet access will open even the most remote locations in the world. Cellular phone technology is providing global access to previously isolated communities. Today, even in the most impoverished areas, it is frequently possible to find television antennas. As a rule of thumb, this paper assumes that Internet access to the less developed countries by 2010 will be approximately as pervasive as television access is today. Even the most remote areas are typically just one link away from someone who has access to the Internet.

Relationship

Philanthropic Markup Language (PML) is an XML-based language that allows both people and computers to understand documents. In the same way that HTML provided tags to allow documents to link to each other, PML provides tags to allow GivingSpace documents to link to each other in a trusted way. This is an example of the next generation of web technology, applying notions of a semantic web.[2] An anthropologist/linguist’s view of PML would be to consider a linguistic shell which creates a speech community – the community of GivingSpace. More information on XML can be found at http://www.w3.org/XML.

For example, the following is a sample of an interview from John Ganda, founder and Director of the Ndegbormei Development Organization in Sierra Leone:

Well, in addition to pharmaceuticals we need, for example, food and we need clothing, we need shelter, a clean water supply. The lack of clean water is one of the major problems. During the rebel war a lot of the village wells were polluted. The rebels killed people and dumped them in the wells. Or they grabbed people and just dumped them live into the wells. People rely on the rivers. The rivers and streams upon which people rely have been polluted. That creates a lot of problems. At this time some of the major problems are typhoid, cholera, diarrhea and dysentery. Diarrhea and dysentery affect children particularly. There is a worm infestation, River Blindness. So we need shelter materials. We need some equipment at least to repair and make improvements in the roads. NDO has this year focused on building a children’s hospital. There is only one in the country and that one is in Freetown. And even that is poorly staffed and under-supplied, under-equipped.[3]

This is a rich source of information about the needs of people in one of the poorest nations in the world. PML is a means of “tagging” this information in such a way that it can be read by computers, indexed, and searched according to the context of the information. For example, one could insert the tag <opportunity> at the beginning of the text marking an opportunity, and </opportunity> at the end of the text. This would look to a computer as follows:

Well, in addition to <opportunity>pharmaceuticals </opportunity> we need, for example, <opportunity>food </opportunity>and </opportunity>we need clothing,</opportunity> <opportunity> we need shelter</opportunity>,<opportunity> a clean water supply. The lack of clean water is one of the major problems. </opportunity> During the rebel war a lot of the village wells were polluted. The rebels killed people and dumped them in the wells. Or they grabbed people and just dumped them live into the wells. People rely on the rivers. The rivers and streams upon which people rely have been polluted. That creates a lot of problems. <opportunity> At this time some of the major problems are typhoid, cholera, diarrhea and dysentery. Diarrhea and dysentery affect children particularly. There is a worm infestation, River Blindness.</opportunity> <opportunity> So we need shelter materials. </opportunity> We <opportunity>need some equipment at least to repair and make improvements in the roads.</opportunity> The road between Bumpe and Bo is only sixteen miles and it takes you three hours during the rains. You sometimes have to where shorts and boots because when you get stuck you have to do everything possible to get the vehicle out of the way so that others can pass. At this time of year, from now until June when the rain starts, we need to get those roads ready. <opportunity>We need basic tools, hand tools, pick axes, shovels, let alone the truck.</opportunity> We need to get those village roads getting. <opportunity>We need transportation.</opportunity> <opportunity>We could even use bicycles because we can put a currier on that so if there is an emergency you can lead a person on there and move them quickly from one place to another for medical attention. </opportunity> But we don’t even have those. These are just some of the things that spring to mind.

Most web users are not aware of the fact that the pages they are viewing are formatted in HTML. Similarly, most GivingSpace users would not know that they were using PML. However, it is a critical piece of the puzzle to link the space together. More information on PML can be found in a following chapter.

Trust

The above paragraphs are very touching, but how do we know that author’s claims are valid? How do we know that if we were to give to one of the opportunities mentioned, that the gift would actually make it to the donor? Could this just be a huge scam, plying on our gullibility and desire to help? The Internet has been shown to attract shady characters, and the field of philanthropy already has its share of dubious participants. How do we prevent GivingSpace from being just another opportunity for scam artists?

The constraint that the World Wide Web was based on an open protocol, Internet Protocol (IP), was what allowed it to be open. The constraints imposed by the trust mechanism in GivingSpace are what allow it to be open. It is impossible to guarantee that everyone’s expectations will be met in a global communication system. However, it is possible to create tools that allow people to form their own trust relationships, and base their decisions on this trust.

The chain of trust is a concept that links PML objects to a trust system. For example, Thomas Tighe, president and CEO of Direct Relief International (DRI), gave the above document to the author during a personal meeting in Santa Barbara on March 28, 2001. DRI has been in operation since 1948, and its overhead averages around 3% of the medical equipment that it ships to needy organizations worldwide. Prior to this position, Thomas was Chief Operating Office of the Peace Corps in Washington, DC. John Ganda, the interviewee from Sierra Leone, was a guest at his home, and has been working with DRI successfully for some time.

Although the author has never met John Ganda, he feels a strong chain of trust towards him. People who trusted the author would presumably share some of that chain of trust, which creates an ever-increasing web of trusted interaction.

If several people who made a contribution to the Ndegbormei Development Organization in Sierra Leone communicate to the GivingSpace that they were happy with their interaction (i.e. it created transformational energy), this would bolster the trust relationship even further. Conversely, if a person or organization did not follow through on its commitments, knowledge of this interaction would be factored into future donor’s activities.

This creates a self-organizing and self-propagating trust mechanism. The more trusted a person or organization becomes, the more it will thrive in the GivingSpace. The

more people can trust the information they get in GivingSpace, the more they will give.

This is an example of how a document may reflect a chain of trust using PML:

<ChainOfTrust>

<trustedperson> Tom Munnecke </trustedperson> tom@munnecke.com. visited Direct Relief International at their offices in Santa Barbara, California, Mar 28, 2001.

He spoke with <trustedperson> Thomas Tighe, </trustedperson> [TTighe@directrelief.org] President and CEO of Direct Relief International. Prior to this position, he was Chief Operating Officer for the Peace Corps in Washington, DC. <trustnote> The two met at a West Coast Interaction Forum meeting in San Diego. Thomas Tighe hosted John Ganda at his home at the time of this interview, and is anxious to have as many people as possible support John’s organization in Sierra Leone. </trustnote>

<trustedperson> Kathryn Poma </trustedperson> , former Peace Corps Volunteer in Africa, presented this interview with John Ganda.

</ChainOfTrust>

Transformational Energy

I once went to a small conference, during which the participants got to know each other quite well. At one particularly boring point, I scanned the room, mentally rating the general happiness level of each person. I then looked for common characteristics that seemed to differentiate the happy people from the angry, frustrated, or cynical people. The most obvious characteristic: the happiest people were the ones who were most generous, who occupied their time with helping others. The least happy were those who seemed to just want to absorb things from everyone else. The world seemed to be treating each participant exactly the way they looked at it.

This was quite a revelation to me. Some people just seemed to glow with this generosity and its reflection – transformational energy. Those who had little of it seemed to block it with a shield of cynicism. “The world is a terrible place, and we have to protect ourselves against it” seemed to be their attitude, and they found much to support that it. “The world is a wonderful place, there is so much we can do to make it better,” seemed to be the attitude of those with high transformational energy. They too, found their beliefs justified.

The transformational energy of giving, and its reflection on the donor, is the fuel that drives GivingSpace. Those people, organizations, and activities that create the most transformational energy in GivingSpace will be the ones that thrive. GivingSpace does not presume to know all the ways in which people can create transformational energy. There is no one correct way to achieve this. Creative, innovative process that may work well in some contexts may fail completely in another. Some people may have more time than money to give, and would thrive with interpersonal communications, helping remote villages find trade outlets for their handicrafts. Others may have more money than time, and just want to send some money to a trusted organization that would use the money according to their wishes.

Key to the creation and nurturing of global transformation is the two-way exchange – connectivity. A cash donation to an amorphous non-profit organization, but it is not likely that experience of Sophia directly seeing the image of the life saved would make it back to the donor. The transformational energy is blocked.

The two-way nature of the GivingSpace may surprise some donors. Some from the developed countries may discover that, while they are resource-rich, they are time-poor. They may gain some insights from meeting others who may be resource-poor but time-rich.

Interaction in the new era of global connectivity can create problems of its own. The printing press unleashed a literacy/literature spiral with which society is still struggling. The power of the press can be used for great religious tracts or for pornography and hate messages. How it is used depends on the values and intentions of its audience. The global connectivity of the Internet will trigger a similar literacy/literature spiral. GivingSpace seeks to inculcate the positive values of trust and generosity.

For example, from the Women’s Empowerment Program in Nepal illustrates but one example of transformation:

Sukarani Chauhan, a 45-year-old Muslim woman, lives in Betahani, a village on the Rapti River in Banke district. Betahani is home to members of several different ethnic and religious groups. Muslims are a minority group in Nepal. The challenges faced by Muslim women differ from those of other Nepali women. Sukarni's story illustrates some of those differences and how she became an inspiration to other women in her community.

“As a daughter-in-law in a Muslim family, my life was confined within the wrap of the veil. My only connection to the outside world was the conversations I overheard between Malik (my lord) and his friends. Whenever I asked Malik about subjects that I thought I understood from his conversations, he would make comments that showed his disdain for me as a woman. "What good would it do for a woman to learn about all these things?" he said. It became a challenge for me to learn to read and write. I wanted to read the morning papers that the men referred to in their conversations.

"I expressed this interest to my friends who told me about an adult literacy class that was being offered in the community. It took me about a week to actually gather my strength to mention it to Malik, who objected immediately. But I started attending the literacy class surreptitiously. When Malik finally learned about it he practically held me hostage at home. But the women in the group showed up at our doorstep in no time. Eventually Malik had to give in.

"I regularly attended the literacy class and soon acquired the skills that enabled me to read the morning papers. But it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I had to work hard and manage my household duties so that I had time to learn to read and write. I endured sharp remarks from my sisters-in-law, who were secretly jealous of my venture. But my determination paid off in the end. I became the best student in the class. As a result, I was selected to attend a training session from the NGO affiliated with the group. I was nervous, and it was quite a surprise when Malik permitted me to attend the training.

"I was the only woman in a veil at the training session. Because of cultural and religious differences, I could not mingle easily with the other trainees. I was in constant fear and had trouble sleeping at night because I worried about my children and about my reputation in the village. But by the time the training was over, I could hardly wait for the next one.

"The training qualified me to teach in the child education program in the community. I earned a good monthly income. Malik and my sisters-in-law began to treat me differently—with more respect. I have been able to remove the veil of ignorance in my life because of my courage, my determination, and the encouragement I received from women in my group.

"My group is a part of the Women's Empowerment Program. I save regularly and am reading Forming Our Village Bank with the group. We are eager to form the one and only women’s bank in the community. I am very excited!”

Micro giving / Maxi Results

If we examine giving from a transformational energy perspective, a small gift, scalable to large numbers of interactions, can have huge aggregate effect. For example, vitamins costing 2 cents can save a childs’s sight:

“In South Asia, they call it "chicken eyes." Since chickens can't see at night, they tend to hunker in a corner when the sun goes down. In countries without electricity, mothers and children with night blindness act the same. They can't move around at night, because they can't see. For the afflicted, in South Asia, Africa, Central America or South America, Vitamin A is a miracle drug. A deficiency of Vitamin A is the leading cause of blindness for children in developing nations. Before their eyes dry up and they lose sight, they experience "chicken eyes."

Keith West, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University, has seen a single dose change a child's life overnight. Within 24 hours, on the next night "a child can find his food, can play with a ball, find his brothers and sisters, where the night before he was not able to do that." Nutrition is so poor in South Asia, said West, that as many as 20 percent of undernourished women develop night blindness in their third trimester. "It's so common, they think it's part of being pregnant."

Doses of Vitamin A (smaller doses administered more frequently) alleviate expecting mothers' "chicken eyes" within days. More importantly, researchers found that the supplements dealt with the most insidious part of Vitamin A deficiency, by giving women more resistance to disease and infection. Nepal's Vitamin A program reduced maternal mortality by 40 percent.

The cost is another miracle. In countries where every penny is important, a dose costs 2 cents and last six months. Four pennies, per year, per child. A 2-cent dose can turn around a small child, suffering from advanced corneal disease, which dries out the eyes. Such a child, West explained, arrives at a clinic, "his eyes usually shut because it's painful, he can't stand the light." But one gift of Vitamin A may improve his sight, restoring it in days, and help him fight off the infections that accompany malnourishment.”[4]

Imagine a blind child next to you. You give it a Vitamin A tablet, and the next morning, it is able to see. This would be a very rewarding gift, an example of transformational energy. Is it possible to create an information infrastructure that can make it feasible to connect more and more people with smaller and smaller gifts? Rather than losing the transformational energy of the gift in the machinery of philanthropy, is it possible to use global connectivity to allow people to interact more closely?

The hierarchical, top-down, “stovepipe” organization is at the root of much of this blockage. Focusing only on specific problems, each organization creates its own infrastructure of fund raising, management, and operations. Thus, the infrastructure costs are born by each organization, in competition with other fund raisers. This turns philanthropy into an “industry” in a fund raising “marketplace.” It assumes that activities are based on a model of scarcity (too little funds, too many fund raisers), and that only by specializing on “problems” can they compete for these scarce resources. This triggers a progress loop of ever-more specific, problem-oriented activity. This can be called the transactional model.

GivingSpace, however, it not based on this notion of scarcity and problems. It is based on opportunities, not problems. It is not based on the notion of scarcity; but rather plentitude. Someone who sees a 2 cent gift save a child’s sight will be motivated to give more. Transformational energy is boundless and generative. The more of it there is, the more of it will be created. It is the fuel that can drive an explosion of goodwill around the world.

From Authority to Communication

There is a scene in the film, Cool Hand Luke, in which the sheriff is pointing a gun at Luke, saying, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” This can be taken as a metaphor for what has happened to many of the systems in the world today.

Simple communication has been replaced with authoritative organizations, which operate in increasingly command and control environments. The interaction of similar groups eventually becomes an “industry,” in which “bottom line” managers seek to improve their results. To measure these results, each interaction is split into transactions, which are evaluated by predefined categories in various hierarchical forms, such as charts of accounts. The industry assumes these transactions to be linear, that is, people can simply add them all up and the sum of the parts is an appropriate representation of the whole. If there is a flaw in the aggregation process, then they assume that it is simply because they didn’t break the transactions into small enough pieces. The knee-jerk reaction to discovering that a system is out of control is to demand more control measures, more accounting, and more of the organization’s resources spent on controlling what can go wrong.

This leads to an ever-deepening spiral. Each problem discovered creates a new, specific solution to prevent it from happening again. Given that there is a never-ending set of problems, this creates a never-ending array of controls to prevent them.

As this “progressive specificity loop” spirals ever deeper into the organization and the industry, the original goals of the organization or industry are lost. The American health care industry is an example of this. Very few people who work in the industry today are actually concerned about improving health. They operate under a system that is increasingly controlled by restrictions, and measured by transactions defined in rigid, hierarchical structures. For example, there are over 1,000,000 terms being managed by some medical lexicon database systems, attempting to track what can go wrong with a patient.

GivingSpace creates an environment within which positive transformation can happen. As GivingSpace grows, new forms of interaction, trust, and generosity will emerge. Those systems that provide the most transformational energy will be the ones that thrive. As the number of participants grows, the space will support an increasingly diverse number of ways to interact.

Invading the Donation

Imagine that you wanted to send a pie to your mother, using an overnight delivery service. Someone came to your home to pick it up, and said, “thank you for giving me this pie. I’ll be sure to put it to good use.” On the way to the warehouse, he took a slice for himself. The people in the warehouse each took a slice, as did the pilot and crew who loaded the plane. The delivery people each took a slice, as it wended its way to your mother. Your mother opened your gift to find that there was just a single slice of your original gift left.

You call the delivery company to find out how this could happen. They explain that the pie became their property when you gave it to them, and that it was their responsibility to allocate the slices as the see fit. You protest, they say that you can read their annual report next year to see how they are distributing their pies among their employees.

Why should giving a pie be any different from making a donation? Why should a telemarketing company “own” your donation, taking a slice of it before passing it to a charity that then “owns” it, taking their slice. Why can’t you just give a donation package, and have it delivered in tact to the destination? The costs of the delivery, like the costs of a FedEx delivery, would be known in advance. Donors could purchase different forms of delivery and “insurance” as they saw fit. One thing they could not do, however, was to invade the donation to pay for their overhead.

This is not the way things work now. Imagine that a telemarketer calls you on the phone, asking you to give a donation to make a difference in Nicaragua. You offer to give $100, to help someone in Nicaragua. They thank you and ask you to mail your money in an envelope.

You ask each organization that handles the gift to write on the envelope, as they take out their handling costs for delivering the gift. The final recipient is to mail it back to you, so that you can see exactly what happened to your gift.

The envelope comes back to you with the following description:

	Percentage taken	Amount taken	Purpose	Balance
Initial Gift:				$100
Turbo Telemarketing, Inc	50%	$50	Telemarketing fund raising fee	$50
MegaCharity International HQ	14%	$7	Overhead for the international office	$43
National Headquarters HQ	16%	$6.88	Costs of running national office of MegaCharity	$36.12
Regional HQ	16%	$5.77	Costs of running regional HQ of MegaCharity	30.35
Field office of MegaCharity	19%	$5.66	Cost of the local field office of MegaCharity	$24.69
Go! Nicaragua NGO	20%	$4.93	To pay for local case worker to go to local business, fill out paper work, and deliver the donation.	$19.76

Your $100 donation turned into a $19.76 gift to the recipient, and $80.24 to handling costs and overhead.

Each participant in the loop “owns” the donation as it is passed through their organization. They take the money, aggregate it with their other funds, and then pass it on after deducting their expenses. What happens to your donation, and the 80% overhead it incurs, is generally invisible to the donor.

An alternative model would be for the intermediaries between the donor and recipient to become trustees of the packet. They would not “own” the money any more than Federal Express or UPS owns the packages they pick up and deliver. As intermediaries add value for handling the packet, they are free to add on their overhead expenses, which are known in advance to all concerned. If someone wants to make a gift to Turbo Telemarketing and pay the 50% commission, they are free to do so. Just as someone buying a product on line can choose from a variety of shipping companies and costs, however, our hypothetical donors could examine the delivery costs and decide how to proceed. Perhaps they would prefer to give the $100 directly to Go! Nicaragua, pay a 3% credit card fee, 20% overhead fee, and see $77.60 get to the recipient.

Some would say that this is unfair, that organizations to support operations cost a lot of money, and can only exist with generous donations via fund raising. The poor have little or no voice, and their services are required to support them. They cannot be expected to survive through “nickel and dime” transaction processing.

The alternative viewpoint, however, is that this is the fairest way to allocate the costs of serving the poor. Donors recognize that it costs money to operate services; they expect to pay for it. People don’t expect FedEx to take their packages for free; they pay for the services they offer and their particular needs for overnight or Saturday delivery. If UPS can do a better job and offer better services, they will switch to UPS.

If some other organization figures out a way of routing donations to Nicaragua more efficiently with greater trustworthiness, then donors will send more donations to them. They are free to charge a fair price for their services, but at the same time, are motivated to find the most efficient way of operating. The costs and services rendered are visible to all, in the same way that everyone knows the shipping fees for FedEx and UPS. Both of these organizations now offer on-line tracking of packages, allowing customers to know exactly where their packages are, on a minute-by-minute basis. This is a “free” service they offer to customers, because they feel that it improves their ability to attract customers.

The Donation Document

GivingSpace uses an electronic equivalent of this envelope. A Donation document is an offer of (one or more) donors in response to a Giving Opportunity Document. The donation is “owned” by the donor until it is accepted by the recipient. The intermediaries who handle the donation do not “own” it, but are rather trustees for its routing to the appropriate recipient. Trustees add their charges to the Donation, which are recorded as they occur. Donors, recipients, and trustees are all able to see this log of charges. When the donation is accepted, the donor gets a receipt showing all of the charges and to whom the fees were paid.

Pooled Donation

Donations may be pooled. For example, a taxi driver needs a new engine for his cab in St. Louis, but can’t afford the $1200 required. Donors may join a Donor’s Pool, each contributing a smaller portion of the gift. When the $1200 is reached, the donation is transmitted. The organizer of the pool, Back On their Feet Again, collects a 5% fee for organizing the pool, which becomes part of the donation document’s processing costs. If the money is committed, but the engine doesn’t get installed for some reason, Back On their Feet Again’s trust rating suffers as the donors give negative comments on the group. If the engine is delivered, the driver gets back to work, and the donors get a nice thank you note, their trust rating goes up.

Scenarios of How GivingSpace Might be Used

Just as it is impossible to describe everything cyberspace can be used for, it is impossible to define all the uses of GivingSpace. The following scenarios illustrate some of the ways that the space may be used. GivingSpace itself is only the infrastructure – the space within which these activities may occur. The actual use of the space is based on the ingenuity, energy, and resources of an ever-growing group of people. GivingSpace is only the seed, not the final product.

Nicaragua

Uli, a Vice President of Project Concern International, finds out from her colleague, Leonel, in Nicaragua, of two donor opportunities in an E-mail. She enters them into the Donor Opportunity system, naming opportunities for $100 mini grants to Maria and Enrique. Leonel offers to be the local sponsor.

Joe in Los Angeles is browsing the web one evening, and discovers the Giving Space web site from a friend’s email. He browses for opportunities in Central America, and Maria’s opportunity comes up. Intrigued, he clicks on Leonel’s name to check his trust history. He finds out that his digital certificate is valid, and that he has a spotless record in the giving space, having been active for over two years. He sees the note that Leonel was at dinner at Tom’s home in San Diego, and clicks on Tom’s name. Tom’s trust level is also high, so he sends a quick email to Tom to see what he thinks. Joe puts the Maria/Nicaragua opportunity in his shopping cart, and decides to sleep on it. The next morning, he gets an email response from Tom with glowing words for Project Concern and Leonel. Joe goes to his shopping cart, and decides to add Enrique’s opportunity, too. He clicks on “check out”, enters his credit card number, and is presented with a summary of the donations to be received by Enrique and Maria, coupled with the processing expenses added to the donation. He accepts the charge, with confidence that his donation will be received in Nicaragua, and that what he paid in processing fees is a legitimate cost of supporting the infrastructure.

He accepts the chain of trust from Project Concern through Uli through Leonel to Maria and Enrique.

His donation is recorded into his portfolio, so that he can track its progress. The portfolio allows him to remember what he has given, as well as record his impressions of how satisfactory the donation was. He releases his tracking and satisfaction ratings for general information within GivingSpace, allowing others to use his experience to base their giving decisions. His success with the PCI-recommended opportunity reflects well on the PCI “trust umbrella.” New donors will be able to see this satisfaction, and PCI as an organization generates additional credibility in their larger organizational efforts.

Nigeria

George, President of the Nigerian Development Association, enters an opportunity to create village banks in Nigeria. He names 6 villages, each of need $1000 start up capital. He offers to be the sponsor for the banks.

Susan in New York is browsing for donations, and is interested in village banking in Africa. However, she suspects that something about the Nigeria situation is not quite right. She clicks on George’s trust profile, and discovers that he has just registered, and has no history of activity. He has no other sponsors, and there is no other information about him or his association.

Susan decides to look elsewhere to send her donations.

Children’s Wish Foundations

Mary Smith gets a call from the Fondest Wish Foundation offering her the opportunity to help dying children achieve their fondest wishes. She checks the opportunity on GivingSpace, discovering that a site which tracks charities states that they are often confused with the Make a Wish Foundation. She clicks on a the website and discovers a USA Today article reference to them:

“A USA TODAY review of government records and federal tax returns filed by wish-granting charities shows that some spend more on fundraising, salaries and other costs than they do on wish-granting. For instance, a Michigan non-profit, Fondest Wish Foundation, raised $1.1 million in 1999 yet spent $7,374, or about 0.7%, on fulfilling children's wishes”

She goes to the Make A Wish foundation, and discovers that they have a much better reputation. Checking the trust ratings, she decides to make a contribution to them. Just to be sure, she clicks on the “Email me a photo option,” paying for the additional $5 cost. She hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether the $5 was better spent on the child or the verification of her donation. She decided to ask for the photo the first time, and if she was happy with the organization, she’d just up her donation in future gifts. The gift was delivered a few weeks later, and she got the email with the photo of the boy visiting his baseball team heroes. She was so touched by the experience that she donated 5 more gifts directly from the confirmation email and added a positive vote on their trust feedback poll.

Swamped by the Generosity

A group of international celebrities hold a press conference describing the plight of landmine victims in Southeast Asia. The ensuing media uproar causes several large organizations to mobilize teams to provide prosthetics for the injured. Unfortunately, the teams did not know who else was responding, or where they were offering services. This resulted in a swarm of activities in a highly focused area, mostly those areas covered by CNN reporters. Each team had a quota of prostheses they had to make; villagers soon discovered that they could go from site to site, getting multiple legs and services. The organizations didn’t want to mention the embarrassing redundancies, so the full extent of the overcapacity was never fully revealed. Everyone knew of this “swamping” effect, but the value of being in front of the media was greater than the cost of the overcapacity. As a result, the villages just over a mountain range were without any support, while others were oversupplied.

Later responding to a hurricane in Central America, the organizations joined GivingSpace, recording their offers and opportunities in a database open to other trusted members. They used a Geographical Information System to locate their operations, and were able to get an up-to-date map with all activities and intentioned operations shown. They were able to find other local NGOs and their trust ratings with simple online queries. One organization even offered a simulation model projecting medical needs, based on epidemiological, geographical, and demographic data that had been entered into the database. It targeted one particular valley as being particularly susceptible to a cholera outbreak. The GivingSpace framework once again provided information, allowing all agencies to coordinate their activities.

Volunteering for a trust network

Judy, a recently returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Senegal, wants to continue to help out in Senegal after she returns home to a small town in Michigan. She volunteers to be a regional editor for opportunities in Senegal. Having lived with a Senegalese family in a village without electricity for two years, she is quite familiar with the local situation. Several times a week, she logs on to the Internet to answer email from prospective donors and review new giving opportunities in Senegal. Over time, she develops an understanding of who is doing what, and what types of opportunities are most successful. Over time, she becomes the center of a web of trust, as new donors come to visit her. She learns if some organizations are not delivering what they promise, and discovers that some are outright frauds.

For example, someone contacts her about an opportunity to purchase a pump for a well in a village. She tells the prospective donor that there is not a reliable supply of electricity in that region, but that they could put solar cooking technology to great use there. She also reminds them that if they donate a well, they must also consider the cost of maintaining it. The villagers themselves do not have the skills or parts inventory. She speaks of

The Difference between Fundraising and Trustraising

With 50,000(?) NGOs in the world, and untold charities, churches, and concerned citizens, it is not possible to create a single top-down structure that defines the one correct way to give. Nor is it possible to use the traditional industrial model based on market pricing of a scarce commodity according to supply and demand.

The current model of philanthropy is largely based on a notion of a scarcity of funds being allocated according to whomever does the most effect fund raising. The survival of most donation-based organizations is based on their ability to access a set of donors. Many donors feel inundated by direct-mail pleas for funds; the industry cannot expand by a factor of 10 without increasing its direct mailings by a similar magnitude. There are several drawbacks to the current model of fundraising:

1. It is not scalable. At some point, people will become saturated with fund raising requests (some already are)

2. It separates the process of giving from the process of delivering the programmatic benefits. An organization’s public image is not directly related to what they actually do. There are endless accounting and public relations schemes which will boost fundraising success while diminishing or hindering the actual delivery of goods and services.

3. It puts the organization under stress. For example, imagine Joe, a very altruistic, honest CEO of an organization undergoing a financial crunch. There simply is not enough money to make the payroll for the organization. Joe examines each staff position, trying to decide what to do. His fundraisers earn money for the organization, paying not only their salaries, but contributing desperately needed cash for operations. His program delivery staff accomplishes the basic vision of the organization, but they cost money. Each staff member not only costs a salary, but the operations they support cost additional money. Financial realities and the survival of the organization tip the scales to supporting the fundraisers. Over time, the organization becomes more and more focused on fundraising at the expense of program activities. There always seems to be another financial crisis. They get trapped in a vicious circle. The diminished program services makes it harder to conduct a good fundraising campaign, which forces them to hire more fundraisers and consultants, which cuts back on their program expenses, feeding the loop.

An October, 2001 issue of the Chronicles of Philanthropy had a total of 104 display advertisements. Of these, 97 were related to fundraising. We may assume that these organizations were trustworthy. However, there are also unscrupulous organizations operating, too:

A Louisiana non-profit, Wishing Well Foundation USA, is raising funds under a contract that allows its professional telemarketing contractor to keep 90% of the donations. Such deals are widespread among lesser-known charities seeking increased name recognition and an expanded donor base. Wishing Well also paid $22,500 to settle 1999 charges that just 1% of the $2.7 million it raised in contributions was spent on wish-granting.[5]

Donors are easy prey for the unscrupulous. Exploiting the generosity of unsuspecting people, they diminish the trust levels accorded to ethical fundraisers. GivingSpace reverses this through an infrastructure for trust raising.

GivingSpace Encourages Trust Raising

GivingSpace inverts the notion that philanthropy is based on the economics of scarcity. Rather, it is based on the economics of plentitude. There is an infinite number of opportunities to give. The generosity of donors is not measured as a static pool of scarce donor funds, but rather something that will expand dramatically as people build trust in the giving process and see the transformational effect of their giving. Transformation is mutual. Both the donor and the recipient are transformed. A donor who feels that they have just saved a child’s life through their generosity will not need a fundraiser to force them to click on the “would you like to do this again?” button on the message conveying the happy news.

The organizations that thrive in GivingSpace will be the ones who build the most trust. They will constantly be seeking ways of attracting donors through the various trust rating and association systems that will emerge. Donors will be attracted to trusted organizations.

Trust raising differs from fundraising in that it more closely aligns the successful delivery of promised services with the organization’s ability to gather additional resources. Organizations will be able to concentrate more directly on their program activities. Rather than spending a large portion of their donations convincing donors to give, they can spend their resources performing their services, and allowing their satisfied donors create additional demand for their services. Some of the ways an organization can raise its trust level are:

1. Provide meaningful opportunities for giving. The more attractive the giving opportunities are to donors, the more they will be attracted to the organization or opportunity. The definition of “meaningful” is not the concern of GivingSpace, as long as it is within the acceptable use policy. This emerges as a result of the dynamics between donors and opportunities. Some people may want to support animal rescue activities in American inner cities, others will want to support micro development in Asia.

2. Perform on commitments. As the organization accepts commitments from donors, they will be rated through the trust management system. If there are many satisfied donors, then the organization’s rating will soar and they will attract more donors.

3. Associate with other trusted organizations. An organization that associates with another would reflect that organization’s trust level. For example, a school education program that is affiliated with the National Geographic Society would raise their trust level. A trusted solar cooker NGO which affiliates with a trusted women’s empowerment program in Nepal would raise each other’s trust level. Donors who discovered a giving opportunity in one group would be motivated to give to both simultaneously, making the opportunities “on sale.” The donor would have the satisfaction of having found a bargain as well as having encouraged two groups to work more closely together in the field. In this way, field organizations are motivated to find opportunities to work together. Similarly, they will be encouraged to stay away from untrustworthy partners, for fear of this being reflected in their trust ratings. This provides a powerful self-regulating mechanisms which allow autonomous field operations to self-organize.

4. Provide transformational energy to their donors. A donor seeing a video clip of someone who had their cataracts removed, thanking them by name for restoring their sight, would be most certainly be moved by the experience. However, if all the donor got was an impersonal form letter in the mail thanking them for a general donation, they would not receive the transformational energy of their gift. The transformational energy of the gift is its own driving force for additional giving. Those organizations that offer this feedback most effectively will be the ones who will thrive.

The trustraising philosophy of GivingSpace aligns the flow of resources and delivery of gifts. Those who are most effective will be the ones who are most attract the most resources. This mechanism is a major shift from many of the tensions and abuses found in the fundraising process today.

Ethics and Acceptable Use Policy

Consider several hypothetical uses of GivingSpace:

1. A father in Nepal wants to sell his 13-year-old daughter into prostitution. This is a well-established practice in his local region, and the father would be able to get a better price for his daughter using the Internet, rather than dealing just with a local dealer.

2. Someone is looking for funds to smuggle into Afghanistan, to support a women’s village bank to help them make and sell carpets. This is illegal according to the Taliban, the ruling government.

3. A group is soliciting money for contraceptives to be distributed in a poor country to reduce the birth rate and prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS. However, some religious organizations are opposed to contraceptives.

4. An ethic group is under siege from a neighboring tribe. They seek weapons and ammunition to defend themselves. (The neighboring tribe also seeks weapons and ammunition, to defend themselves in what they see as a civil war).

5. Someone lists the need for aid for a refugee camp, describing the exact latitude and longitude of the camp. The enemy militia finds out about it, and uses the information to launch an attack.

6. A village in Africa is listed as getting a new pump for a well. Some thieves get this information, and steal it the night that it arrives in the village.

7. The closer connection between donors and recipients facilitated by GivingSpace creates tensions. Donors assume that because they gave a gift, that they are may control the villager’s activities. Operating from the best of intentions, they suggest or introduce things that are inappropriate for the village. For example, they donate automated factory equipment to a banana processing plant. Instead of helping the factory, the unreliable electricity supply causes the whole organization to collapse.

8. A recipient of a donation is overwhelmed by visits from well-intentioned donors who interrupt their activities with the assumption that their donation has earned them that right.

These are but a few of the issues that may confront an organization that is based on open systems principles. What constitutes an acceptable use of the space? How do we balance the benefits of an open system with the possible abuses and negative effects of the space?

These are not new questions, and there is no single answer to them. However, GivingSpace is triggering a convergence that will force these issues to flair up. If “One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel,” then the larger the barrel, the more likely we are to find a bad apple. The trick is to flip the dynamics, so that one generous, trustworthy person or organization can trigger an avalanche of transformation, despite, cynicism, greed, or ignorance.

GivingSpace addresses this problem in several ways.

1. An acceptable use policy will be written, maintained and enforced to the best ability of the space.

2. The trust mechanism will allow users to narrow their activities to only specific circles of trust. For example, someone who is opposed to the distribution of contraceptives can choose to limit their activities to only those opportunities approved by a specific religious organization who shares that conviction.

In general, GivingSpace employs a minimalist philosophy on these issues, constantly asking, “What are the minimal constraints on the system which will allow trust and goodwill to flourish?”

[1] Berners-Lee, Tim, Weaving the Web, The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web, Harper San Francisco, 1999, p. 36 and 209

[5] USA Today, “Some wish-granting charities take but don't give Donations pay for expenses, not ailing kids' dreams” May 3, 2001 http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20010503/3286580s.htm