Online Philanthropy: Opportunities and challenges

 Two new articles on the Financial Times touch two of the issues that are explored in the recently published Keystone study ‘Online Philanthropy Markets: From Feel-Good Giving to Effective Social Investing?’: the array of opportunities that the online world offers for transforming the way we engage in philanthropic activities and the challenge of giving both with our hearts and heads.

Sarah Murray, in a piece titled: ‘The age of cyberspace offers aids for giving’, reviews the rising phenomenon of online giving and the opportunities that it presents for revolutionizing philanthropy. The article identifies that beyond offering a means for making donations easily, online philanthropy platforms enable knowledge exchange among different actors that facilitates ‘a more “open source” approach to finding solutions to seemingly intractable problems’. In addition, they come with ‘built-in’ accountability and transparency elements, such as direct reports on the use of funds and progress achieved from beneficiary organizations or individuals. And the innovation goes on to enabling direct involvement by users, with systems that are based on user-generated content or crowd-sourcing for identifying successful solutions to social problems.

Perla Ni, the founder of Great Nonprofits, an informational website that uses direct constituency feedback to create the ratings of its listed organizations, warns against the dangers of treating philanthropic donations as investments. In her article ‘Use your heart and head when giving’ she urges philanthropists to move away from hard, impact data and to not underestimate the force of the heart as a basis for philanthropic decisions. Effectiveness ‘matters a great deal,’ she says, ‘but the human dimension is just as important’. She invites those that want to know how well an organization is doing to get a first-hand experience with them. This will give them a view of the different dimensions of the work of the non-profit, which ‘extends beyond tangible, immediate or predictable results’.

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Keystone_Online Philanthropy Markets.pdf	480.75 KB