71 different ways to give without opening your wallet
28th October 2009
The social web is an often wonderful thing that harnesses the ideas of many and focuses them on issues of the day. The best ideas are almost always the simplest (I will buy a beer one day for the folk that put all of London's motorcycle parking bays on a google map). One such example for these recession-hit times is The Give List. Its simple: it lists 71 different ways to give without opening your wallet. And that, my friends, is more or less it. You can rank them if you wish, but that's icing. This blog explains in a bit more detail.
We have Allison Fine and Marnie Webb to thank for this, two of an increasingly large community of US bloggers (and yes, it is a community) who are thinking about new technologies - whether its the social web or the mobile phone - can intermesh with nonprofits to hasten social change. Anyway, in Allison's words, "We wanted people to help us to list ways that individuals can do to give back to their communities or give to someone else in lieu of buying presents. The point of making a list is to encourage people to participate in some of these activities, and to celebrate the creativity and passion for giving of so many people."
I'd love to see a UK GiveList, but I dont have the IT skills to build one. And on my own, I can't build such a list. So, a challenge to you all: can we build a UK Give List? Here's the deal: I will identify a suitable teenager to do the geeky stuff if everybody out there will start submitting ideas in response to this article. Hint: there could be some ideas here.
- Karl Wilding's blog
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Comments
Interesting list, Karl - it seems to fall into three areas - volunteering time, (non-financial donations (eg #17); and spreading the word or a positive comment (eg #71) . The last of these seems most broad (eg. #7 is about building social capital within a family; not a wider altruistic motive) and I think it's interesting to include this as when we talk about altruistic 'giving' that there is almost always a necessary sense of a wider community beyond the family.
I got some good responses when I asked for examples of uses of social media for fundraising the other day (take a look at, for example, the beat cancer campaign) . These make use of new media to encourage traditional financial and non-financial donations. But they are also used to leverage exisiting transactions (such as searches) by driving traffic and interest through a particular platform. Therefore it's worth noting that #11 (the microsoft search and give function) has already stopped: presumably because the cost (donations) to benefit (traffic and audience share) ratio for Microsoft was too high. It may be that the window for these kind of opportunities may be quite brief (ie while advertising and other sources of online revenue is low) and the model is still young - so worth non-profits and charities in the UK jumping in and getting involved now.
Great idea, there would be no problem getting a comprehensive list together. Perhaps there could be a parallel list to show businesses how they could give? (E.g. Employer Supported Volunteering, donating un-sold goods etc.)
There is also the angle of social media tools facilitating volunteering/ micro volunteering, e.g. The Extraordinaires in the US http://www.theextraordinaries.org/about.html - which I guess falls into Katherine's first of three areas above.
There are really ways that you can give and help anyone without opening your precious wallet. Some people don't really need financial help but what is essential is to help them to be able to stand on themselves without depending or begging for anybody. "Teach them how to fish" as the saying says. There are many ways to help or change something as long as everyone is united just like the fans of the Kansas City Chiefs who have made a Larry Johnson petition to throw the player out and be benched. They did not spend on anything they have just fought for their expression and opinion. It is like helping and being charitable without your money being pulled out of your pocket. Because what is really essential cannot be found on a person's pocket.