Active Givers,
Today we thought about how three different types of communities can help transforms their respective memberships into ones that engage in habitual giving.
Many of the ideas below came out of brainstorming session – a huge thank you to all who participated!
- Organizations (both formal and informal)
- Brand Loyalists
- Enthusiasts
Engaging communities built around organizations with habitual giving:
Organizations often have their own desire to become institutions (communities and structures that are repeatable and sustainable). Many of their members “opt-in” to the community and are invested in helping to build the community. Utilizing the implicit values that unite these communities in the first place provides a strong foundation for encouraging giving.
We believe that there are many immediate tangible actions that can be put into place. First, we propose that organizations require a pledge or commitment (of time, skill, and/or money) of all participants. In addition, many organizations have an orderly sign-up process – these areas of “transaction” around the organization are perfect places to feature causes or opportunities for their members to give.
TED Active is a perfect example of this type of organization and have implemented a program at this year’s event where all participants are encouraged to donate unnecessary items they may have while at the conference. These will be collected and distributed to a local charity.
Engaging brand enthusiasts in habitual giving:
Brands have specific and clear reasons that connect them with their customers. If brands and companies are to encourage a culture of giving, we found the best path is simply leverage this powerful connection and build from there.
Below we provide two suggestions ofwhere brands could transform brand enthusiasts into active givers:
First, Tupperware has built a distribution network where their products are shown at cooking parties at various households. What if these cooking parties took place on a larger scale and at schools or soup kitchens?
Second, EBay has a massive community of sellers and an active feedback and ranking system for those “sellers”. What if sellers were enabled to add a ‘seller for good’ badge that meant from all items they sold, 5% of revenue would be given via a charity, such as donorschoose.org? This would encourage giving while creating a new competitive advantage and differentiator amongst sellers.
Engaging communities built around shared interests and enthusiasts in habitual giving:
Communities of enthusiasts are often driven by intense personal passion either for a personal goal (fitness, health etc.) or professional commitment (from legal help to design aid.) Building off of personal passion is a great base point for creating communities of commitment to giving.
One of the big and existing ideas that came out of the conversation was the idea of platforms that would allow for people to donate their skills to causes they care for – perhaps even for significant and lengthy commitments. Out of that came a simpler, smaller idea that nonetheless has the potential for tremendous impact that we’ll try to explore in greater detail tomorrow: Support Networks.
The core of this idea is that there are people with simple skills or commitments that may not allow them to place their life on pause to take on big giving projects. What if there was a network of supporters who could be engaged to support other larger projects and endeavors. Imagine someone offering dog sitting services for someone else taking on a project that requires them to leave for a lengthy time period or someone taking on simple errands that support even larger actions. What systems digital, social, and otherwise could be built to support a next layer of supportive giving?
Tomorrow we’ll be looking deeper into these ideas and further playing out the scenarios. It’s time to make our ideas and examples a reality!
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