What Are the Costs, and Benefits, of Networked Giving?
BY Nancy Scola | Monday, December 20 2010
Over on the New York Times, Stephanie Strom digs into the new suite of networked charitable giving platforms like Jumo, Facebook Causes, and Causecast. Is there added value in blending a networked, social approach to charitable giving?, asks Strom. Or are these sites recreating a "pass-through" model of intermediated charitable work that has perhaps fallen out of favor in the offline advocacy world? Here's Strom:
[T]o many in the nonprofit world, the value of the sites remains to be seen. For one thing, they hand partial control over charity brand names and trademarks to users who are often unknown to the nonprofit groups they support. And virtually all of them ask users to pay to donate.
“I think of them as disintermediaries because they stand between a nonprofit and its supporters, and what most of our clients’ value is establishing that direct connection,” said Gene Austin, chief executive of Convio, a company that provides technology to help nonprofits manage relations. “It’s especially concerning if they’re taking a cut.”
To Mr. Austin and others, the new sites operate on a model that evokes memories of the United Way a decade ago. It began to lose ground when donors questioned why they should make donations through United Way — and give it a percentage of the money — when they could give directly to a charity.
The folks who run these new sites are, naturally, of the opinion that what they do indeed adds value, which is why it makes sense that many of the sites ask for charitable donations for their own coffers. Strom quotes two such people, but they take a slightly different path to their responses:
The young entrepreneurs behind the new sites say their organizations are more than middlemen. “Saying the people can donate on an organization’s Web site misses the fact that nonprofits have to advertise to get people there, do marketing in various places to convince them to donate, cover credit card fees and pay for technology associated with their Web site and payment processing,” said Matthew Mahan, a representative of Causes.
Chris Hughes, the founder of Jumo, said his site was primarily about helping people connect with one another and with organizations around social missions, not about fund-raising.
“Jumo makes it easier for people to find an organization and stay in touch with it,” said Mr. Hughes, who is also a founder of Facebook. “That has a value.”
In other words, there's an argument to be made that networked non-profit work makes sense because it's more efficient; that's the way that Causes' Mahan seems to be looking at things. Jumo's Hughes, though, is making the more ambitious argument: that Jumo isn't just a better-oiled way for people to give money to charities -- instead, the idea is to create a more social experience around charitable work. It's not just about money, it's about all manner of support, and momentum, and imbedding the charitable experience in people's broader social existence. But it's probably fair to say that Jumo is a way off from demonstrating that that's included in its value-add. Give it a read.