Philanthropy connotes being compassionate to someone. Giving your best in your job is being a philanthropist. I hope people could understand the real meaning of it.

I pay all administrative costs (web site hosting, etc) out of my pocket so I am “walking the talk” and constantly contributing myself. We have a number of affiliate programs (and more to come) tied to PFS and all the funds earned in those programs go to what we do . . . send pillows to soldiers, vets and to the families of fallen soldiers to thank them for their service and offer them a little comfort when they sleep.

In fact, I resisted becoming a 501(c)(3) (which means filling out a bunch of paperwork and sending it and in extortion fee to the IRS for $750, and yes out of my pocket). at first, but did it hoping contributions would rise and would attract larger donors.

Pillows For Soldiers is one organization where 100% of all donated $$ go to the cause. We have no employees, just volunteers, which I am one also . . . I just happened to come up with the idea and executed it.
My ownership of the domain name and web site is pretty much it and I have a awesome web master . . . David Warner . . . http://www.ewshost.net

Note: On January 9th, 2010, we will be passing out 500 pillows to vets (many of which are WWII vets) at the W.G. (Bill) Hefner Medical Center in Salisbury, NC which just happens to be walking distance from Dave Warner! If anyone wants to help us in this endeavor, go to http://www.pillowsforsoldiers.com and make a donation. Your donation of only $21 will send a pillow to a vet in a VA Hospital and we plan to go to all of them!!

When one sees Gates being “philanthropic” it is very easy to get pretty jaded about the whole exercise.

Real philanthropy helps build grass-roots life improvement and businesses and is very much in tune with the needs of the community.

Paternalistic philanthropy will send in a “solution” that does not match the problem. This tends to be very wasteful and only helps boost the donor’s ego.

What many 3rd world schools need are pencils and paper. What many families need is simple gardening tools and vegetable seeds. Instead we want to send them OLPCs.

One of my favorite charities is World Vision which has an emphasis on enablement rather than hand outs.

bob wyman

http://www.kickstarter.com/

They have an interesting microfunding platform that is not quite philanthropy but still looks to be quite successful.

Ammado is not what you think it is.

Ammado is operated by Anna Kupka and Peter Conlon, who have not paid staff at their other company, Xsil, even though they have money to do it (from selling Xsil assets to ESI for $2.3 million). We, the unpaid employees of Xsil, have repeatedly requested that our salaries, holidays and notice-pay be paid to us but all of these requests have been rejected.

We have been forced to seek legal action. So far, we have received positive decisions from Ireland’s Employment Appeals Tribunal and from the Labour Relations Commission, ordering Xsil to pay us. But still they do not. Not nice, are they?

If you are well-meaning and want to give to charity, simply give DIRECTLY to charity. Why pay 5% or 10% of your donation to these people at Ammado?

Take my advice and do not associate with them. There are 44 former employees (and their families, including very young children) who do NOT believe that they have any charity.

>http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0102/1230842348992.html

>http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2008/1206/1228515634652.html

>http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0515/1224246568408.html

>http://www.tribune.ie/article/2009/apr/12/corporate-enforcer-in-probe-of-insolvent-technolog/

>http://seekingalpha.com/article/137289-electro-scientific-industries-inc-f4q09-qtr-end-03-28-09-earnings-call-transcript

>http://seekingalpha.com/article/137289-electro-scientific-industries-inc-f4q09-qtr-end-03-28-09-earnings-call-transcript?page=3

>http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news/Stock%20News/2430734/

Apologies for the anonymity.

Yours in ethics,
Xsil unpaid staff.

Let’s take an environmentally focused foundation. Rather than having all of their investment $$ invested in whatever sectors that will maximize return, they carve out perhaps 2% of their portfolio to invest in For Profit startups working in the same field — clean tech/energy as an example. Naturally, this could work for Knight, Tow and others who have made journalism-related grants with no expected financial return. Take some of their assets and invest in promising journalism-related startups with similar scrutiny as a venture firm. Perhaps that is a twist on your X-prize idea but doing it as an investment – e.g., have some thought leaders be a part of the selection process (Wyman, Jarvis, Evslin, Wilson, etc.). Some of those bets will pay off and help the sector in the process.

A useful distinction to be made here is the difference between specific “applications” of philanthropy (i.e. feeding the poor, teaching folk, exposing them to art) and the “infrastructure” that supports the various applications. A very significant, fundamental problem with philanthropic efforts in the US today is that virtually all of them are in the application business and few are in the infrastructure business. (Thus, there is little sharing and much waste…) This may be, in part, because, just like with software, it is the “applications” that people actually interact with and most folk don’t see the infrastructure. Thus, if your view is shallow or if you’re in it for the ego boost — you will tend to focus on the “sexy” applications business.

In my opinion, the “Googly” thing to do in philanthropy would be to work on infrastructural issues — not applications. The Googly thing would be to withhold resources from specific applications while pouring resources into efforts that make a hundred thousand different applications more efficient, effective, etc. — by building up the infrastructure for philanthropic efforts.

For instance, a Googley group concerned with disaster relief would build rapidly deployed communications, collaboration, and database systems, etc. that could be instantly put in action when there is an earthquake or Tsunami — but, that group would NOT put money into sending food or blankets to the victims of any specific disaster…

A Googley group that wanted to improve the diversity of cultural events in New York City would focus on providing or building tools to efficiently find low-cost temporary housing for visiting artists, members of orchestras, etc. since that turns out to be a significant component of the cost of performing in New York — but such a group would not provide funds to support any specific performance or group.

A Googely group might look at the Forbes article in 2006 [1] that showed that US non-profits in 2006 spent $45 Billion on IT with over $11 Billion of that on software. That group might then work to reduce the cost of IT through resource sharing or by developing free and open-source software for non-profits. Such a group would NOT build software for any specific non-profit but rather would seek to do something like reduce by 10% the IT costs of the entire non-profit industry and thus free up Billions…

The subject of Non-profit industry infrastructure (NPII) is one that is rarely discussed — largely because it is not a very sexy issue and it offers few opportunities for “naming” things in a public manner. But, the most effective philanthropic investments will be those that focus on infrastructure. A dollar invested in infrastructure can benefit thousands of non-profits. The leverage is fantastic.

bob wyman

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/02/nonprofits-software-marketing-cx_ck_0503software.html

At the individual level this is a very powerful tool however, and social networks are starting to play a big part in the attraction and retention of new and repeat funding respectively.

http://www.ammado.com

http://www.ammado.com/about

Individuals and organisations can engage with causes that are important to them, donate to nonprofits all over the world, and raise funds through ammado.

Built on top of the platform is a micro-payments system that has spurned “micro-philanthropy”. Donations can be made from as little as €4 (or the equivalent in 30+ currencies), this donation can then be split right down to 5c per non profit. Your “ammado giving circle”, will graphically represent your giving portfolio – the causes you donated to you and the proportion in which you donated.