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Microgiving: In Online Philanthropy, Small Is Beautiful

You make a difference with modest charitable giving

by: Bill Hogan, from: AARP, December 5, 2011

Personal Touch

In the old days, small donors may often have had good reason to feel that their contributions were lost in the maw of a mammoth charity. No longer. Technology — the Internet and mobile communication — has changed everything, to the point where the $5 you give online today can be half a world away tomorrow, on the ground and doing good.

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Experts like Kari Dunn Saratovsky, a vice president of social innovation at the Case Foundation, which is pushing the use of new technologies to “democratize” philanthropy, say that it’s all about empowering people whose sense of social purpose may run deeper than their pockets.

“There is a great deal of good that can come from opening up the process of philanthropy and helping redefine what it means to champion a cause you personally care about,” she says. “We feel strongly that social media are helping level the playing field to allow all of us to see ourselves as philanthropists.”

How One Man Started a Microgiving Group

Dan Morrison wasn’t planning to help lead this revolution when he traveled to India in December 2006. He went at the invitation of the Self Employed Women’s Association to tour villages that had been devastated by an earthquake. An economic development consultant at the time, Morrison visited the village of Vachharhajpur, where, having lost funds to rebuild its public well, women were walking more than four miles every day to get clean water from a neighboring village.

Once back home, Morrison decided to raise the money to finish the well in Vachharhajpur. He designed “e-cards” that recounted what he had seen and emailed them to his friends and relatives. Almost instantly he began receiving contributions, and in early January 2007 he wired $5,000 to India. The well was finished in May.

Morrison knew that with new donors, his success could be repeated in village after village in India. So he set about creating a charitable organization based on the premise that anyone can be a philanthropist. Morrison built his new charity, called 1 Well, from the ground up, on the Internet.

The charity empowered Morrison's budding army of citizen philanthropists to raise money from their social networks, just as he had done. In short order his organization had 15 people signed up to raise a total of more than $100,000 — and three projects in India fully funded.

As 1 Well took on projects that went beyond its original focus on water, the group changed its name to Citizen Effect. But the original premise remains the same.

“Small donors may only be able to budget a charitable gift of $50,” Morrison says, “but they can leverage their social network to raise $1,000 or $5,000 or $10,000.” — B. H.