16 January 2008
Nongovernmental Group Making Personal Philanthropy Easy
GlobalGiving guarantee ensures donor satisfaction
Washington -- An American organization is making giving to international development causes easy while ensuring donors their gifts have the effects they expect.
The nongovernmental organization GlobalGiving, founded in 2002 by two former World Bank officials, also offers a way for donors to meet like-minded donors through the Internet.
Through its GlobalGiving Guaranteed program, the organization gives donors assurance their gifts of up to $10,000 will be used as intended or donors can redirect those gifts to alternative causes. To learn how their gifts are being used, GlobalGiving lets donors track project progress through online updates. GlobalGiving also enables donors to communicate directly by phone and e-mail with those implementing the projects.
The guarantee program is the only one of its kind in the United States.
GlobalGiving’s way of directly connecting individual and organizational donors with high-impact, grassroots projects has received financial, technological and business support from executives of the Internet auction site eBay and from the Case Foundation, established by the co-founder of America Online. It also has attracted the support of the Hewlett, Ford and Packard foundations, GlobalGiving founder Dennis Whittle told America.gov.
Whittle, with colleague Mari Kuraishi, in 2000 created the World Bank’s popular Development Marketplace to help "anyone with a good idea" about how to fight poverty present the idea to bank officials for potential funding.
That led them to create an organization where many more development ideas could be put before potential donors.
They wanted to "explode the myth" that only development professionals could come forward with ideas worthy of funding, Whittle said. He added that they also wanted to show funding could be accomplished more quickly by bypassing a traditional bureaucracy.
"As more donors give online, their expectations for accountability, convenience and impact are increasing. ... We treat donors as customers," Whittle said.
People around the world can access the GlobalGiving Web site to review projects needing support. They then can select those that reflect their interests -- such as clean water, reducing greenhouse gas emissions or reducing hunger. Ten percent of GlobalGiving's donors are from outside the United States, Whittle said.
Donors donate online an amount they can afford -- from $10 to thousands of dollars.
GlobalGiving also offers donors the option of purchasing gift cards. Card recipients then choose causes they want the values of the cards to support.
The Hewlett Foundation funded technology for GlobalGiving that gives individual donors the ability to link directly with the projects they are supporting and to evaluate the progress of the projects. The Sall Foundation created the computer software to help donors interact online.
And such companies as clothing merchandiser Gap have instituted programs matching employees' gifts to GlobalGiving.
"Gap Inc. employees around the world are using GlobalGiving to support specific nonprofit projects in their own countries and anywhere else they choose. Their donations are matched by the Gap," said Marianne Campbell, manager of community relations at Gap Foundation.
GlobalGiving follows the Case Foundation’s belief in the "democratization of philanthropy," Whittle said. That means that donors without large amounts of money can make a difference, he said.
More information is available on the GlobalGiving Web site.
