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Last week, while I was visiting TechSoup’s Virtual Office in Second Life I met an avatar who turned out to be Sombit Mishra, a Technology Associate at GlobalGiving. Founded by two former World Bank executives, GlobalGiving enables more funding to reach projects throughout the globe as well as provide a transparent, engaging way for donors to give. At the web site, you can browse through projects by themes, regions, and special catagories.
1. What makes GlobalGiving unique?
You can choose to donate to over 300 locally-led projects in more than 60 countries. As a donor, you are kept uptodate about the project’s outcomes. GlobalGiving's mission is to facilitate feedback loops, accountability, and ultimately a community-driven marketplace, where the fluid exchange of information enables donors to make good decisions about the projects they wish to support.
2. Can you point out a few projects listed in the "Gender" theme that you feel are particularly noteworthy?
That's hard, but here are three:
Help 100 Iraqi Women Launch a Business - This program provides a one-time loan to a woman in Iraq who receives small-business training, equipment loans, materials, or funding to launch a business.
Rescuing Young Girls From Bonded Labor in Nepal - In Nepal, approximately 40,000 girls are sold into bonded servitude. Families are so poor that they cannot get enough food without the $40-$50 they receive for their daughters. These girls, some as young as 7, are sold and shipped off to work in distant cities. The situation is tailor-made for abuse. This project educates the families; pays for all school costs; provides the family with an animal; and has a micro-lending program enabling the parents to end this practice. The money for this project helps rescue a girl from servitude by covering school costs and giving the family a pig for her lost wages.
Vocational Center for Freed Slave Girls in Ghana - At the center in Ghana, over 40 women are taught sustainable vocational skills like batik dyeing, dressmaking, processing palm oils, baking, and kente weaving.
3. How does GlobalGiving vet local projects?
GlobalGiving has multiple ways of ensuring that the Project Leaders within the GlobalGiving network have a solid track record and deliver significant social impact. We rely on a network of "Project Sponsors" — highly-respected, well-known organizations like Ashoka, IDEX, and the Acumen Fund — to help identify, vet, and post projects. Many of these organizations have awards and fellowship programs that support the work of innovative individuals and organizations throughout the world. In order to identify these individuals, these organizations have done a great deal of due diligence already, including detailed analyses of people and projects, financial audits, and data collection from local, national, and international experts verifying that the individual/organization can be trusted to deliver on promises.
Posting the projects on GlobalGiving allows these organizations to access new sources of funding. GlobalGiving, in turn, evaluates Project Sponsors' methodologies and procedures and reviews the due diligence done. Additionally, GlobalGiving conducts secondary research and random audits to ensure that the organization meets GlobalGiving's standards for trustworthiness, quality, and impact. In some instances, Project Sponsors submit their own projects, in which case GlobalGiving collects third-party validation from stakeholders, funders, and local/international experts in order to certify them.
4. We met because we were both researching the possibilities for nonprofits in Second Life. Can you tell me more about what GlobalGiving is planning?
In Second Life, we would like to create a virtual GlobalGiving community that features project descriptions and links, along with virtual representations and games to educate and inspire volunteers to market and raise funds for projects on globalgiving.com. The most attractive components of Second Life are that physical distance is a non-factor and information can be disseminated easily, which is exactly how we want people to feel about the GlobalGiving experience. We are actively looking for designers that would be williing to create virtual property on our behalf and market it to the SL community.
Photo from GlobalGiving. Vocational Center for Freed Slave Girls in Ghana.
Contributing Editor Beth Kanter also blogs at Beth's Blog and Cambodia4Kids
