The infrastructure of giving requires an update. The barrier to participation has become so low that people are able to feel like they’ve done something without actually doing anything. You can click Join Group or retweet about a cause and feel like you’ve done a good deed, when you’ve really done nothing other than become conspicuously compassionate.
How do we make actually helping as simple as pretending to care?
I proposed a system of allowing people to have their credit cards charged whenever they retweet a message about a particular cause, or append a special hashtag to their tweets.
Twitpay seems like a viable way to implement this en masse.
But what about the life time value of contributors (LTV)? If charities and not-for-profits are most successful if they can increase the money given by a smaller number of people, does making it easy for mass groups to give only a little work against this?
How do we use social media to publicize the needs of not-for-profits without people feeling like they’ve done enough just by “creating awareness”?
The problem:
- Social media makes people feel like doing nothing is enough
- Text campaigns and tweet-to-give systems don’t allow charities to track LTV, and may make people less inclined to do even more (the same problem when people click Join Group, or retweet)
- People are lazy, and the friction of giving needs to be reduced
Can we use this as a forum for ideas and potential solutions? If we have ideas, is this an opportunity for a group like Apps4Good to help develop a solution?
We need to both raise the bar for participation in social causes, and make it simple for anyone who wants to actually contribute.
Please, share this post with your friends, and share your own ideas of what can be done about this problem in the comments below. We’ve talked about this, we’ve started to “build awareness,” now let’s get off our asses and actually accomplish something.
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Good points. Haiti showed that the ability to SMS/txt donations is a highly viable, low-friction way to donate.
But it does hit the LTV issue in that it’s easy to do what I call the “txt-and-forget” syndrome, so that gives a charity the issue of staying relevant and engaging ongoing value from donors.
then there’s the issue of “donor fatigue” plaguing charity’s today.
Precisely. So there’s got to be a way to have a system that’s as simple as “txt and forget” that still allows for ongoing interaction. But then you’re spamming people’s phones. Which is no good either. Conundrum.
I liked the one entry point way of giving. If I tweet a website the easier to navigate the more likely I am to give again.
As well I am about accountability so love knowing in a quick way exactly how and where money went.
The easier a charity can make these two well I think it would spell success.
Very true, Hollie.
FYI, Peter Deitz of Social Actions just posted a great presi today outlining How Microphilanthropy is Changing Giving.
http://my.socialactions.com/profiles/blogs/how-microphilanthropy-is
Interesting presentation! Thanks for the link, Dale.