Editor’s note

The barriers to development in Uganda are manifold. Charities need to work smarter. Democracy has to work better. But at the end of the day, it is a thriving private sector that will enable Uganda to realize its potential.

Private investment in Africa has focused mainly on microfinance and commercial scale capital. Small to medium size enterprises (SMEs), often the engines of economic growth and job creation, have been mostly overlooked, creating what is now known as “the missing middle.”

These businesses are starved for growth capital in the range of 5,000 USD – 100,000 USD, the respective ceiling and floor of microfinance and commercial banks. Loans in this range are hard to access, have prohibitive collateral requirements, are expensive (average 20% APR), and impatient, often strangling cash flows with immediate repayment requirements. Though an SME can have a competitive business model and stable revenues, they may not have years of audited financial statements or formalized business processes, and thus fall outside of the financial system.

SMEs are not only underserved, but are critical for development beyond dependency. Uganda is the youngest country in the world and youth unemployment hovers around 83 percent – thousands of jobs must be created to fill this gap. In the United States, small firms account for 64 percent of all new jobs, and employ approximately 51 percent of the nation’s workforce. In Uganda, the data is even more striking: small businesses account for 75% of GDP output and 66% of non-farm private sector employment. According to a recent reportby the Summit Development Group, a dollar invested in an SME creates three times as many jobs as a dollar invested in a microenterprise.

Uganda is also a promising frontier market for investment. GDP growth has averaged 8 percent over the past five years and is projected to continue in the future. Economic liberalization, regional integration, a stable currency, the recent discovery of oil, rapid urbanization, and a growing middle class create the conditions for sustained economic progress in Uganda. The Ugandan businesses that will drive this economic growth are just now being born, only now being discovered. Who will invest in them, who will accelerate the growth of their enterprises?

This is why we are building Flow Equity – to create thousands of jobs in Uganda, participate in the renewal of a region, and capture significant economic growth for investors. Flow Equity is a new social investment fund making growth stage equity investments in promising SMEs in East Africa. We look for entrepreneurs in competitive sectors who have a blended value proposition, that is, they pay fair wages, protect the environment, and realize above market-rate returns. Beyond capital, we work with entrepreneurs to formalize processes, build brands, develop long-term strategies, and find markets for their products, making them more sustainable, credit-worthy, and competitive in the long-term.

Flow Equity is trying to help the world think differently about Africa. Though partially true, we cannot carry on thinking that Africa is suffering and needs our help. This perspective is not only degrading, but dishonest. If we want Africa to be more than a second-class global citizen, a recipient of our charity, we must invest more than annual donations and volunteer stints. We must invest in its entrepreneurs and believe in its economic future.

(Photo by weesam2010)

At their core, Pallotta’s arguments in Uncharitable come down to the idea that the activities of nonprofit organizations have been governed by social norms tracing back to the Puritans that hinder the ability of charitable groups to effectively address the problems they are tasked to solve. The antidote to these damaging social constructs is rational application of market norms to our expectations of charitable organizations, allowing groups and individuals free reign within these broader confines to take the most expedient approaches to achieving their missions. Not allowing such groups access to these tools is irrational.

While I agree with the logic behind almost all of Pallotta’s individual recommendations, I’ve come to recognize that most people who aren’t social sector professionals aren’t willing to make the effort to intellectually understand how philanthropy “should” work. Even among professionals within the sector, there is little consensus over what constitutes good philanthropy and whether Pallotta’s ideas are a step in the right direction. How can we expect those who are not living and breathing this work to reach conclusions that go against their gut instincts about acceptable ways for charities to operate? It’s not that they don’t care about poverty and climate change and human trafficking; it’s that their lives don’t rotate around these issues. Although they want to help, they don’t have time or energy to dedicate to understanding why it’s a good thing that the charity they just gave $20 of their hard-earned money to is going to spend part of it to pay more competitive salaries for its staff, rent a billboard to raise awareness about its cause, or experiment with an unproven but potentially lucrative fundraising event. Their involvement in philanthropy is based around social norms, which are governed by our desire for community, altruism, and interactions without explicit expectations of reciprocity. It is difficult to reconcile that goals arising from a set of social norms may be best advanced by adopting practices that are based around costs and benefits, individual merit, and financial transactions.

What if we do succeed in creating a broad shift in public sentiment towards the acceptability of applying market norms and market thinking to aspects of philanthropy? At what point does our encouragement of donors and professionals within the sector to apply market norms begin to seep into other areas and overwhelm our social motivations? Market norms and social norms do not mix well together. In Predictably Irrational, behavioral economist Dan Ariely relates the story of how a few years ago, the AARP was rebuffed in their request for lawyers who would be willing to offer their services at reduced rates of around $30 an hour to retirees. But when the AARP went back and asked the lawyers to volunteer their time, they received an overwhelmingly positive response. In both cases, the AARP was attempting to appeal to the lawyers’ sense of social obligation, but the involvement of even a hint of a market transaction overwhelmed the social instincts to assist the elderly. This is a trend that shows up again and again in behavioral economics: when money or market norms are introduced, social norms tend to go out the window.

I don’t mean to suggest either that the approaches Pallotta advocates in Uncharitable exclude the role of social norms or that it is impossible to introduce aspects of market functioning into the social sector. Yet, the combination will not be easy, and those who attempt to navigate the grey area where social and market norms may overlap will have to be cognizant of the trade-offs involved. When investors (social or not) begin to question whether an organization may be shifting away from the “rules” that were implicitly or explicitly understood when their investment was first made, their willingness to make future investments is likely to diminish.

Pallotta has established himself as a leading voice of reason within the social sector and I consider him to be one of the most consistently insightful writers in this space. That said, his views on how charitable goals can be met most effectively are still far from commonly accepted even within the social sector. I see a future where more widespread acceptance of the application of market norms to various aspects of social sector behaviors will result in more resources for the sector and better outcomes for the populations it seeks to serve.

At the same time, it is important that we do not discount how deeply embedded, powerful, and valid the presence of social norms is in the decisions of the people we hope to enlist to our causes. We need to find ways to tap into those “irrational” forces and direct them to more effectively create social impact. After all, these forces are responsible for countless hours of volunteering, in-kind contributions, and $300 billion in donations that flow into US charities each year.

The concepts of market and social norms and more broadly the study of how emotions and perception can trump logic in decision-making are the subject of an emerging field known as behavioral economics. A fantastic primer for those interested in behavioral economics and how to apply some of its core findings to social sector work can be found in the creatively titled, Homer Simpson for Nonprofits: The Truth About How People Really Think and What It Means for Promoting Your Cause, available as a free download from Network for Good.

Over the past 5 years, at gatherings and conferences etc., I have witnessed a new breed of professional “Social Entrepreneur” who is usually well-educated, well-spoken and can put together a powerful proposal and eloquently pitch for money. It is this group that, more often than not, benefits from funding and networking opportunities which means that much of the available money continues to move in the same established circles.

This is similar to a theme I remember first hearing spelled out explicitly by Echoing Green’s President, Cheryl Dorsey, at the StartingBloc Institute for Social Innovation in New York last year. Cheryl expressed pleasure at the skills and enthusiasm of the new breed of social entrepreneurs that have been flooding Echoing Green with applications in recent years. Yet, she also shared that a challenge Echoing Green has begun to face is finding ways to be inclusive of entrepreneurs who might not be as polished, but have ideas with lots of raw potential and deep insight into the communities they serve.

This is a valid concern. As Nathalie observed, if we only support people and ideas backed by detailed business plans and flashy PowerPoint presentations, we will miss out on the impact that could have been created by those that aren’t as good at using these tools. But the fact that we are seeing an influx of professional, polished entrepreneurs to the sector is something that we should be celebrating, not wringing our hands about.

We need to wrap our heads around the fact that this trend is not about to reverse itself anytime soon. Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner and others have suggested that a silver lining of the recession may be the release of the financial sector’s stranglehold on a huge stockpile of human capital, which will only accelerate the flow of talented professionals flocking to the social sector. We should be ecstatic to see a flood of well-educated, hard-working, polished, focused people of all ages directing their attention to protecting the environment, ending educational inequity, and becoming social entrepreneurs.

“Organic” social entrepreneurs and changemakers–that is, social sector participants that emerge from the communities they seek to serve–have the advantage of naturally understanding many of the needs and challenges facing their clients. “Professional” social entrepreneurs and changemakers–social sector participants who tend to have more academic or professional credentials, but lack first-hand knowledge of the communities they seek to serve–can also be taught to listen better to their service communities and integrate improved understanding of community needs into their ventures. It’s not really about who has the “opportunity” to be a social entrepreneur. It’s about making sure that the needs of vulnerable populations, of the people being served, are deeply understood and implemented into products and services.

We need effective organizations and interventions, but developing effective local organizations and small-scale interventions is not enough. If we want to fundamentally change the world and drastically reduce poverty, end world hunger, prevent the spread of pandemics, reverse climate change, and abolish slavery, it’s not enough to have a program that only reaches hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people. We need interventions that reach millions, tens of millions, and hundreds of millions of people.

The scale of this need is one reason why concepts like social franchising or microfranchising have been garnering attention in recent years. Franchising is all about replicability and scalability. A 2008 study by the International Franchise Association found that franchising is responsible for over $2.3 TRILLION in economic output, directly and indirectly creating one in seven jobs in the US. What is it going to take to get social sector interventions to create impact on that kind of scale? Who are the people we need leading and supporting organizations to get our sector to that place?

Professional social entrepreneurs don’t just make slick pitches. They are the people who would be building multi-national corporations and creating value for private sector interests, but instead have chosen to dedicate their talents and energy to addressing social issues. They don’t just form an insular network and channel available social sector resources within the same established circles. Their networks extend outside the sector, to people in financial institutions, law firms, consulting firms, Silicon Valley, offices of elected officials, government agencies, traditional media, and new media, and they draw on these networks to bring new resources into our sector. They have the talents, the resources, and the vision to affect social change on grand scale that is demanded.

We need to make sure professional social entrepreneurs are attuned to the realities of the communities they seek to serve. We need to make sure professional social entrepreneurs don’t blind us with buzz words and grandiose promises they can’t achieve. As long as we can do those things, bring ‘em on! There’s a lot of work to be done and we need all the help we can get.

The social sector has gotten stuck. We have confused energy and vision with meaningless mission statements and empty slogans featuring words like “eradication”, “sustainability”, and “collaboration”. We promise our donors and investors that we have found the way to end pollution, disease, hunger, and social injustice. We paint these grandiose pictures akin to that of the millennium development goals (MDGs), and then we wonder why our donors are beginning to ask us where their money is going.

People are still poor. The slave trade is still thriving. Children are still hungry. Carbon dioxide emissions remain excessive. All realities that leave us with a question of, “Have we actually done anything at all?”

Yes, we have. We have developed ready-to-use-therapeutic-food to address issues of malnutrition. We have provided millions of dollars in loans to foster entrepreneurship in the developing world. We have used SMS technology to connect people to healthcare and food. We have even set up voluntary carbon markets to hone and incentivize environment-friendly processes. Those of us vested in the work of social development have been innovative and have implemented solid programs with tangible deliverables that have saved lives, developed community leadership, and created safe refuges for countless species.

We are doing good work. But we are growing increasingly lazy in the way that we tell our stories. In fact, I’ll take it one step further – we are lying. People are asking for measurements of success and many of us do not have them – at least, not the ones we promised. The upcoming generation, the famous Millennials, demands to see impact if they are going to donate, and more of the recent social impact investors are expecting organizations to prove they are actually achieving their goals.

It really is not going to matter whether we preach a sermon on eradicating poverty. It is going to matter that through our work we increased a community’s income by 20%. It is going to matter that we perfected a revenue-generating model that allows for the maintenance of the wells that we fund-raise for.  It is going to matter that through our work, 27 women were rescued and protected from the sex trade in the last month due to the donated amount. The marriage of what we do, how we do it, and why we do it, needs to be our focus and message.

And for those of us who are donating, we have some work to do as well.

A professor of mine points out that business plans must “be realistic”. When he reviews business plans that promise the entire world is their market, out comes the red pen and the editing begins. A wise investor knows the age-old saying, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” She won’t invest in a business that promises the world.

This is why we have to seek out organizations that can demonstrate how they are solving important social issues. Investors that do not require evaluations are doing the community a disservice.  If we hand organizations a check, we are saying that we believe in the work they do.  You wouldn’t buy into a product that promised you abs of steel without ever having to leave your couch (at least, I hope you wouldn’t). Why would you believe an organization that promises to eradicate poverty by 2015?

Using buzz words instead of using creative and honest ways to convey the work we are doing is disrespectful to the people and communities we serve. If you do in fact choose to promise to eradicate poverty, I challenge you to do this in front of an audience of children in the slums of Kenya.  If you choose to promise to stop the international sex trade, do it while looking into the eyes of the young rape victims in your own city.  And if you choose to promise a future for all children, I dare you to do so while sitting with a mother who knows that the AIDS that claimed her husband’s life will soon claim hers. They will all ask how. And they deserve a clearly defined answer.

(Photo by Vanguard1219)

Failing the success of sweeping interventions, the sector has recently become obsessed with micro solutions to social problems. The wave of micro activity started with the popularity of microcredit, but has recently devolved into a flurry of any philanthropic word pre-fixed with “micro” such as micro-volunteering, micro-donations, micro-philanthropy, and micro-actions.

My macro point here is that the momentary micro dogma of the social sector distracts us from pursuing real solutions that help people.  What matters, of course, is what works, small, medium, large, or super-sized.  The micro-trend was started by microcredit, the first, and only member of the “micro” solution set that resembles a real intervention rather than a gimmick focused more on size than effectiveness.

Microcredit is micro in so far as it is a small loan to an impoverished person, ostensibly used for wealth creating activities. While microcredit has been heralded in some circles as a powerful poverty-reduction tool, recent evaluative research has raised some important questions. Specifically, David Roodman speculates there might be a microcredit bubble in Bangladesh. Roodman writes

Indeed, multiple borrowing is widespread in Bangladesh now, and it has raised concerns that some Bangladeshis are juggling microcredit loans the way some Americans juggle credit card debt, in a merry-go-round that must one day stop.

As borrowers acquire multiple loans their debts becoming increasing less micro, raising doubts about microcredit’s core promise that the poor need only small loans to lift themselves out of poverty, a falsehood promoted more by Kiva’s marketing than the fundamental tenants of the microcredit movement.

While the idea that a modest investment by Western standards can create sustainable businesses is appealing, evidence of multiple borrowing undermines this hope. Even though most people involved in the day-to-day development of microcredit as a poverty intervention strategy take a sophisticated, nuanced approach to microcredit, its widespread popularity has less to do with actual outcomes and more to do with the suggestion that solving big problems only requires small actions.

And here, I believe, is where the micro thinking begins to unravel.

The current adherence to the micro dogma does not come from a measured understanding of effectiveness of micro approaches. Instead, our fascination with all things micro stems from a hope that simple, small, and intuitive sounding actions can solve tremendously complicated problems. By attempting to reduce the daunting magnitude of poverty to something we can solve through trivial investments, shopping, and meaningless minute-at-a-time volunteer activities, we simply aggregate our micro inabilities to solve social problems into a macro inability to solve social problems.

Over on the Tactical Philanthropy Blog comments section reader Chip McComb sums up the problem with micro giving nicely, in so doing revealing much of what is wrong with micro thinking in general. Chip writes

I fear that as micro giving, and mobile giving becomes more and more prevalent the attitude of those that give, could shift dangerously to think that all giving should be as easy and as pleasing as buying a coke or a big mac, and when it’s not easy or pleasing, it is therefore not worth their time or expense. What a dangerous trap!

I am not arguing that all micro efforts are problematic. There are some great virtues of thinking small, so long as micro means local approaches to social problems, small strategic investments (like microcredit), or other such reasoned uses that resemble actual strategies. My problem with the current wave of micro thinking is that micro has become a euphemism for easy.

Ultimately, what matters is providing solutions that work. In some cases, small interventions might work best, like microcredit, in other cases, perhaps our investments need to be large and patient, rather than micro, like Acumen Fund’s approach to social investing. Whatever the size of the intervention, all our approaches should be well reasoned and rigorously evaluated.

Of course, unlike our modern micro interventions, evaluation is hard, even if it is indispensable in expanding what works and purging what does not.  Recognizing both the importance and complexity of evaluation, perhaps I should pursue the idea of micro-evaluation, a simple evaluative framework that is as easy to use as it is meaningless.

(Photo by Articulate Matter)

My initial reaction upon learning about this casino was disbelief, followed by indignation.  I’m a strong proponent of social enterprise, but surely this venture took the concept too far.  ”Problem Gambler Cured by Social Enterprise Casino” would make a good headline for The Onion, right?  But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve started to wonder whether it really is such a terrible idea.

First of all, is a new casino likely to create or further gambling problems?  The National Council on Problem Gambling asserts that “the casino or lottery provides the opportunity for the person to gamble.  It does not, in and of itself, create the problem any more than a liquor store would create an alcoholic.”  I generally try to defer to the expertise of others in areas where I know little to nothing, but it seems to me that at the very least, we have to consider liquor stores and casinos enablers of their respective vices and the negative individual and societal consequences that result.  I think it’s fair to assume that at least a few problem-gamblers-in-waiting will become problem gamblers as a result of having access to a new casino.

But remember: this isn’t just a new casino, it’s a new social enterprise casino, whose profits are directed to the work of another social enterprise, Count Me Out, to prevent and treat gambling addiction.  Assuming that Count Me Out’s programs are indeed effective, the question now becomes whether the profits generated by the casino enable Count Me Out to reduce the incidence of problem gambling to a greater degree than the casino’s presence increases the incidence of problem gambling.  Also, since treatment is available on premises, the casino functions similarly to a “wet” shelter for homeless alcoholics or a needle exchange program for drug addicts, providing an opportunity to mitigate collateral damage and provide the addict with access to resources to address their problems when they are ready.  Better for an addict to get his fix there, in an environment designed to minimize abuse, than at another establishment which aims to capitalize on his vulnerability.

If that were where the equation ended, I would make the case that, at best, the casino might turn out to be slightly better than a wash.  However, Hospitality & Grow are also using the casino to provide accredited training, life skills, work experience and employment opportunities to disadvantaged populations, including ex-offenders, people with disabilities, and the long-term unemployed.  On top of that, the casino helps to drive more customers to Hospitality & Grow’s complex which includes four other social enterprise businesses, all of which provide similar employment and training opportunities, among them a 66-room hotel that is being renovated to serve people with special needs and generate environmental benefits.  Surely the social and economic value created by providing such substantive opportunities to these populations both directly and indirectly is enough to tilt the balance firmly, if not emphatically, in favor of the casino having a net positive benefit.

A case can be made that the resources Hospitality & Grow is directing to the casino could be better used to create similar social benefits in another type of business that isn’t centered around such ethically dubious activity.  I’d much rather see employment-focused social enterprises like the catering businesses run by DC Central Kitchen and the Pine Street Inn, the landscape services and bakery businesses from Rubicon Programs, or the maintenance, fulfillment, and other businesses run by countless NISH affiliates.  But the fact is, the decision-makers at Hospitality & Grow saw a casino as the most promising social enterprise opportunity given their location, resources, and the synergy with their existing offerings, so they went with it.  I’m still not 100% convinced of the concept, but at this point, I’m inclined to be supportive and to applaud Hospitality & Grow and its parent, Grow Organization UK, for having the vision and strength of conviction to launch such a seemingly counter-intuitive venture with the potential for both positive social impact and financial sustainability.  We may not need social enterprise casinos to proliferate, but we do need more leaders in all organizations and at all levels who are willing to give ideas like this the consideration they deserve.

(Photo credit Social Enterprise)

The thing is, I’m not sure this widget and what it represents are really good for the social change sector.  It might be good for the sector on a superficial level, but it also promotes the damaging mythology of The Social Entrepreneur.  The mythology of The Social Entrepreneur is the idea that there are these few, special people who take on an almost super-human role in creating incredibly innovative and successful organizations that are on their way to solving massive social problems.   The Social Entrepreneur’s own personal brand and story become inextricably linked with the marketing and achievements of the organization he or she started.

Kjerstin Erickson inspired a lively discussion on this very topic in a post on Social Edge.  To quote her:

The mythology of The Social Entrepreneur revolves the whole story around the individual. Through a shrewd slight-of-hand, our attention is turned away from the collective movement and toward an individual onto whom a Hero’s Journey is imposed. The drama of such a tale is high, but at what cost? Kings and Queens are made, and many a speaking career launched…but what is sacrificed? What collective narrative, what real representation of holistic social change, what inclusive vision for proudly joining hands as small cogs in a big wheel?

The emphasis on the individual at the expense of the collective narrative is certainly one danger of focusing so strongly on social entrepreneurs rather than social entrepreneurship.  David Henderson touched on another danger on this site yesterday, when he warned of the unconscious shift in our loyalties that can occur as we pour our time and resources into a social change organization and find our ambition increasingly driven by the success of a particular organization or approach.  ”Where once the poor themselves were paramount in our ambitions, our ambitions instead become about the success of our solutions.”

The symbiotic relationship between the social entrepreneur and the organization she founded can also be damaging to the long-term health of the organization.  It is commonly recognized within the for-profit sector that although entrepreneurs make terrific leaders early on, as a company grows and matures, it eventually reaches a point where a different skill-set is required of its leaders to get it over a hump and scale it to the next level.  When a company reaches this point, assuming it has shrewd investors or a diligent board, the entrepreneur steps aside (though not always of their own volition) and allows new leadership to build off the successful business model the entrepreneur developed.  In the nonprofit sector, it is much harder for the founder to step aside from the day-to-day operation of their organization because so often their personal story and involvement are an integral to the organization’s fundraising capabilities.   The opportunity costs of this intertwining between the entrepreneur and the venture are great: to the organization which has trouble bringing in the new leader it needs; to the individual who may no longer be achieving her full potential in the role that is now required of her; and to society, which is denied having that entrepreneur redeploy her energy to solve a new challenge.

Like Kjerstin and David, I have the utmost respect for social entrepreneurs and the profound influence many of them have in improving our world.  In fact, Kjerstin was one of the individuals I recently commended for taking a Full Contact approach to philanthropy.  I do not mean to diminish in any way the accomplishments of entrepreneurs (social or otherwise) or imply that they do not play a tremendously important role in bettering the world.  Let’s just be conscious of the costs of promoting the mythology of The Social Entrepreneur and remember to emphasize the metrics and outcomes that capture their organizations’ true impact so that our human and financial resources can be deployed to the places where they can do the most good.

(Photo by yosoyjulito)

Thanks everyone for taking time out of your day to offer a critique of our work. We welcome and appreciate the input and feedback.

There are a few points we would like to make.

(1) The field of crowdsourcing is still in its infancy and so is our company. We’re just getting started.

(2) We’re already providing value to organizations via image tagging — the first of many tasks to be offered on our platform. For museums, cataloging images is a real need. It costs money to hire curators. Brooklyn museum helped to pioneer this space a few years ago (http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/ta…), the Steve Project took it one step further with their project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve.museum), and even Google has taken advantage of image tagging in their own form (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_image_labeler). For organizations, making thousands of images searchable provides a tangible benefit to staff, the public, and more. But there exists no system to facilitate image tagging for organizations that don’t have a software development budget, until The Extraordinaries.

But image tagging does much more than deliver an archived photo database. Image tagging (and other tasks in our system) strengthen relationships with supporters.. Keeping even the most devoted supporters engaged is a touch point that organizations work hard to achieve through email blasts, Facebook messages, tweets, and maybe even direct mail.With our platform, supporters do actual work for something they are passionate about, and feel closer to the organization’s mission in the process. For some organizations (like museums and libraries), it’s one of the first opportunities to *get information back* from patrons… please read the Steve Project research for how much value this channel creates.

(3) We’re just beginning to explore possibilities that others have proven in the marketplace.

For science, NASA used an early form of micro-volunteering in 2000 with the Clickworkers program (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickworkers), Galaxy Zoo took that process one step further (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_zoo), and the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology has had several amazing advancements for bird research using this method (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/NetCommunity/Page….).

For graphics, iStockPhoto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istockphoto) and http://www.99designs.com has saved nonprofit organizations tens of thousands of dollars in design costs.

The list goes on. In summary, we’re not the first to prove that crowdsourcing works, nor the last. But we’re the first to make it easily available to organizations.

(4) This is not a replacement for traditional volunteering, it’s another way to give back, and we’re already proving it. For example, each year about 1.1 million people in the United States have heart attacks, and almost half of them die (http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/He…). An organization called First Aid Corps came to The Extraordinaries and built a mission that asks people to help build a mapped database of public heart defibrillators (shock pads). With our system, people can snap a photo of a defibrillator in an airport, government building, or other public place, record the GPS location of the device, and beam it to the map. So far, with only a limited number of users, we’ve had over two-dozen defibrillators submitted through our system. See for yourself (http://app.beextra.org/activityfeed/show/orgid/…) scroll down to where it says, “mapped a defibrillator” in one of the lines and click the orange arrow.

(5) What we’re replacing here is actually idle entertainment. We spent nine-billion hours in 2003 playing solitaire (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/no…), 1800 hours watching television in 2008 (http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobi…) and 74% of Americans *did not* volunteer in 2008 (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/volun.nr0.htm). The Extraordinaries is working to make it meaningful, for someone to do actual work for an organization, cause, or community they care about, in a few minutes of spare time. See for yourself: http://app.beextra.org/activityfeed/show. And for a great read on how our so-called “cognitive surplus” can be applied to good causes, see Clay Shirky’s piece:http://www.shirky.com/herecomeseverybody/2008/0…

(6) True, one in five children in the United States *does* lives in poverty. What can you do about that with your mobile phone? At the moment, you can help Christel House deliver messages of encouragement to underprivileged students. That’s a start.

Down the road:

– You might be able review and critique the resume of a parent of one of those kids looking to find a job, while you’re waiting for a latte in Starbucks.
– You might be able to help map food resources using your camera and GPS and ensure that assets reach their destinations, on your way home from work.
– You might be able to help a distributed phone-banking service make a few phone calls to identify kids in need, while on your lunch break.
– You might be able translate brochures into other languages from organizations looking to service those impoverished communities.

The possibilities are endless if you can dream them. And, The Extraordinaries is nearly finished with the first iteration of our platform that will enable you to start making some of those dreams a reality. Come see how: http://www.BeExtra.org

Thanks for taking time to read our response.

Sincerely,

Jacob Colker
Co-Founder and CEO
The Extraordinaries
Jacob@beextra.org

The Extraordinaries developed an iPhone app that enables users to “volunteer” from their phones.  The pitch is that we (liberal elite smartphone owners) are too busy to volunteer (because we are the liberal elite) but have five minutes here and there to mess around on our phones.  So why not use those five minutes to complete a micro-volunteering opportunity from our phone?

Answer:  Because micro-volunteering is stupid.

The only thing The Extraordinaries have been able to get their users to do is tag photos for online archives maintained by museums like the Smithsonian.  This is all fine and good, but hardly worth much praise, or investment, and clearly not a game changer, like was claimed by the Huffington Post.  What has me so in a tizzy about this company is their claim that they are a “Social Enterprise” focused on both providing social value and earning profits.  Frankly, I see them achieving neither.

We have serious problems as a country and a planet.  One in five children in the United States lives in poverty.  What can you do about that with your mobile phone?  Not a darn thing.  Efforts like the Extraordinaries create an illusion of social engagement that I argue is actually a threat to people like us who work on social issues in a serious way.  We do need help in the social sector.  We need better talent, we need more resources.  The Extraordinaries’ product is not social value, rather what they peddle is the falsehood that people who do not do anything for anyone can absolve themselves of that shame by clicking buttons on their smart phones.

I am not a surgeon.  There is no iPhone app that makes me feel like I am one, and that is a good thing.  If someone does not volunteer, is not engaged in their community, why should we sell them a placebo application to make them believe otherwise?

Ridiculous.

(Photo by beextra.org)