Embedded Giving to be Regulated

Lucy Bernholz of Philanthropy 2173 identified "embedded giving" as a buzzword for 2007 early on, and it is proving to be the run-away leader of all philanthropy buzzwords for the year. In fact, the concept has gained such notoriety that one senator has announced plans to introduce legislation to regulate embedded giving,

to require that retailers notify charities when their names are being used in sales promotions, to require charities’ approval of embedded giving and to require retailers to disclose how much they are actually giving to charities.

Hopefully this new legislation, if passed, would help to alleviate concerns such as those posed at one point by Freerice.com.

Thoughts on Radicalizing Philanthropy

In the Tactical Philanthropy One Post Challenge, Trista Harris of New Voices in Philanthropy won the runner-up prize for having such a radical, innovative and thought-provoking post in which she called for philanthropy to leave the "ivory tower" and essentially send its program officers out into the communities that foundations actually serve.

Lucy Bernholz of Philanthropy 2173 proposes something equally radical and astute: she says that if she were "philanthropy queen" she would

find a way to take advantage of... applications of methodology and creativity from smart people... thinkers (students and faculty) from the social and natural sciences, arts, design, humanities, business, policy, and religion to co-craft possible solutions to poverty, hunger, sickness, cultural isolation, etc... Then I'd develop critiques and review processes that were led by those living the conditions so that only applicable, reality-based strategies would survive the process... The whole process would be public so that those we hadn't yet found who had something to contribute could find it, use it, improve it--and it would feed a marketplace of ideas for the public good.

Lucy calls this "open source charrette philanthropy." Personally, I love this idea. It starts off sort of as I imagine think-tanks (ideally) function, but then the incorporation of transparency, public testing and the open-source aspect of it make it truly novel and worth a real-world look.

Lucy also makes a really strong, valid argument against using overhead ratios as a metric for success for nonprofits:

in what other are of your life do you deliberately seek out the product, service, location, or experience that is being made available in the cheapest possible fashion? We don't pick restaurants because they forgo cleanliness...we don't choose schools for our kids because the administration is keeping costs down and not supporting teachers...

She goes on to argue that the main reason why that is the prevalent metric is that it is easy to calculate and compare. I'd like to take a moment here to congratulate Holden and co. at GiveWell for bucking this system and radicalizing philanthropy by establishing new methods for determining the success of nonprofits. Holden was the guest speaker/respondent at the Chronicle of Philanthropy online discussion yesterday entitled, "Changing the Culture of Philanthropy: a Young Donor's Views."

Freerice.com: Addictive, Yes, But Does it Actually do Good?

Have you ever seen one of those comedic routines in which a character receives a series of individual pieces of information and with each one, the character's expression turns alternately from sad to happy and back again? Well, that is exactly what just happened to me as I read a series of differing sources of information reporting on the legitimacy of one of my favorite, fun charity sites: freerice.com.

Freerice.com is a site that tests your vocabulary and for every right answer, ten grains of rice are donated to the UN's World Food Program. The test is "smart" and adjusts the level of difficulty to fit your vocabulary. Needless to say, I'm not the only one out there who finds the site completely addictive.

I first became alarmed when I read in Philanthropy2173 to "beware: embedded giving is not always what it seems" with regards to sites like freerice.com. But the main point made in that blog post seemed to be that the money made on freerice.com was actually from ads and not really from the "clicks" of the participant. Well, so what? I felt relieved.

But then, I read a post on Read/Write Web that said that the way the advertisers check to see who is visiting them and buying their goods from freerice.com is by using Linksynergy cookies. As the blogger points out, "I have no problem with cookies myself, I like them, in fact - but a quick look around the web indicates that many people find Linksynergy cookies distressing." Oh. I was back to frowning again.

But then I scrolled through the comments and discovered that someone had actually contacted the WFP to check on the legitimacy of freerice because he had wanted to start a Facebook group devoted to it! WFP wrote back to say that freerice was indeed legit, and in fact, just recently published on their website an article about how pleased they are with the results. Whew. Guess I can go back to testing my vocabulary, I mean, donating rice online.

However, to get back to the initial cautionary blog post on Philanthropy 2173, another questionable website is also mentioned in it: iGive.com. Unfortunately, careful looking reveals that Lucy is dead on about this one. iGive is a shop-to-give site that allows you to select

"your favorite cause" as the recipient of funds donated by merchants when you make purchases. Most of the causes run along the line of "my trip to Hawaii," or "Mama needs a new pair of shoes." The site explicitly states "Any cause in the U.S. or Canada qualifies - and 501(c)3 nonprofit status is not required."

Hmm. This doesn't necessarily mean that the site isn't doing what it says by donating proceeds to the indicated causes, but it does raise the question of whether real 501(c)3 organizations really want to be affiliated with a site that will give money to any (non-vetted) cause... For those of you museums currently using iGive, what do you think? Does the fact that just about anyone can establish themselves as "a cause" on this site bother you? Will you continue to use this site, or look into other options?

And Speaking of Giving with Somewhat Ulterior Motives...

Well, okay, actually the ulterior motive here is also giving, but of a different sort. I'm talking about charitable giving as a form of gift-giving for family and friends. This can take the form of making a donation in honor of a loved one or of shopping for a loved one at a store or on a website that then gives at least some portion of what you spend to charity. There may be other forms that giving for the sake of, well, giving can also take, and you can be sure that if there are, someone responding to Britt Bravo's current Net2ThinkTank question will blog about it!

One place where those wanting to support museums can shop is Shop for Museums. (That is, if they don't want to shop at a museum gift store, which is another great way to support a museum and buy fantastic presents for everyone on your list!) For a broader range of nonprofit options, you can try eBay's Missionfish, Freepledge, or iGive. You can support free trade and support the charity Social Action for Association and Development when you shop from the free trade clothing store, Tam and Rob.

If you are more interested in giving donations in honor of your loved ones, you can try Global Giving or Give Meaning to support grassroots projects around the world, or Changing the Present, a site specifically set up for giving philanthropic gifts, such as an adopted tiger, or school clothing for a young girl in Africa. The site even has specific gift recommendations according to how much you want to spend or what family member you are "buying" for.

Philanthropy 2173 blogger Lucy Bernholz also has ideas about gifts of giving.