Earlier this spring, I had the opportunity to visit some project leaders in Nairobi. I was so impressed with their enthusiasm and eagerness to learn about GlobalGiving and how to appeal to GG donors. I have to say, some folks from that batch have turned out to be real rockstars!

Towards the end of December, GlobalGiving will have the opportunity to meet some Project Leaders in India, Indonesia and Pakistan. We’d love to learn more about the leaders behind these projects and find out about the work they’re doing. We plan to host a few workshops to bring them together and to answer their queries!  Here are just a few of the people we’re planning to visit:

• Home for 100 Banda Aceh Orphans, PUSPEM in Indonesia
• Educating 100 children in earthquake hit areas, The Citizens Foundation in Pakistan
• Ecological Restoration in Tribal Villages of India, Seva Mandir in India

However, as a GlobalGiving donor myself, I wondered, “What would I want to learn from the donor perspective?”

So I would pose this question to you-have you supported any projects in Delhi, Udaipur or Chennai or Indonesia and Pakistan? What more do you want to know?  What else would you like to see? Do you want more project photos?  Interviews with the people behind the project?  Be creative!  Send us your thoughts and questions, and we’ll try to answer as many of them as we can while we’re there.

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Vh1 and the Best Week Ever crew launched a funny PSA around their “Nothing But Nets” campaign about preventing Malaria in Africa.  Check it out:

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Take a look at the most highly read stories on CNN.com today:

CNN MOST POPULAR NEWS STORIES

Oprah, a parade gone bad, MySpace suicide, and the writer’s strike in Hollywood.

How about somebody paying attention to this:

BASRA, Iraq, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Women in Iraq’s southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behaviour deemed un-Islamic, the city’s police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment. Read More…

Jeepers.

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This appeared in last Sunday’s paper.

I guess I’m a little behind on my reading.

When I read it, I thought the sentiment resonated true; I’ve found that most people struggle with living a “Starbucks life” and their commmitment to international (or local) charitable giving.  I guess there’s a little comfort in knowing that the feeling is universal enough that it made it into the Sunday comics.

 Happy Friday, everyone!

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The incredibly popular tech blog, TechCrunch, has started a new set of web awards call “The Crunchies.” If you’re a fan of GlobalGiving and would like to help us get some extra press, then we could really use your help to get us nominated.

To nominate GlobalGiving:

• Go to http://vote.crunchies.techcrunch.com/#worldimprovement
• Enter “http://www.globalgiving.com” (without the quotes)
•  Hit “Proceed” and you’re done!

We really appreciate the support of our donors and hope that even more people learn about the great opportunities to support grassroot projects around the world.

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Today’s New York Times has an article about the travesty of deforestation in Indonesia. According to the article, western companies are cutting down Indonesian forests for the production of several items including biodiesel, which is an eco-friendly alternative to oil. This process of deforestation releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment, and therefore gravely affects the local community. The international community is considering implementing a carbon-trading plan - a process whereby wealthy countries pay developing countries for the latter’s allotment of carbon emissions - to mitigate this problem.

To a student of international development, the facts presented in this article have some staggering implications:

 - Biodiesel is supposed to be a sustainable alternative to oil; however, the effect of deforestation from biodiesel manufacture belies its sustainability, and this has serious environmental implications. As we discover “sustainable alternatives” to anything (be it oil, paper, plastic, etc), we need to be mindful of the detrimental effects that the production of such items has on the environment, and whether these effects reduce the product’s sustainability.-

-  Indonesia is the world’s 14th largest emitter of carbon, ahead of wealthy countries (France, Spain, and Australia) and steadily developing countries (Brazil).  Aside from the wealthiest countries, the world’s largest carbon-emitters are countries experiencing steady industrial development (China, India, and Mexico, for instance).   Indonesia is neither wealthy nor is it experiencing industrial development anywhere near that of India or China.  This means that Indonesia is using up a lot of carbon space but not reaping the vast development benefits this should entail.

- On the surface carbon-trading seems like an economical move: it provides the wealthy country with incentive to cut back its emissions while simultaneously incorporating the developing country into the international market. However, industrial development necessitates increased carbon emissions. If wealthy countries buy a poor country out of its carbon emission allotment, the poor country will not have a chance to develop industrially.

Something tells me we’re not going to solve these problems today, but we can provide you with ways to make a positive impact on the environment and change the lives of Indonesians:

Help Women Regenerate Degraded Natural Resources

Indonesian Ecological Restoration and Education

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Last week we had two great visits from our friends at NIKE. We’ve been helping them cultivate a network of projects around the world using sport to make things better in their communities - from a women’s football association in Rwanda to basketball for youth in one of Nairobi’s toughest slums. NIKE’s Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) employees have been particularly supportive of these projects, and now NIKE is giving all of those employees an opportunity to support them even more. This week, all of NIKE’s EMEA employees can donate $15 to any of these projects, just by plugging in their employee numbers as gift certificate codes. I’m thrilled that NIKE has chosen to give this gift to NIKE employees for the holidays, and the projects will benefit tremendously.

We’re seeing a huge amount of interest in our new gift cards as corporate gifts - whether for employees, partners, or customers. I don’t want to ruin the surprise by revealing who’s buying what and for whom, but we’re rapidly going through our stock of biodegradable cards and have already ordered more to keep up with the demand.

At a previous job, I remember getting a call from a business partner who had just received a holiday gift from me. They’d been taking bets on what exactly the gift was, and they wanted me to settle things. I believe the objects they received were meant to be a pencil and sticky note holder, and I was happy that they’d brought some entertainment to the office, but I’m sure those gifts went right in the landfill after the betting was over.

Thanks to NIKE and all of the other GlobalGiving partners who are giving a meaningful holiday gift this year!

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Today, The New York Times published an interesting article about the popularity of philanthropic gift cards this holiday season. 

Key quote : “People are realizing that giving somebody another sweater is not as good as giving them the opportunity to give to a charity they support.”

Here’s our response:

And the best part is, there are no additional processing fees.

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We’ve all grown up with “Don’t waste ___, do you know how many children would love to have it and you’re throwing it away?” or well, something to that effect. As a result I’ve always been respectful of my easy access to resources - a daily, heartbreaking struggle for so many others. What I’ve never really been able to decide upon is whether I like the guilt-creating approach to developing a conscience. And, if indeed it was effective.

It’s Holiday Season, and the retail-advertising gods have launched the “Annual Guilt Trips”. Retails stores want part of the holiday sales pie; heck at this point whether the US economy dips into recession depends on how much the American consumer spends this Christmas season. Non-profits also want to leverage the annual charitable giving season. Just check out the ads running on TV; they all look the same - the dusty background, the gaunt, vacant eyes, the protruding ribs, the despairing music. And they’re telling you that YOU can make a difference this holiday season.

Watching TV, munching on my dinner and enjoying a lazy evening at home I was just addressed by a NGO Anon advertisement. Two African children, brothers (They just say Africa because you know, Africa is one country, really just the size of Connecticut and as diverse) are beginning their day. The elder one, shirtless in raggedy shorts works and takes care of the smaller child. Flies flutter on and off their thin chests and arms. Then there is a close up. There are a few tears rolling down the older child’s face as he contemplates the misfortunate circumstance of his birth. Shift frame to a charming young actress, impeccably dressed telling me how I’m capable of making a difference. Moved by the images, I felt miserable about the full plate on my lap that probably had as many calories as those kids got all day. But I also knew – my philanthropy would never be directed to NGO Anon. I’m not Grinch and I don’t like being made to feel like that. My mother has the sole right to emotionally manipulate me. The list ends with her.

However, I did wonder if this approach works. While I couldn’t find any statistics to show the effectiveness of this approach, I came across a study that showed that 7 in 10 donors (both active and lapsed) did not like to be guilt-tripped. I’m going to go with it’s not the highest impact approach to fundraising. Normative questions, aside.

Disclaimer: I work at GlobalGiving.

Disclaimer 2: I have more than a couple of Starbucks coffees a week. I know how much they cost.

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We at GlobalGiving are big fans of Facebook—while we’re interested in building applications that support our projects, we also just love to have fun and see what our friends are up to.

I personally love the Flixster application in Facebook, where I can compare my movie tastes with everyone I know and get friends’ recommendations on movies I haven’t seen.

Why Flixster is awesome:

A) It’s easy and fun to rate, share, and compare movie tastes—the Facebook application is simple, simple, simple.

B) Users can compete with others in movie trivia, and Facebook users LOVE to compete—it turns out that I know more than I’d like to know about Adam Sandler movies.

For the philanthropy sector, the meteoric rise of Flixster, iLike, and Scrabulous is informative, even if they are free applications.

The lesson: Facebook users want to play, so let them play.

About a year ago, I asked Facebook’s team if we could transform the NCAA Basketball Pool promoted through Facebook into a fundraising application, where participating users could pay $10 each into competitive pools and raise funds for their favorite GlobalGiving projects.

That was before Facebook opened its platform up to developers, so this year I’m issuing a challenge to developers at large:

Calling ALL Slashdotters, Facebookies, OpenSocialites, ESPNers, Bloggers, and Friends—if you have ideas for a fun, simple, and collaborative application where users get to play around and still contribute to a good cause, let us know. If we really like your idea, we’ll invite you to blog about it.

Your ideas don’t have to deal with the NCAA—that’s just my idea. Be creative!

	Click on the pictures above to learn more about these particular projects.

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