Entries Tagged 'giving' ↓

A true gift economy normally requires gift exchange to be more than simply a back-and-forth between two individuals. A Kashmiri tale tells of two Brahmin women who tried to fulfill their obligations for alms-giving simply by giving alms back and forth to one another. On their deaths they were transformed into two poisoned wells from which no one could drink, reflecting the barrenness of this weak simulacrum of giving. WP: Gift Economy

The story came to mind recently after seeing two parties engage in gift-giving to increase their  “karma” in an online community, reaching the top of the leaderboard. It will be interesting to see how much of the problem is solved with technology, and what portion through old fashioned social means.

I wonder if the intellectual heirs to Mauss’s legacy are doing research on this

I have been a fan of Kiva since Jamais Cascio wrote about them on worldchanging. Kiva works on a simple idea: 20 people in rich countries can each lend $25 to a person somewhere half-way around the world. It’s small change for us, but that $500 can be enough for a borrower to build a decent livelihood.

99.7% of loans made through Kiva are repaid. It’s easy, cheap and changes lives; a lot of people love the idea.

They’ve had trouble keeping their servers up after receiving mainstream media attention, so when news came out that Oprah was to feature them I figured they might crash hard. They were only down for three 20 minute periods. 94,000 people visited the site that day, and 4388 new registered users lent $145,000 - more than triple their previous week’s total.

With two years of operation, Kiva has managed to get some solid data on repayment. Their knowledge and experience is paying off. What mainstream media recognition they are getting is richly deserved.

Because of the sudden influx of loaners, they have run out of businesses to fund. This is an excerpt from their site:

We’ve funded EVERY business on the site!!

[…]

With your help, one day we’ll run out of businesses forever. We at Kiva.org look forward to the day our website ceases to be a functioning microfinance site and instead becomes an online museum dedicated to showing future generations what we used to call “poverty.”

After reading about carbon offsets on davidsuzuki.org, I decided to check the prices for the “Gold Standard” vendors they listed*:

planetair.ca - $38, CAD $43.30 with taxes (site includes emission calculators for air travel, road travel and home)

myclimate.org - SFr. 40.00, about $35 CAD.

sustainabletravelinternational.org - $16.12

climatefriendly.com - $19.93

atmosfair.de -  $29.31

Not all carbon offsets are created equal, but these are the best in the world. Clearly, these organizations are still learning to find cheaper ways to finance green projects. This is both expected, and a good thing; it’s the whole point of creating a trade mechanism for these credits.

(*) Not all websites give you a straight price per ton. PlanetAir, MyClimate and ClimateFriendly were all easy to use. The other two required using their calculator to get a price per ton:

• For Sustainable Travel, I picked calculated a package of 4.2098 tons of emissions for $64.20, or $16.12 CAD per ton (today’s exchange rate).
• For Atmosfair, I picked a flight that resulted in 4.1 tons of emissions for 83 Euros, CAD $29.31 per ton.

Some of us are more effective at making money than others. If the same holds true about effective giving, who are the Warren Buffetts of the giving world? I have a few ideas to find out.

Rescuing Young Girls From Bonded Labor in Nepal sounded like a slam-dunk investment. One of my friends just returned from Nepal, so I sent her the link. To my surprise she gave it a thumbs-down. It’s not that the organization isn’t doing good, it just isn’t where she’d put her money. A Tibetan Natural Birth and Health Training Center training midwives sounded more effective to her.

We all have limited funds, and most of us giving want to make sure our dollars have the most impact. Since I haven’t been to Nepal or Tibet, I have to rely on her to discriminate between projects.

The website those two projects are listed on make it easy to decentralize giving. As far as helping people reach informed opinions however, it fails. Perhaps social networking can help: I could let my friends know I trust her to have an informed opinion about projects in that region.

Expertise could also be deduced the other way: find people that fund the projects you’ve already vetted, and chances are you’ll find other discriminating funders. I have loaned money through kiva, which I consider very effective, and given money to Trees for the Future. I’d like to know what else people give money to when they give to those organizations. Do they know about other effective non-profits?

A historical perspective could help too. In 2 to 5 years from now, we’ll have a clearer idea about which projects had a high impact - just like we know today the impressive impact the Grameen Bank has had. Like startups, many will fail and some will have average results. A few projects will hit home-runs. When we know that, I’ll want to go back and see who funded those home-runs, and what they’re funding today. They are the Warren Buffetts, and I want to mimick them.