I wanted to use this post to share a site that is using community and technology together in a neat way. Indiegogo is a website that allows people or organizations to fund raise money for various causes. Indiegogo definitely falls in line with our traditional american value system; it promotes a sense of individualism in a capitalistic setting and allows for successful, creative and innovative ideas to flourish. Of course Bellah and others find plenty of faults with these values-- but when it comes to charity, it works pretty well.
Indiegogo allows any person, group or organization to present a cause they would like to fund raise for. These causes range from typical charity work and funding for entrepreneurial ventures, to sponsorship and commission for just about any kind of art. Indiegogo has had over a hundred thousand of different funding campaigns, developing an environment that financially fosters the life of many ideas. Basically, if you think it's cool and have the cash, donate.
Being a Lawrence student, I'm not exactly a full time philanthropist, but it's always fun to poke around and see what people are thinking up. One of the categories I enjoy browsing most is the technology section. While most of the ideas you find here are pretty gimmicky and most likely going nowhere, there are some cool gadgets that would be fun to try. One of the more successful fundraisers fight now is the Cynaps. Cynaps is a hat that operates as Bluetooth enabled headphones. I'm not a huge hat fan, but the earpiece free design seems interesting, check it out.
To move on to something more charity oriented-- you can find tons of initiatives where people are using Indiegogo to improve communities around the world. This contradicts my "Indiegogo promotes the individual" spiel earlier, but it's good to see so many people trying to find a way to better the world. Here's an example of a project looking to provide sustainable energy to impoverished communities.
While it's difficult to tell which of these initiatives will be successful in their mission, go poke around and try to find something worth donating for.
Sites like this and Kickstarter are really reinventing the way we think of innovation. I'd like to see you say more about how we might now think of charity differently.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I just "got" the mast for your blog with its reference to title of our course..
Wow - I have never heard of this, very cool. I would like to go into nonprofit work and am always interested to see how charity organizations integrate into online communities. In nonprofit social media and marketing workshops, we're told that we need to appeal to individuals by making them see some kind of personal benefit from a good deed. Looking ahead, I'm sure I'll be thinking of this post when we continue reading Habits of the Heart - it looks like there will be some more chapters on reaching out to others. Maybe they'll have a more in-depth comparison of changes in philanthropic attitude over time.
ReplyDeleteWOW!!!! Talk about innovation! Will those videos were absolutely remarkable in terms of showing how far the advancements in technology have truly come. I really valued how you were also able to contribute the focus of the websites goal in campaigning through your post of a single video as well. This overall gives a grand perspective of where our world has come from and the phenomenal strides we are making today in not only terms of technology but too as well in respect to working together as a world to overcome many of the struggles faced by those around us on a daily basis.
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