This is a cross-post from charitychamps.wordpress.com
On this blog I’ve written two previous posts on microfinance (also known as microcredit or microlending) and its effects. Well the debate regarding whether microlending solves poverty still rages on, and this month, the Boston Globe published a fairly extensive article containing much supporting material that concludes microfinance doesn’t actually do much to alleviate poverty. If you’re interested in the subject I would definitely recommend…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on November 20, 2009 at 11:00am —
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This is a cross-post from charitychamps.wordpress.com
If you follow this blog you’d know that I’m always on the look-out for online microphilanthropies with a Canadian bent (I am Canadian afterall). For the most part I actually don’t think it really matters where the microphilanthropy is based, but sometimes it does affect whether as a Canadian I can participate in the programs, and other times it affects whether Canadian charities are the beneficiaries or not.
So I was quite delighted to disc…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on November 13, 2009 at 10:04am —
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This is a cross-post from charitychamps.wordpress.com
If you’ve been following the debate surrounding whether microcredit works or not you’ll be interested to read A Mostly Comprehensive Guide to the Kiva and Donor Illusion Debate, written earlier this month. While I’ve written several articles on this blog about microcredit and its impacts on third world communities, I have never focused in on any particular microcredit organization, and if you could only analyze one it would obviously be Kiva…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on November 6, 2009 at 7:51am —
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Today is day 3 of Round 2 of the Aviva Community Fund up in Canada. The slogan of the competition is "Supporting what's important to you". Charity CHAMPS is promoting microphilanthropy amongst youth, the most important, but least engaged demographic in philanthropy. That's important to us!
Also unlike a lot of the other ideas competing for votes, ours has a fundamental online and micro-action foundation which we think there needs to be more of. Philanthropy needs to benefit from the huge change…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on November 3, 2009 at 8:30pm —
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As a former eBay employee, my first approach to getting rid of things I don’t want is selling. I’ve sold all sorts of things on on eBay, and for bigger items that are hard or expensive to ship, I’ve used Kijiji or Craigslist. As great as those sites are however, there have always been 2 things limiting me from using them more: 1) it’s very time consuming to make a posting (you need to do price comparisons, upload photos, write detailed descriptions, etc.), and 2) I always think that I can probab…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 28, 2009 at 9:30am —
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I attended Toronto’s first Ignite event on Tuesday, and had to chance to connect with other individuals who are also very interested in the microphilanthropy / microfinance space—including Renjie Butalid of SiG Waterloo, Karim Harji of Social Capital Partners and founder of Social Finance, Ramy Nassar of Engineers Without Borders, and entrepreneur and socially-minded dude Joseph Fung. Of several great conversations we had, I particularly enjoyed one about the effectiveness of microactions, a top…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 23, 2009 at 7:45am —
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The other day at work I noticed that Dawn is offering $1 to save wildlife for every bottle of dish detergent sold. Just enter in the bottle’s donation code at their website by the end of this year and Dawn will donate a dollar that will go towards the Marine Mammal Center and the International Bird Rescue Research Center. This is just another example of social responsibility that I see companies being increasingly involved in, but for once I can’t help but question the effectiveness of the campa…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 16, 2009 at 8:36am —
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Back in July I had written about how Call2Action was looking for Beta testers – well now they’ve launched! I got the launch email on Sept 18th and meant to write about it then, but didn’t get to it until now. If you haven’t yet you should check the site out. It’s s a “viral action tool for nonprofits”, so if you’re a nonprofit looking for a way to run a viral campaign online, this is the site for you. The Call2Action video widget lets you bundle campaign videos with actions together, so that you…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 14, 2009 at 8:26am —
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Do you buy digital music online? If so, you should check out FundTunes. FundTunes is a recently launched site that is partnered with Universal Music Canada to sell digital music for the benefit of charities. Nonprofits get $3.00 per 10-song bundle and $1.50 from each 5-song bundle that you buy. Currently listed nonprofits include MADD, Best Buddies, WhiteCrow Village, and Canadian Cancer Society. And if you’re looking to donate to a specific nonprofit but can’t find the organization listed, all…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 9, 2009 at 9:40am —
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Last night I attended a Munk Debate on the topic of foreign aid. Dambisa Moyo and Hernando De Soto argued the view that foreign aid does more harm than good, while Stephen Lewis and Paul Collier were for foreign aid. It was a very stimulating discussion, with both Dambisa and Stephen both getting quite passionate about their views. You can read the Toronto Star’s coverage here.
Some of Dambisa and Hernando’s arguments supporting that aid does more harm than good were:
* Africa cannot rely on a…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on October 5, 2009 at 10:05am —
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Do you have waaaaay too many emails in your inbox? Or do you send too many emails in one day to keep count? Well for once that’s good news! How, you ask? Check out ReplyForAll and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
In the office I’ve often seen people using email signatures to spread a particular message. People use all sorts of tag lines, from “don’t print this email – be good to the environment” to “you have to be the change you want to see in the world”. But with ReplyForAll you can take tha…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on September 29, 2009 at 8:55am —
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Have you ever sat around with friends discussing how this world could be a better place? Did you end up with some darn good ideas that you would love to see happen, but don’t know how to go about doing it? If that’s the case then check out Challenge Your World.
Your ideas can change the world, and Challenge Your World is there to help (just like Home Depot’s “you can do it; we can help” motto). You’ll find a space where ideamakers and emerging entrepreneurs can get support, resources, and feedb…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on September 24, 2009 at 8:25am —
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Practically everything you do online nowadays can end up in a small donation to a charity of your choosing. Send an email, buy a book, click an ad, post a twitter update – just think of an action and an organization listed here on this blog will turn your action into charity money.
With over 55% of travel being booked online nowadays, travel is no exception. Here are some of the organizations that you can go to when booking travel so that your money goes toward a good cause:
* Travel 4 Charity…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on September 2, 2009 at 6:17pm —
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At Charity CHAMPS we’ve been thinking for a while about who our target “market” should be. While we would love to encourage the whole world to be involved with microphilanthropy, we have to face reality: we can only reach certain segments of people with our website, and we would probably be more successful having a focus rather than not. So just who is participating in online microphilanthropy right now? Our rough market research would suggest that a main segment of online givers are middle-aged…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on August 25, 2009 at 9:01am —
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Have you ever watched the TVO television series called Get Involved? It showcases inspirational stories of people who are making a difference in their communities, mostly regular folks like you and me who have done some amazing things. There’s ROLF, an inventor who has taken his family home almost entirely off the municipal grid; Edney who wrote a book called “How to Change the World for 10 Bucks” to promote microphilanthropy; and Amanda, a 10 year old who raised over $100,000.00 for The Heart a…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on August 14, 2009 at 4:28pm —
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Since writing the last article on DIY fundraising I’ve come across a plethora of other sites that help you to do fundraising, whether it’s for a specific charity, project, or your next door neighbour who’s in need of some help. Generally all the sites let you create a webpage of content, and help you market to potential donors, and of course, take donations. The sites charge differing fees as a percentage of your total donations, so make sure you know what the fees are before you plunge in. Othe…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on August 12, 2009 at 8:25am —
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For those of you who doubt that microphilanthropy works, especially in the context of online social media, here are some things for you to consider:
- Microphilanthropy is transformational. It touches more people and therefore increases the value of good done with a network effect. See Munnecke and Ion’s paper on this.
- Although the microphilanthropy market is still small (less than 1% of total philanthropy), it’s growing at a phenomenal rate according to Gabriel Kasper of the Monitor Institut…
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Added by Sylvia Ng on June 16, 2009 at 8:13am —
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