This is Dylan Taylor live-blogging from the 2007 Net Squared Conference. This is the first feedback session for Economic Sustainability.

The following projects presented:

Farmer2Farmer Learning

Yankana.org: Social Web Tools for Developing Countries

MAPLight.org

YouthAssets

Format
30 second presentations by each project – recap and how they are going to be economically sustainable
Question and Answer – from panel and then audience

Farmer2Farmer Learning
30sec
- system where farmers record daily activities
- farm level- predecessor of system
farmer’s willing to pay for beneficial system
- what we see in Vietnam is service provider links
- pay small fee-while income increases so makes sense income increase more than fee
- grant to get release

Q/A
What’s your cost? What percentage has to be covered?
– system introduced by outside project – cost varies as environment/ condition dictates

Great deal of human interaction. Given it’s a people heavy operation. What’s staffing and budget? And how much does farmer pay offset that?

- bare bones implementation for say 1000 farmers would probably be around $20K to $30K which is in training costs, computer. That money is covered by NGOs and privates as well as corps involved in coffee supply and coffee traders.

What are advantages to doing this via software?

- Need to automate as demand increased. Not restricted to anyone crop. Crop independence a focus.

Who’s involved and how many?
-Income increase amounted to $200 a year per farm (hectare) while cost of implementation $10 to $20
- 6000 farmers
- FF fits with sustainability requirements as well

Do farmer’s pay you for training/ etc.?
-projects usually funded by corp. responsibility
-FF trains the service provider
- sustainability by paying for what they like.

Yankana.org: Social Web Tools for Developing Countries
30 sec intro
- about empowering profits in developing countries
- sustained on fees non-profits pay for services
- $40, $60, $80 per year. Rates include different services

Q/A
Why are you structured as a non-profit? As your selling services.
- Yakana.rog will have to eat costs
- Keeping costs low and relying on donations to survive

More than the tools I what they need- need IT knowledge as well. Is there opportunity to sell consulting services?
- online services
- and offline services- teaching them to use the tools
- Not a toolbox approach. Ready-to-use-approach. Here’s tool and here’s how you use it

Opportunity for customization
- basic customization is available
- aid them in developing themselves
- not just giving them the tools

How much will earned income support? How much will donations, grants, etc fund?
- 40 percent outside funding within 3 years – but most start-up costs

NPOs that don’t know a lot about the web usually don’t really know what to do with it. Thinking is that they need a website. Concerned that market is so vast and differentiated that costs will be insurmountable.

Offline questions as to customization ability and issues with diversification.
- First have to start. Worry about educating NPOs as to the possibilities of the Internet.
- $40 service is for basics (ex. We would like a website, customizing, ID-ing existing website)

Does yankana.org have to raise additional capital to cover costs?
- Yes, in the beginning
How much is covered? How much has to be raised and what are costs?
- Costs covered from outside especially in the beginning
- 40 percent of costs in initial 3 years
- 1st year 250 organizations cost = $45,000 and revenue = $50,000

Providing significant services initially at low cost and then cover in back end. Once up, why do they stick with you?
- not static categories as there are emerging amounts of tools
- costs sticks them with Yankana – cheap or expensive

MAPLight.org
30 sec intro
- 5 diverse funding streams- foundations, major donors, membership level gifts, earned revenue(subscription, keyword/ display ad), individual donors

Q/A
Plans for earned income strategy? Specialized people that this stuff is applicable toward
- tension between providing data for free and charging for
- hardcore analysis for pros (journalists, etc.) at costs while basic info and interactive tools are free

Income strategy
- Sunlight Foundation offered initial grant and will continue to fundraising
- Expansion. Expanding all existing funding streams

Collecting info of MAP’s sort is difficult. What about cost of data collection?
- three data streams
- campaign contributions – done by separate entities
- how people vote via govtrack.us
- what interests groups support each piece of legislation – 10 man research team

How far has business plan gone? What happens if a leg(NPO helping out) folds?
- Rapid income stream expansion
- Plan – but a lot depends on exposure, getting it to all states, etc.

Grant to fund complete domestic build-out?
- $20m
Yearly cost after that?
- About $2m

How much is $20m relative to impact?
- Relative to social impact not a whole lot of money.

Who is audience? Lobbyists purchase?
- journalists firms
- yes lobbyists could and probably will purchase

What sort of tech have you used and how easy is it for others to use?
- IN process of creating widgets
- Also built with Drupal (open source)
- Personalization – people track issues that interest them

Focus on campaign contributions, soft money etc?
- our focus is on linking it to outcomes, votes

Does membership restrict and turn people away in a 2.0 world?
- No, many of options to keep it free

Data collection, verification – how do you get info?

YouthAssets
30sec intro
- developing content for orphans in Africa and aggregating the data they provide, selling data sets
- pass this income to orphans to help pay the technology involved - a sustainable service

Q/A
In 2010 20 percent of kids will be orphaned. Some revenue from selling. Receive funding from donors -> like a for-profit saying we are going to make money. Who are these donors?
- expand donor list
- Identify specifics that donors can accomplish
- break up things into small accomplishments
- you can donate and buy actual things
- See map - buy a borehole, etc,

Cell phone service – is that what is being paid for – is that cost?
- yes and getting them involved

What is data? And who is it being sold to?
- little quizzes – test (ex. Do you have access to a school within X miles of your house?)
- Also attach appropriate, helpful info with quizzes
- Getting them helpful info and then pulling that data and mapping it
- Haven’t had a lot of time to research who they would sell info from, but info on ground is scarce – local service providers, NGO’s and the like need that info

How do you verify the data? And what is orphan’s return? What do they get for a story?
- Incentive for orphans to go and verify data as well
Relying on transparency and accountability. But who are you relying on to gather?
- Inspiration came from MyRoad(?) software in US universities – provided by college boards – which encouraged exploring higher education
- People on ground are doing the work

Getting funds by selling data is one-time thing, but what about 2nd year? Continuous sustainability?
- Real time data – not a one-time door-to-door survey.
- Info changes, updated regularly
- Population, demographic ever-changing and thus data will change and value will always be there

Kid’s Industry – Toy-R-Us and Johnson and Johnson may be a good way to go.