Join us for the San Francisco Net Tuesday on September 9:
Involver: How Nonprofits Can Create Video Campaigns for Social Networks.
NetSquared is an initiative of TechSoup
NetSquared enables social benefit organizations to leverage the tools of the social web.
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- CoolPeopleCare.org
CoolPeopleCare.org
Voting Summary (Elevator Pitch):
Want to change the world, but you don't (think) you have enough time? Visit CoolPeopleCare for ideas on how to make a difference in less than 5 minutes a day. While you're there, connect with like-minded people at nearby nonprofit events.
Supporting organization:
CoolPeopleCare, Inc.
URL:
http://www.coolpeoplecare.org
City:
Nashville
State/Region:
TN
Country:
USA
Project Vision Statement & Potential Social Impact:
CoolPeopleCare.org is a website hoping to spark a revolution. We believe in you, and we believe you really do want to give back to the world. But, when you've got a job to go to, rent to pay, and grocery shopping to do, your schedule quickly fills up and time can be hard to find. That's where we step in. CoolPeopleCare seeks to motivate you by showing you the small, everyday things that you can do to make a positive impact. Our signature feature, "5 Minutes of Caring" is a daily, 99-word article that shows you how to make a difference in 5 minutes or less, every single day. Many of our suggestions even fit right in the middle of your daily routine, saving you even more time as you save the world. These small steps, when done every day in concert with countless others around the world, add up to large-scale change.
Everyone's looking for ways to be cool. We work towards setting trends that matter as we motivate you to impact your worlds. We also feature local event calendars for various US cities so you can get involved with great organizations in your own community.
Read our articles, visit our blog, sign up for the emails, and get ready to make a difference.
Sustainability (financial) model:
Currently, CoolPeopleCare generates revenue by featuring nonprofits in the cities for which we maintain a calendar. We sell annual partnerships to nonprofits at extremely affordable rates, exposing great organizations to individuals who want to save the world. This model helps perpetuate one of the driving organizational principles behind the site: connecting willing individuals who want to change the world with key organizations already doing so. There are countless nonprofits doing amazing work, but often don't get have the resources to launch a major awareness campaign to recruit volunteers, donors or employees. Because partnerships are as little as $150 (US) per year, great nonprofits of every size and for-profit social ventures get 365 days in front of socially-minded eyeballs for much less than any direct mail or 'traditional' advertising campaign.
Eventually, the site can lower or eliminate these fees as it generates alternative income through consulting services and book and merchandise sales.
Potential obstacles:
- Growth that exceeds infrastructure
- Not enough short-term income to maintain the site
Resource Needs:
Sure we could use some money. Who couldn't? So, if some were tossed our way, here's what we'd spend it on:
- Legal advice. We would love some input about what needs copyrighting, protecting, and trademarking.
- Expansion. We'd love to take this thing to as many places as possible. To do that, we need to pay some folks to manage content and maintain community calendars.
- Advertising. Even though we're experience natural (viral) monthly growth rates of 10-20%, we think that purchasing advertising on key web sites and in print outlets will raise brand awareness as we try to take this revolution to as many people as possible.
- Enhancements. With additional capital, we could pay a programmer to further develop the social aspects of our sites, such as allowing users to manage a detailed profile of their interests, allowing them to connect and network with like-minded individuals around the world.
Key Milestones:
- Since its launch in August 2006, we have served over 100,000 visitors from around the world
- We currently send out nearly 1,500 "5 Minutes of Caring" emails each day
- On March 1, we signed a publishing deal with Xyzzy Press to write a book with some of the site's content, due out this fall entitled "New Day Revolution: How to Save the World in 24 Hours"
- On March 1, we added our fifth city, so users can tailor content based on where they live
90-Day Plan to Expand the Site's Influence:
- June 1: Add 20 additional cities to the Act Locally events calendar
- July 1: Add 25 additional cities to the Act Locally events calendar, bringing the total number of cities served (defined as cities in which nonprofits are featured and socially-beneficial events are listed) to 50
- This will be done with the help of new summer interns, along with a targeted ad blitz.
Project Summary:
CoolPeopleCare.org is a website striving to make the world a better place, five minutes at a time. We believe in you and your quest to save the world, and we also know that your daytimer quickly fills up with work, feeding your coffee habit, and laundry. So, we show you the ways to change the world in the midst of your daily routine. We then show you how to take it a step further by highlighting nonprofits and community-wide events in your local world. Take five minutes today to make a difference, and know that thousands of folks around the world are following in your footsteps. It's never been easier to plug in and help out.
Comments
If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time
...But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. --Aboriginal activists
I understand the motivation here -- giving people a greater sense that they can change the world -- and I think that's a laudable goal.
But. Not to be harsh, but this strikes me as the epitome of the "nonprofit-industrial complex." I see very little evidence of liberation or empowerment, and more than a few echoes of nineteenth-century "social uplift" programs of the philanthropic upper-class.
The website encourages people to give a very small amount of time/attention/money to a given problem, and then feel good about the supposed impact -- exculpating them from any larger responsibility or role in changing the world. The "cool things" that people can do treat the symptoms, not the problems -- which are systemic -- or are so vague ("form an opinion") as to be virtually meaningless. You charge nonprofits a fee to appear on your website, ensuring that only large nonprofits will be able to do so -- eliminating the small community-based change organizations that would be most likely to benefit from five minutes of someone's time. You only propose to do away with these fees once you get greater income from consulting and merchandise -- in short, when you get yours. There is nothing user-driven or user-centric about the initiatives, no social aspects to their proposition or adoption, no visible metrics for participation, no evaluations of how successful they are. Social networking is virtually nonexistent, save for event calendars for which organizations must manually submit entries.
There ARE ways of engaging people where they are, with the limited attention/time/resources they can marshal, and nonetheless working toward social change -- helping to begin living in ways consistent with our beliefs. (Some call this "prefigurative politics.") But this does not at all seem to be the approach -- I see no evidence that the organization is working toward any sort of "revolution" even in a figurative sense. There's no empowerment of individuals and no real community-building.
Small initiatives can be vital in giving people a newfound sense of their own power, but I don't see any evidence of that here; all this does is create dependency on an organization for inspiration and direction.
Again, I think the motivation for giving people quick tips on ways to have a slightly less-negative impact on their world is admirable. But beyond a general sense of feel-good activism, I don't see this as a very true fit with NetSquared, which is about individual empowerment and community-building. There's simply no social web built into this website -- there just doesn't seem to be any "there" there.
--ivan (quixotic1.com/Genocide Intervention Network)
Thanks!
Thanks for your comments. Constructive criticism is very helpful to us in this stage of our development. We appreciate the time you took to give us feedback.
In terms of the social aspects of our site, that's something we're working on. We'd love to eventually have the capability for user profiles to include links to worthy causes that people care about so more people can learn about more things that need changing.
We also aim to build real communities outside of the digital world, so a lot of the social aspects of the site point towards that.
And, I looked at your site. It's great! Thanks for sharing it. We'll try to direct some people your way.
Sam
www.coolpeoplecare.org
A Couple Questions & One Idea
Couple Questions:
Curious what you need legal advice for?
Do you have any data on if the users you have actually take action? What is the response rate?
What is your user fatigue rate?
One idea:
With everyone so busy ... how do you see expanding what your doing to integrate into the daily life of people?
For example, if you gave the option for a text message of the 5 minutes a day message ... this would open you up to a whole new market of people: Teens. (and also lesser so but growing: Tweens)
Who cares more about being COOL than Teens?
Also, (just brainstorming here) you could perhaps partner with phone companies to have this service come preloaded on the phone.
Getting change into the hands of people ... well, what's in our hand? cell phones.
OK ... hope that helps a bit.
/ Erin Handy
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Erin Denny aka "Handy"
erin@techsoup.org
Great Questions!
Erin-
These are great questions. I hope I can shed some light on them.
First of all, we educate people on things they can do as part of their daily routine to make a difference. A lot of our content has to do with encouraging people to make better choices. For example, when you go to the coffee shop, take your travel mug instead of using a paper cup. It seems like a small act, but if you do it every day for a year, you'll save the equivalent of one tree. We actually have a book coming out this fall that highlights more ways to make a difference throughout your day.
We need legal advice to make sure all of our copyrights. trademarks, etc. are in order as we begin to expand and brand merchandise.
June 1 will be the next phase of the site, where users will be able to keep track of what they're doing. People will be able to keep a running total of how many minutes they've cared. We're currently trying to develop a larger sense of community at the site, so users can share experiences regarding their attempts at caring.
GREAT IDEA about the cell phones. That's come across our radar as a very viable option. With a few more resources, that might be something that could very quickly become a reality.
Thanks,
Sam
www.coolpeoplecare.org
really i can save a tree a
really i can save a tree a year by using my own mug? wow. i had no idea. good thing i have a mug. :) it helps to know what i'm working towards.
thanks for answering my questions!
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Erin Denny aka "Handy"
erin@techsoup.org
I also had no idea that a
I also had no idea that a tree could be saved every year if everyone used a mug instead of a paper cup. Great info!
The idea of your nonprofit really appeals to me because I really do want to make a difference but I am really strapped for time. Life is so hectic that I barely have time to eat properly and take care of myself, let alone anyone/anything else. But I *want* to help. I really do. I write letters to congress where I can, buy organic, yadda yadda. Thank you for setting up an organization that will help educate people on how they can make a difference, and for enabling them to do what they can with the time they have. Hopefully for me this will branch out and I'll be able to do more and more...