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Foik Micro-Philanthropy Network

Challenges Entered: 
Foik aims to do to philanthropy what eBay did to the auction house: increase participation by helping people connect with people.

Foik Micro-Philanthropy Network ScreenshotWith the arrival of a unique set of social networking tools and collaborative payment systems, the barriers to practicing philanthropy on a large scale are coming down.

Anyone with an internet connection and a story to tell can now launch their own micro-philanthropy campaign in support of a particular outcome or non-profit project. Inviting large numbers of friends, family and fellow internet users to contribute costs nothing and can be fun.

The Foik Micro-Philanthropy Network was created to assist this emerging movement in reaching its full potential. Foik aggregates small-scale giving opportunities and helps individuals create and promote their own micro-philanthropy campaigns.

WHAT WE NEED:

In order of priority, the Foik Micro-Philanthropy Network needs:
  1. An advisory board composed of passionate and experienced non-profit professionals
  2. Collaboration opportunities with traditional players in the philanthropy sector
  3. Start-up funding while the consulting portion of the project establishes itself

Project Details
Project url: 
http://www.foik.org
Supporting organization: 
Fractured Atlas
Project Assessment
Sustainability Model: 
Foik is currently a one-person initiative maintained by a web designer living in Montreal (originally from New York City).In the short-term, the project will continue as a part-time endeavor. To generate revenue and expand the project, the founder intends to offer a consulting service to traditional philanthropists who want to amplify their impact by entering the social networking world of micro-philanthropy. Traditional philanthropists will hire Foik to design and implement innovative micro-philanthropy campaigns that have matching-funds associated with them. The resulting revenue and experience will permit Foik's founder to deepen his expertise in online organizing while continuing to pursue the core mission of helping people create and promote their own micro-philanthropy campaigns.
Project goals: 
October 2006Initial launch of First-of-its-kindNovember 2006Foik's How to Use the Internet for Group Fundraising featured in NTEN's monthly newsletterJanuary 2007Relaunch of First-of-its-kind, this time abbreviated to Foik. The new site makes use of Drupal 5.1, a Google custom-search engine, a Google map, and the Tagedelic, CCK, and Views Drupal modules. February 2007First weekly list of Top-Ten Micro-Philanthropy Campaigns publishedPhilanthropy 2173 credits Foik with helping to coin "Micro-Philanthropy" as one of the top buzzwords of 2007.April 2007The project's organizer will speak on a panel called "Not your mother's fundraising campaign" at the NTEN conference in Washington DC90 Day Project Plan (April/May/June 2007) Build a widget for promoting micro-philanthropy campaign that resembles Google AdwordsCreate a Drupal custom content-type for people who want to track their contributions to micro-philanthropy campaignsProduce screencasts and video tutorials that walk people through planning and setting up a micro-philanthropy campaignPublish articles on micro-philanthropy's contribution to the social change movement  
Identified Obstacles: 
A market for the consulting service may take several years to matureThe Foik-produced micro-philanthropy campaigns may not reach their matching-fund targetsThe online tools that enable micro-philanthropy may become overly commercializedPolitical organizing in 2008 may divert attention and philanthropy dollars away from the non-profit and independent sectorsThe do-it-yourself and web 2.0 movements may burn out (unlikely)

Location

Montreal
Canada
See map: Google Maps
Submitted by peterdeitz on March 29, 2007 - 9:52am

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