More than one million videos are viewed daily on the YouTube video platform. The latest printed edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica includes 65,000 articles – the English version of the Internet site Wikipedia with their 3.1 articles, offers 50 times more. And if the social network Facebook, with its over-300 million members, was a nation, it would compete with the USA as the third largest country in the world. It’s undeniable: the Internet is on the rise. It’s no wonder then that more and more donors are turning daily to online giving opportunities, especially during Christmas time.
“The Internet is ideal for connecting people with knowledge worldwide. It offers exactly what donors are looking for today: more transparency of their money’s application and direct contact with those who benefit from their donations,” according to Till Behnke, founder of the non-profit Internet platform betterplace.org. With more than 20,000 members and over one million Euros of generated donations, betterplace.org is Germany’s largest donation-community. Behnke explains that the largest portion of gifts received stem not from the “classic donor aged 60 years and up,” but rather from those under 40, a much younger target group which until now has been inaccessible for the classic aid organisations.
Younger Donors, better project comparisons, quicker feedback
Access to new target groups is not the only appeal for using the Internet in the social sector. The benefits of online-donations are manifold. As with YouTube or eBay, it’s much quicker and easier to find what one is looking for on the Internet. On betterplace.org, for example, one can filter by region or topic to find specific projects. Then the donor can invest money, needed goods, or voluntary work — according to her wishes and personal interests – into helping the particular project of her choice, such as a children’s home in Berlin or a cooperative in Honduras that needs to install solar panels.
Is a donor uncertain about how well the project seems to work? The Internets many avenues of communication allow for project managers to update their supporters regularly on the status of their projects. One can also review the publicly available project evaluations from other community members, many of whom have visited the location of the projects themselves. In finding a project to support, members are themselves supported by a wide array of online multimedia: videos, photo reports and blog posts are frequently sent to inform donors of the recent progress made on “their projects.” The multimedia communication possibilities can then also work to motivate other members to support a project. “Up till now, donating was a one way street. We want to make it into a roundabout,” says Behnke.
Cutting fundraising costs online
At the same time, the Internet cuts fundraising costs, which are often considered to be too high by classical aid organisations. Stephanie Sczuka, a fundraiser for action medeor, one of Germany’s largest medical aid organisations, says: “Conventional expenses for new-donor acquisition costs action medeor between 70 to 90 Euros. Our project on betterplace.org received 15,000 Euros within a short time. The acquisition of these new donors would have cost us around 17,000 Euros by conventional methods.” Of course, how the donor loyalty will continue to develop on the free platform remains to be seen, according to Sczuka.
The Internet is particularly well suited to giving the countless small initiatives a chance to make their work known alongside the large aid organisations. These on-site projects were often previously unknown, now for the first time they have the chance to apply for online support worldwide. Those projects that are seated outside of Germany and therefore not recognized as non-profits by the German tax department or that are too small to qualify, can present their projects on betterplace.org without acquiring a seal of approval, a label which is often too costly for small organisations to obtain. Good intent and purpose: these are the only requirements to posting a project on betterplace.org. According to the 30-year old Behnke, the Berlin start-up doesn’t monitor the presented projects.
This openness naturally raises criticism. Burkhard Wilke, the managing director for the German Central Institute for Social Questions, which issues the non-profit seal of approval in Germany, considers the open access to betterplace.org “risky.” He stated in the Berlin Tagesspiegel that the commentators on the betterplace.org platform could lie, using visually rich language to feign a help project for African children, while actually using the donations received for their own purposes.
To this, Behnke replies: “Of course, we can’t check every project in the world – no one can. Everyone who works in the social sector has to be honest about that. However, alongside the well known and trusted validation-measures – such as the seal of approval or the recognized non-profit status issued by the revenue service – both of which we show on our platform, we are additionally able to highlight a previously overlooked dimension: individuals with their own positive – or also negative – ratings, on-location travel reports and comments.” Behnke sites Wikipedia as a positive example of this, as well as the rating systems for goods and services from other online associations. “This ‘mass intelligence’ is an important supplement to previous trust mechanisms. We believe that individuals and socially engaged associations are competent in finding the information that they deem necessary for their decision to donate.” No one on betterplace.org donates to projects that seem suspicious.
Already convinced: Ashoka and Prof. Eigen, founder of Transparenc International
Behnke and his team are not alone in their opinion. The betterplace.org concept is gaining more and more advocates, some of them prominent. Next to Ashoka, the world’s largest organisation for social entrepreneurs, Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen also supports the two-year-old portal. “The previous form of worldwide aid needs renewal. It must be transparent, participatory and immediate – like betterplace.org,” says the founder of Transparency International, a world renowned organisation that fights against corruption, which is known to be one of the largest problems for development cooperation. Thereby, Eigen says he has still never read a single Wikipedia article nor signed up for Facebook membership. He’s only ever seen a couple of videos on YouTube. One of those was about a project on betterplace.org.