Learning with the Fang

over at my MSN blog I’m asking for money!

why?

tinyurl.com/lkp001

what’s that all about?

For several years now I have been working with Dave (LifeKludger) Wallace to envision a way to use the social web to improve people’s lives through effective technology hacks. We can see and almost taste a world in which networks of ‘livers’ emit ideas or issues they are facing and with the help of networks of ’suppliers’ and ‘givers’ end up with pieces of technology modified by ‘makers’ that improve their life in some way. All totally scale-able, all powered by the social-web.

So our little ‘lkp001′ experiment is our first dabble into the world of social-web powered micro-finance and it is showing a lot of promise. We have shown that it is indeed possible to have a single project funded using the social web without creating too much fuss, admin overhead or any potential bottleneck to scale.

what’s next?

To see if we can demonstrate scale through networks of networks without placing any burden on our initial round of supporters. Here is the plan:

• Ask people who contributed, or thought about it to ask 2-3 people from their social network to do likewise for the next project.
• Run a batch of around 10 projects to see what issues / opportunties emerge
• Develop plans to scale from 100’s to 1000’s of projects with an increasing level of difficulty
• Build LifeKludger into a global community that self-promotes, montoring for and healing any dodgey practices that emerge.

Our humble first experiment has emboldened us to think of LifeKludger growing into a network with a strong reputation for enriching human life, affording great confidence for all stakeholders to articulate their needs, dream up new possibilities, raise funds to source, modify and deliver kludges that will make a difference.

further details and thoughts

Here is the LifeKludger open spreadsheet (so you can see where the money goes)

Beth Kanter (who inspired our fundraising effort) points to some even more ‘micro’ finance tools we might try:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/bethblog/~3/461381603/twitpay-but-what-about-twitdonate.html

The tool I really needed was a way for Kevin to simply twitter his $10 donation to the Sharing Foundation.  But, now he can – with a new tool called Twitpay.  According to Killer Startups, will enable anybody send payments using the popular micro-blogging platform via pay pal. (Hat Tip PlanetNelson)

Killer Startups describes how it works:

This is implemented in the following manner. First of all, you have to fund a Twitpay via PayPal. The amount of this account can vary between 10 and 50 US$. Once the account has been created, you can make payments to any person simply be tweeting. That is, if you want to pay Mark Wolffe $2 all you have to do is enter a message like “@MW twitpay $2 for services rendered” and the corresponding amount will be debited from your Twitpay account.

On the other hand, to see if someone has paid you using Twitpay all you have to do is keep an eye open on the replies tab of your Twitter stream. The site also includes a balance page that will provide you that information.

My initial question is .. hmm how will they avoid fundraising scammers? I’m sure they thought about that?  How do potential donors do their due diligence in 140 characters?

Is Twit2Donate too far behind?  Maybe by 2012.  Peter Deitz has a post called “How Will Your Nonprofit Raise Money in 2012?  He acknowledges the bad economy and it’s impact on fundraising, but makes the following point:

Fang – Mike Seyfang