The Global Venture

In a previuos post, there other day we discussed about the possibility that a Charity 2.0 start-up might be a for profit organization. Today I would like to discuss about a famous web company that in September 2006 created a for-profit charity: Google

This articles is based on extracts from the article Philanthropy Google's Way: Not the Usual (New York Times), published on September 14th 2006.

"The ambitious founders of Google, the popular search engine company, have set up a philanthropy, giving it seed money of about $1 billion and a mandate to tackle poverty, disease and global warming.

But unlike most charities, this one will be for-profit, allowing it to fund start-up companies, form partnerships with venture capitalists and even lobby Congress. It will also pay taxes.

One of its maiden projects reflects the philanthropy"s nontraditional approach. According to people briefed on the program, the organization, called Google.org, plans to develop an ultra-fuel-efficient plug-in hybrid car engine that runs on ethanol, electricity and gasoline. […]

By choosing for-profit status, Google will have to pay taxes if company shares are sold at a profit — or if corporate earnings are used — to finance Google.org. Any resulting venture that shows a profit will also have to pay taxes. Shareholders may not like the fact that the Google.org tax forms will not be made public, but kept private as part of the tax filings of the parent, Google Inc. [...]

Google.org is drawing skeptics for both its structure and its ambitions. It is a slingshot compared with the artillery of charities established by older captains of industry […]"

Also read:

• Google's For-Profit Charity (The Faculty Blog -Chicago University Law School)
• For-profit charities? (Marginal Revolution)

Sponsorships are common in the anglosaxon world.

Basically, someone decides to do something like running a marathon, going for a long walk or some other physical challenge (one colleage of mine even joined a trip to the base camp in mount Everest in the Himalayas!!).

Then this person asks around, usually via email, saying 'Please sponsor me in my race against Cancer'. Then people receiving that email may donate some money to the cause, in websites like justgiving. Donating there is a pretty painless process.

After the race/event, you usually get a nice email from the person who started all this, saying 'thanks for your support, here you have some pics of the race, I made it!!!'

One of our approaches to a Charity 2.0 website could involve making the integral process to happen in a website, and generating some more meaningful feedback about what actually happened with the money, or how was the race.

This feedback could take the form of video or other media. The point is to get the donor to be more involved in the process, giving a bigger feeling of ownership about the particular thing to which they contributed! (And so he /she donates again in the future!!)

I have donated several times this way, and lots of people in my office did it as well. This was in the UK but I think this donation model could be exportable to other countries. We could try it out!