Digital Donations - Crowdfunding for Social Change
Crowdfunding, text donations, microfinance and other innovative ways of fundraising have not only become increasingly important to the existing non-profit sector, it is changing the humanitarian scene, as we know it. The route from observing a social problem to gathering people, resources, data and good ideas have become much shorter through platforms such as IndiGoGo, OpenIDEO and Ushahidi, to name but a few.On Jul 21st 2014 the Berlin Peace Innovation Lab teamed up with Betterplace.org, Germany's largest online marketplace for social projects. The donation platform currently supports 5,384 projects in 146 countries. On the agenda was the future of digital donation. Dr. Joana Breidenbach, co-founder of Betterplace, started off by giving an inspiring introduction to the newest global trends in the fundraising market. Afterwards, the Peace Innovation Lab went to work, and spent the next hour discussing challenges facing digital donations and coming up with new fundraising ideas. When the Lab closed, the conversation continued into the late hours of the day at a nearby restaurant, discussing topics like "How can we learn to ask the right questions to drive social change?" and "Should there be financial incentives for social entrepreneurs?"The MeetUp and following discussion and brainstorm were good indicators of the kinds of conversations and ideas, which will be developed in the upcoming hackathon. On July 19th-21st The Berlin Peace Innovation Lab and Betterplace.org willl team up and bring together social entrepreneurs, creatives, developers and business people to explore and develop a new generation of digital donation tools.