Venture Philanthropy: Investing in a better world

Jul 25 2010

Brantford Expositor“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Let’s face it the adage is a little dated and overused but as a philanthropic philosophy it has persisted because there is value in it.

What happens though if you’re like me and want to help but have no idea how to fish? I figure our aspiring fisherman could probably use new and better equipment or working capital to start a fishing business more than a fishing lesson anyway.  He or she may still need a “hand up, not a hand out” but perhaps the adage needs to be updated with the times to: “Give a woman a fish you feed her for a day, help her start a fishing business and you change her life”. A few months ago I did just that.

For the past two years Juanilyn Bacala, a 20 year old single mother, has owned and operated a successful fish selling business in the village of Bitibut in the Philippines.  The profits however have not been enough to grow her business sufficiently to provide for her family. She needed $225 in working capital to expand and along with 7 other investors worldwide I loaned her the money to make it happen.

I may not know how to fish, but I know a thing or two about investing and running a business. Juanilyn is a driven hands-on proprietor with a track record of success. She knows her business and has a solid plan to expand into a growing market. The opportunity had a low risk / high reward ratio and that’s why I invested in her. Doesn’t sound like traditional charity? It’s not and that’s why I like it.

I get the most satisfaction out of working with a charity or not-for-profit when my values are in sync with theirs and when I feel I’m investing my time and money, not just giving it away. I’ve had amazing life changing experiences with local organizations; however, I wanted to find a way to use my skills and expertise to do something bigger and with global impact. Luckily I found a way to do it. I found Kiva.

Kiva (www.kiva.org/lender/kevinmagee) is a not-for-profit organization that facilitates microfinance loans directly to entrepreneurs in developing nations. Generally the loans are small however the impact they make has remarkable potential to change a person’s life and a community’s future.

In Microfinance lending individual lenders, not banks, each contribute a small portion of the total loan which is made to the entrepreneur directly. The loan is then repaid over a set term and the interest collected funds the in-country lending organizations. While I don’t get a tax credit, when the loan is repaid I have the opportunity to re-invest the same $25 again and again in new entrepreneurs or even withdraw the money.

So far I’ve had unprecedented success with Kiva. I’ve made over 60 loans worldwide with no defaults to date. I think this is because I take the time to really qualify each investment that I make. It’s not all work though, I greatly enjoy reading the business plans and personal stories and really come to know the people that I have helped. As a bonus, I’ve also learned a great deal about other countries and cultures.

If you have $25, an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to better the world why not invest it directly in someone’s future? Over time, you may find you’ll get a greater return on investment than you can possibly imagine.

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Look ahead to reimagined city of Brantford 2.0

Jun 20 2010

Brantford ExpositorThe future leaders of our community have grown up in a world in which there has always been an Internet. So, too have future voters. Tech-savvy and sophisticated, this new generation is completely comfortable with online participation and collaboration and cannot conceive of a hierarchical and closed government that denies them a voice, an opinion, a say.

This generation will not patiently wait for one opportunity every four years to express their concerns, hopes, and ideas by checking a box in a voting booth with a No. 2 pencil. They expect to be consulted, to be involved in real-time, to be heard and surprisingly, to contribute.
Most importantly they expect to be able to do it all online.

Governments should not fear this paradigm shift but instead embrace it. The best place to make a difference is where government most often interacts with citizens, and 80% of the time this occurs at the municipal level.

In a world where we can trade derivatives on an iPhone, telecommute to work and even eFile our taxes, what can we accomplish online as a citizen of a city? Not much yet, but we’re beginning to imagine the possibilities and they are indeed boundless.

Like most cities in the world today, our municipal government’s “operating system,” let’s call it Brantford 1.0, was developed and installed during the Industrial Revolution and it’s due for an upgrade.

So what is a Brantford 2.0, anyway? Well first off, let’s deal with what it isn’t. It’s really not about technology! It’s not about having a Twitter account or a Facebook page and most of all, it’s not about politics. Call it what you will– e-government, Government 2.0, whatever — the idea is simply to leverage technology and citizen engagement to continuously innovate our local government to a new and better version.

A 2.0 world is coming and the evolution of government can no longer be the exclusive domain of the politician. It’s not simply an IT project, either, nor is it fair to task the tech folks with modernizing the very source code of democracy.

Rather than striking a task force or hiring a consultant to complete a paper-based master plan, why not crowd-source the solution using online tools and ask the actual users what they want, need and can imagine? Why not even ask them to help build it?

Citizen engagement is imperative for a successful upgrade, anyway.

If we citizens are willing and able to contribute to the future of our community, then why not empower us to do so? The debate regarding the Southside, attendance at various city-sponsored town halls and open houses, the conversations on Facebook and Twitter and most revealingly the number of candidates already declared for the fall election all indicate our citizens want to engage, be heard and make a difference. To borrow liberally from late U.S. President Ronald Reagan, “We’re from the electorate and we’re here to help!”

So how do we begin the upgrade to Brantford 2.0? Why not start by leveraging what we already have rather than completely rewriting? Take, for example, our current citizen committees: community- minded volunteers bring their expertise, experience and passion to the table to tackle municipal challenges and provide advice to council on such diverse topics as economic development and the control of vicious dogs.

Why not then establish a Brantford 2.0 or, at the very least, an e-government citizen advisory committee? It would be a good place to start and if nothing else I hope the idea can spark a valuable conversation and perhaps even give a few of the candidates something to Twitter about!

Kevin Magee is a 2.0 Citizen, capitalist, community builder and member of The Expositor’s Community Editorial Board.

Republished from the Brantford Expositor: http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2642452

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Reimagining government as a platform

Jun 05 2010

Brantford ExpositorDuring the early days of the evolving technology industry, the Internet was often called the “Information Highway,” AOL was its principal onramp and Netscape was almost synonymous with what we now call the web.

How did these pioneering giants of tech rise so far so fast and then ultimately become irrelevant while other companies such as Google and EBay built billion-dollar businesses that have completely transformed much of our society?

The answer lies in vision: Google’s is to organize the world’s information while EBay’s is to provide a global trading platform that will allow anyone to trade anything.
These companies have built iterative, interactive platforms, not simply products and services, and have thrived because of what I as a user, entrepreneur or citizen can accomplish by both using and leveraging them. In contrast, governments tend to interact with their citizens much like vending machines do. We drop our taxes in, choose from a pre-defined selection of stale services and then hope that what we wanted will actually be delivered. When it isn’t, we can protest. We can shake it, kick it, call it names, but ultimately if you wanted a Mars bar and ended up with Doritos, it’s pointless to try to reason or argue with a machine.

Government is, however, successful when it builds quality infrastructure for the use of its citizens, institutions to govern use and a justice system to maintain order and then stands back. Sound crazy?

Well there is precedent for this sort of thing: think roads. Governments build and maintain them, create laws to govern their use and then police them to ensure that order is preserved. What governments certainly do not do is attempt to make cars. It’s left to the individual and the private sector to create and add value leveraging a network of roads as a platform.

The success of Web 2.0 is similar. It’s not actually about Twitter or IPhone’s. It is a “webenaissance” that has emerged out of the dot-com dark ages wherein the Internet has been rediscovered for its core purpose, that of networking, connecting and sharing. Once that happened, everything began to change and corporate, static, outdated vending machine-style web pages were replaced with all sorts of creative and interactive services like Amazon, Linkedin, Salesforce.comand Facebook, which are interestingly also platforms themselves.

In both examples, it is what can be accomplished by users or citizens and the private sector leveraging the platform that amplifies both economic and social value. Unfortunately, most governments today are intent on reinventing themselves as eVending machines and would probably have more success trying to build cars.

So, what would a Government 2.0 service look like? For one thing it should not be simply a “webified” version of an existing service rebranded with an “e”. An inapt or dated service ported to the Internet becomes not only an inapt or dated eService but also a missed opportunity. A true platform would allow citizens to create innovative and valuable services whose outcomes are not completely predetermined; services that evolve and are iterative creating a government that is an enabler for its citizens.

It is beginning to happen in cities like Vancouver and Toronto and in countries like the U.K. Collectivism and capitalism, left and right inexplicitly coming together to enable government as a platform. With elections at all levels on the horizon in Canada, we as citizens now have an opportunity to encourage this momentum and participate directly in the creation of the next version of government. Let’s ensure we do not allow existing goat trails to be paved over and called eRoads. If we do, then perhaps government too risks becoming irrelevant in the future.

Kevin Magee is a 2.0 Citizen, capitalist, community builder and member of The Expositor’s Community Editorial Board.

Republished from the Brantford Expositor:  http://brantfordexpositor.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2609595

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Opt in to the iOptOut revolution!

Apr 06 2008

ioptoutHave you ever been quietly going about the business of enjoying your life only to have it interrupted by a long distance ring and a request to speak to the lady or man of house that leaves you trapped in an unwelcome and unsolicited interrogation regarding your inability to fully realize the relative merits of a phone plan, a newspaper subscription, a thinly veiled marketing blitz banking survey or some other such nonsense that you would gladly chew one of your own limbs off if only it meant certain escape?

You know, the kind of “telemarketing” call that no amount of “I’m not interested”, “No thank-yous” or even blatant and highly imaginative obscenities will expedite you from?

Even if you somehow dodge that “free” time-share vacation you’ve recently won in the contest you can’t quite remember ever entering, the sense of relief and satisfaction gained by simply hanging up recedes rapidly into an aching knot in your gut and a sickening realization that no matter what you do or say, they will call again and again and again and again and again and again.

Who can we turn to and who can protect us?

The Tele-Zapper? It’s only marginally effective. Believe me, I’ve tried.

The Government? Unlikely at best. Canada’s do-not-call registry legislation, Bill C-37 was first introduced by the Liberals in 2004 and became law in late 2005. This registry is scheduled to take effect sometime in 2008 however the fine print states that many charities, businesses with prior relationships, political parties, survey companies and newspapers will be exempt and therefore permitted under the law to make unsolicited telephone calls. In other words, business as usual. Only by informing each and every organization that you wish to cease and desist will free you from the tyranny of the unwelcome telemarketer and that seems hardly practical.

Now before you capitulate and sign up for that 4,863 channel cable package with the low introductory rate, know that there is hope in the form of University of Ottawa law Professor Michael Geist.

“The policy priority ought to be where the government started, which when the legislation was first introduced was no exceptions. If a Canadian doesn’t want to receive phone calls from certain businesses or polling companies or charities, they ought to have the right to opt out of that,” says our hero.

Fresh off his success in trouncing the government’s ill conceived copyright legislation with his legions of supporters on Facebook Michael Geist as a private citizen has taken an “if I build it they will come” approach to a do-not-call registry. Last week he formally launched www.iOptOut.ca as a free public service and come they did. 10,000 people registered in the first few days.

iOptOut takes advantage of the part of the legislation that requires companies to remove your name and number from their call lists if you formally notify them. All that is required is that you to create an account on the www.iOptOut.ca website and to provide the system with your name, phone numbers and e-mail addresses. Once registered, you can elect to opt out of all organizations listed in the system (currently about 150), opt out of whole categories such as “Polling Companies” or pick and choose the specific organizations, charities and businesses that you no longer wish to receive unsolicited communications from. Once completed, and it took me less than two minutes from start to finish, you have essentially created an automated do-not-call notification list for any number or all of these companies and organizations.

If you truly value your peace and quiet, you can elect to have all future organizations added to the system automatically notified as well. If you have privacy concerns regarding providing your personal information toiOptOut, then you can even elect to have your information removed from the system once the initial batch notification is complete.

If simply joining the iOptOut revolution will not sufficiently calm the rage that burns within you towards rouge telemarketers, than iOptOut also provides a wiki, to allow anyone to suggest a new company or organization to add to the list.

There are hundreds of organizations that make thousands of telemarketing calls daily and not all unsolicited calls to my home are unwanted, unwarranted or unwelcome however Professor Geist’s websiteis essentially providing me an easy and effective tool to make a pre-emptive strike against those telemarketers that I do not want calling who will also be exempt under the new law.

For this remarkable service, I greatly thank him.


Related links:

iOptOut - website
Privacy Commissioner of Canada - iOptOut
Ingram 2.0 - Michael Geist vs. phone calling spam
Globe and Mail - Professor’s new website aims to stop the phone from ringing
CBC - Anti-telemarketing site draws thousands of registrants
Michael Geist - iOptOut: The First 36 Hours

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